Friday, April 16, 2004
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Friday, April 16, 2004 |
Neighbors feel ‘dumped on’By J. FRANK LYNCH Cynthia Zeldin’s thoughts were on an offer she was mulling on a home in St. Simons Cove when her real estate agent steered the car into the north Peachtree City neighborhood Monday night and came to an abrupt halt. About a dozen of Zeldin’s potential future neighbors mingled at the entrance to the community, having just met to discuss what, if anything, they could do to stop Faison Corporation from locating a compromise entranceway to the proposed Target store directly across Georgian Park from their homes. After months of legal wrangling and despite a last-minute compromise barely three weeks ago that halted a court trial, another group of Peachtree City homeowners are preparing to challenge long-delayed plans to expand the Kedron Village retail center. Zeldin, a personal motivator and “life coach” from Indiana who is moving to Peachtree City to be closer to her children in the area, said news that hundreds of cars per day would be funneled to Target through a proposed access drive directly across from St. Simons Cove would certainly impact her decision to buy a house there. “This is absolutely going to affect my decision to move here and the offer I was prepared to make,” said Zeldin, leaning to speak through the open car window across her real estate agent, who didn’t want to be identified. “I’ve been out here six or seven times and I love this neighborhood,” said Zeldin. “But this is going to cause me some concern; I’ll need to seriously consult with my agent about what to do.” The nearly four dozen homeowners already living in St. Simons Cove are also considering what to do next. Of the 48 families in the small neighborhood, 32 were represented at the homeowner’s meeting Monday night, said John Turner, president of the group. Turner wrote a letter last week expressing his concerns to Mayor Steve Brown and four members of the City Council, which met in executive session the morning of March 26 to approve the terms of the compromise. The deal was OK’d 3-1, with Murray Weed, Judi-ann Rutherford and Stuart Kourajian agreeing to allow Faison to relocate the road, and Brown voting against. Councilman Steve Rapson was absent from the meeting and did not vote. According to Turner, Rapson is the only one of the five to respond so far to his letter. Another meeting is scheduled for Friday night, Turner said. St. Simons Cove is just downhill from Regents Park, the cross-street that was originally designed to feed traffic into an expanded Kedron Village and directly to the Target store, according to site plans submitted to the city by Faison last summer. But the threat of increased traffic and the fear that it would bring crime rallied homeowners in the three neighborhoods accessed off Regents Park, and their efforts succeeded in getting Faison to agree to relocate the Target entranceway to an unspecific location “on the southwest corner of the property” downhill from their homes. Elmer Koldoff, a 15-year resident of the city, said St. Simons Cove homeowners first learned of the impact the Faison compromise would have when they met about two weeks ago to get an update on buffers promised them after protesting another project, a 24-hour car wash now under construction across Georgian Park. Koldoff said he thought the new road agreement would make use of existing Newgate Road, which for years has served just one business: Holiday Inn. Instead, they were told the compromise entrance is “directly across from your backyard,” according to a memo from City Planner David Rast sent to Turner March 30. Turner and his neighbors, who were included in early efforts by the Kedron Hills Homeowners Association to fight the Target plans, insist they were left out of the dark once the final negotiations with Faison were begun. “We understand that they were just trying to protect their homes as well,” said Turner, athletic director at Our Lady of Victory Catholic School in Tyrone. “And it’s not a good deal of difference for us either way, because if it had stayed at Regents Park we’d still feel the traffic.” Instead, some St. Simons Cove homeowners say they feel betrayed, by their neighbors and the city. St Simons Cove was one of the “five neighborhoods” the Kedron Hills Homeowners Association originally claimed had joined forces to fight Faison, Turner said, and they thought their interests were still being considered. “But now we feel like it’s all been dumped on us,” he said. Turner said the leaders of the Regents Park fight, John Hedge and Tim Wedemyer,Êwere sympathetic and they insisted that the new compromise road not be located directly across Georgian Park from the St. Simons Cove entrance. Mayor Brown said he asked the morning of the called meeting if any of the St. Simons Cove homeowners had been consulted. “I asked the representative of the homeowner’s group if they had cleared it with the neighbors, and they said no,” Brown recalled. “That’s about the only place it can go,” said Brown, who came out with City Manager Bernard McMullen and Developmental Services Director Clyde Stricklin last week to examine the situation first-hand. According to Turner, nobody was real clear where the agreed-upon road could go. His neighbors concede that there isn’t much choice. Documents show the new road is supposed to be cut through “Lot 14” on Georgian Park, which is across the street and just slightly to the west of the St. Simons Cove curb cut, next door to the Lifeboat Medical Center building that is nearing completion. City staff say the agreement on where to locate the compromise access road into the project was never specific enough to make issue of, and Faison has yet to submit its latest design plans anyway so an all-out protest may be premature. “We don’t know what the plan is yet,” said McMullen. “I encouraged the homeowners association to seek a positive solution instead of trying to make it a greater problem.” “They’ve got some valid concerns,” said Brown. “We’re going to see what we can do.” Said McMullen, “We just have to wait for the plans and see what happens.”
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