Wednesday, May 4, 2005 | ||
Bad Links? | Debate on rezoning involves someones visionBy CAL BEVERLY So what are zoning fights about? Include annexations and sewer service extensions in this as well. Essentially zoning is a restriction the majority places upon an individuals property rights. Whole philosophies expend lots of energies defending or rebuking such community restrictions on individual rights. Lets join that debate. Peachtree City is the reality that results from a vision. The reality has departed significantly from the utopian plans first put on paper more than 40 years ago. In true utopian manner, PTCs master plans envisioned a planned city of 80,000 residents clustered in self-sustaining villages, each containing a mix of dwelling types, from apartments to mansions. Because much of PTCs land was assembled and ultimately owned by a single proprietor, the plans went forward. However, reality, also known as the marketplace, intervened. The original landowners went bankrupt; new owners came in with plans more suited to market realities. In other words, what people were willing to pay for varied from the original vision. What you have today is the result of dreams modified by reality, the PTC in which a third of the countys population lives in 2005. Part of that reality is that PTC no longer belongs to one landowner or one dreamer. It belongs to 35,000 or so residents, many of whom own land and vote. Those voters elect city council members and expect them to represent the latest reality-modified version of the PTC vision. How does annexing the West Village, rezoning a central church corner into a 24-hour Walgreens and selling sewage treatment rights to a neighboring municipality coincide with the majoritys vision of what PTC represents this very week? I contend, as a resident of PTC since January 1977, not even one of those three initiatives matches the PTC vision of 2005. Having been around before the bankruptcy of the original developer of PTC, Ive seen a few permutations of that original vision. I stirred up some developer animosity when I headlined a 1982 newspaper story with the mostly unrevealed news that the citys master plan called for nearly 10,000 apartment units at a time when there were fewer than 500 units in the entire county. Obviously, that master plan was modified over the next few years as city administrations decided to propose a vastly lower number of apartment units in PTC. That downward trend in dwelling densities was the outward manifestation of a changing vision for PTC, a vision that was being modified by the new people moving into the city. Politically, it played out in city council rezoning decisions and land use plan changes. Now its 2005, and the pressure to develop all remaining land in PTC to its highest and best use is playing out at the corner of Peachtree Parkway and Ga. Highway 54, the citys second major commercial intersection (Willowbend-North Lake and Hwy. 54 at the bike bridge was the first commercial intersection in PTC). A realistic assessment would be this: At best a few hundred people want the Lutheran church property rezoned to accommodate a Walgreens; a few thousand folks want the corner to remain unchanged; and many more thousands of PTC residents are mostly unconcerned about whatever happens at that intersection. Its up to our city council to make the momentous decision about this most Peachtree City-ish of intersections. A vote to change the land use plan and then to rezone for Walgreens would be a significant modification of the PTC vision. It would have domino effects throughout the city, not the least of which would be the remaining church across the street. It would also affect two churches just a block west, next to City Hall and keepers of what used to be called the village green. I hope the council members buy into the less-dense, less-commercial PTC vision that has guided the citys development for the past quarter-century. I hope the council wont embark on a drastic reversal of that vision trend, for I believe such a reversal will act to the ultimate detriment of all PTC residents, whether they currently care much about that intersection or not. The West Village annexation should be dismissed likewise as alien to the PTC vision of less density, less commercialization. The sewer idea is just plain expediently dumb. Selling Senoia a half-million gallons of sewage treatment a day will ensure that housing and population density will increase on our borders dramatically. Why should a PTC governmental unit enable greater density on our border when it would never be allowed or get the chance to enable such densities within our borders? This scheme should be slapped down by the PTC Council immediately to protect our southwestern flank from hordes of new traffic onto Rockaway Road and Ga. Highway 74 within a block of the Starrs Mill school complex. Some bureaucrats have no vision at all, save a bottom-line mentality in the service of an overbuilt sewer system. |
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