By JOHN THOMPSON
Staff Writer

The town of Tyrone moved a little closer last week to ushering in the biggest office park development in Fayette County.

The town council agreed to a variance that allows the business park setbacks to be lowered from 250 and 200 feet to 120 feet, but stopped short of giving developer Richard Bowers everything he wanted.

Bowers also sought a variance on the percentage of impervious surface throughout the 769,000 square feet development. Impervious surface is anything such as buildings and parking lots that water can't seep through. The town currently limits that to no more than 50 percent in a development, but Bowers was seeking an increase to 58 percent.

Landscape architect Roy Ashley said Bowers was seeking the variance to build a four-lane parkway through the development. The roadway would account for 5.7 percent of the overall 8 percent increase sought by the developers and would lessen the need for curb cuts along Ga. Highway 74.

The council first nixed the request for increasing the impervious surface, but later rescinded its vote and said it would not count the parkway against meeting the requirement.

Bowers will now have to cut 2 percent off his site plan to meet the town's requirements.

When built, the office complex will feature 28 buildings on an 88-acre tract.

In other news, the council agreed to let planning commission member Paul Letourneau keep his seat on the commission while running for a town council post this fall.

The town's election rules stipulate that he should resign if he's seeking another position, but the council said other planning commission members in the past were able to keep their seats while running for city council.

Qualifying for the town's elections starts next week.