New design restrictions for businesses along Ga. Highway 85 north of Fayetteville are on their way back to the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.

The county Planning Commission approved the standards last week, sending them to the County Commission for a vote Dec. 10.

Planning commissioners had approved the restrictions, designed to create a visually pleasant entrance into Fayette County, in June, but the Board of Commissioners sent the proposed ordinance back to the Planning Commission in July after land owners complained that they hadn't had a chance to comment.

Julian Lee, a businessman who owns several parcels along the busy highway, made numerous suggestions and convinced Planning Commission members to make some changes in the standards.

The area controlled by the new rules will be 500 feet on either side of the highway, instead of the original proposal of 700 feet.

Side yard setbacks will be 25 feet instead of 50 feet, as originally proposed.

In addition to the requirement for a 50-foot landscaped buffer along Hwy. 85, the ordinance requires a 10-foot landscaped strip along side yards. Alternative use of native vegetation in lieu of the landscape strip also will be encouraged, under new provisions of the ordinance.

A section restricting signs has been stricken from the proposed Hwy. 85 overlay ordinance and placed in the county's sign ordinance to prevent confusion.

A provision requiring that existing businesses be rebuilt if they are destroyed has been toned down. Under new proposed rules, a business would have to be replaced if fire or natural disaster damaged it in an amount equal to or greater than 60 percent of its replacement value. Previously, the figure was 50 percent of its assessed value.

Lee attended last week's meeting to argue for still more changes in the proposed ordinance, but commissioners decided to stick with the proposal.

"We've worked long and hard on this," said commission Chairman Bob Harbison.

A restriction that requires half of a development's parking to be on the side or behind the buildings is too restrictive, Lee argued. He showed commissioners a typical "L" shaped shopping center plan, pointing out that parking spaces behind such a development would seldom be used.

"You wouldn't park there," he said.

But zoning administrator Kathy Zeitler said the design standards are intended precisely to prevent such "cookie-cutter" shopping center designs. Commissioner Bill Beckwith agreed. "L-shaped is not necessarily the only way to go," he said.

"I realize it's not going to be easy to design [businesses under the new rules] but I think in the overall context it's going to be something that's accomplishable," commission Chairman Bob Harbison said in an earlier meeting.

The standards are intended to go hand-in-glove with a recently adopted land use plan for that area, which in turn is expected to work with zoning of property along the corridor to "establish and maintain a scenic gateway into Fayette County," according to officials.

A similar set of special requirements along Ga. Highway 54 between Fayetteville and Peachtree City is working well, officials say, and they want the same thing for 85 north.