Controversy over development plans for a Pine Trail Road shopping center has crossed Fayetteville's city limits and involved Fayette County.

That's because, although the proposed development is within the city, Pine Trail Road straddles the city limits. Most of the residents affected live outside the city.

And county records designate Pine Trail a "collector" road, raising residents' fears that development can encroach on their neighborhood even further.

For numerous residents of Pine Trail Road and a subdivision that runs off it, the road is the only convenient way to leave home and go south or north on Ga. Highway 85.

They're concerned that plans presented by Concordia Partners Inc. to put a curb cut on their road for a restaurant as part of a shopping center will back traffic up into their neighborhood and make it almost impossible to exit onto Hwy. 85.

The Fayette County planning department is now considering whether the road's designation should be changed, to help send the message that further commercial development wouldn't be welcome in that area.

But County Commission Chairman Robert Sprayberry told residents recently he doesn't think the designation makes any difference. "It doesn't mean that the city or the county is necessarily bound to this," said Sprayberry.

"We're a cul-de-sac... we're a dead end," protested Pat King, who addressed county commissioners about the residents' fears recently. "What brings us here is... a transportation study from December 1996, signed off by city and county officials," showing the road as urban, said King.

Sprayberry pointed out that there are three ways in and out of the neighborhood, but King argued that the other two routes require a slow winding through the adjacent subdivision, with numerous stops and turns. Long-term plans call for possibly extending Pine Trail to Ga. Highway 54 and using it as part of a by-pass around downtown Fayetteville, but that's just one of several options, and those plans are on hold for years due to air quality problems.

County manager Billy Beckett assured King, "The status of the road as being defined as a collector or not a collector really has no bearing on the issue" concerning commercial development at the corner.

Residents continue to fight against a curb cut through Fayetteville's planning process, but Planning Commission members recently told the residents they may have to approve the curb cut, because city law allows a curb cut to serve a single parcel, even on a minor residential road.

The developer has promised to spend about $500,000 improving the intersection, and Concordia spokesman Kent Rose insists those improvements will actually make it easier for residents to get in and out, even after the development is built.