Concordia Partners Inc. will take its case to the Fayetteville City Council.

The city Planning Commission last week denied the firm's latest development plan for a shopping center at Pine Trail Road and Ga. Highway 85, and company spokesman Kent Rose said the firm will appeal that decision to the City Council. Council will hear the company's appeal in a work session Wednesday, Dec. 30, and again in its regular meeting Monday, Jan. 4.

Both meetings are at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

Last week's Planning Commission denial follows several rounds of hearings in which residents have bitterly opposed a driveway into the center from Pine Trail Road. But city staff say the effect of that curb cut pales in comparison to the long-term traffic problems associated with the Concordia property and a 54-acre commercial tract next door to the north.

With leases in hand for Linens and Things, Barnes and Noble and a Chili's Restaurant, Concordia presented plans last week that include a drive winding through the shopping center parking lot, connecting Pine Trail Road at the southern end of Concordia's ten acres with the 54 acres to the north, owned by Piedmont Properties Inc.

Piedmont will be proposing commercial uses at the front of its property, with apartments to the rear, along Morning Creek, according to spokesman Marvin Isenberg.

City staff members have suggested that the company beef up the drive that would connect their property with Piedmont's, making it a full-fledged frontage road, but chief planner Jahnee Prince said this week that Concordia has not altered the plan in keeping with that suggestion. Rose balked at the idea during a recent work session, saying he fears the city might one day widen the proposed frontage road, taking valuable parking space away from the shopping center.

The combined effect of all 64 acres of development on Hwy. 85 traffic makes a frontage road essential, said Prince, adding that such a road could eventually be extended to Guthrie Plaza, to the north of Piedmont's property, taking even more traffic off the busy thoroughfare.

Connecting the parking areas of the two projects will get some of the traffic off Hwy. 85, and traffic will be less likely to leave the shopping center via Pine Trail, said Rose.

Residents say any curb cut on Pine Trail will result in hopeless gridlock on the narrow residential street.

Debate has raged for most of 1998, and Concordia has revised its plans several times. Rose points out the firm has studied the Pine Trail/Hwy. 85 intersection and offered to pay for about $500,000 in improvements that he claims will reduce congestion on the residential street, not add to it.

But residents aren't buying that claim.

"They have overdeveloped for that corner, knowing that it abuts a residential street," said Pat King, who lives off Pine Trail, during the commission's recent work session.

Concordia proposes a curb cut next to the proposed Chili's, which would be at the immediate northeast corner of 85 and Pine Trail.

Residents argue that not only will the restaurant's customers use the curb cut, but also shoppers visiting stores in the heart of the shopping center will enter and leave on the residential street. That, residents have warned, will make a bad situation even worse.

A curb cut was allowed on Pine Trail for Office Depot, on the southeast corner, and residents complain that delivery trucks block the street completely as they back up to the store's loading dock from the Fayetteville Church of Christ across the street. The church occupies much of the property on which Concordia proposes to build its shopping center, and plans to move to a new location if the shopping center is approved.

Cars leaving the office supply store to turn left onto Hwy. 85 clog their street so badly that they can't get out of their subdivision, residents say. Developers have argued that the residents do have other ways out, by driving through the Ponderosa subdivision to get to Banks Road to the south, but residents say that route requires several starts and stops, twists and turns, and is no faster than using Pine Trail.