Residents of Pine Trail Road and developers who want to put a Barnes & Noble shopping center on the road must wait one more month to find out their mutual fates.

Fayetteville City Council Monday voted to table Concordia Partners Inc.'s plans for the Pine Trail-Ga. Highway 85 intersection again, and directed city officials to meet with the developers, and with developers of property to the north, to hammer out details of a proposed frontage road that would serve both the projects.

In a prepared, written motion, Councilman Al Hovey-King directed that "the city manager and the city attorney immediately meet with the property owners between Pine Trail and Guthrie Plaza to propose a cooperative effort among the city, the property owners and the developers to develop a city-owned and maintained frontage access road system along Hwy. 85, providing access to the subject properties through one common access point with Hwy. 85, at the crossover north of the Pine Trail intersection."

The motion, approved unanimously, also requires a progress report at the council's Feb. 15 meeting, with the final decision to be made March 1.

Council's vote Monday does not address the main issue for residents of Pine Trail access to Concordia's shopping center from their residential street. Residents say that city ordinances prohibit access to a shopping center from a residential street, and the city's comprehensive plan lists Pine Trail as just that.

But if the city's plans are realized, the curb cut won't be for a shopping center entrance. It will be for a frontage road to reduce traffic problems for the entire area, said city manager Mike Bryant. The law doesn't prohibit a curb cut for a new city street, he said.

Current plans for the center, negotiated over a year of meetings by both Planning Commission and City Council, call for an exit onto Pine Trail, but no entrance. During a work session last week, Concordia spokesman Kent Rose asked council to consider a temporary entrance and exit that would be closed whenever a traffic light can be installed at the Hwy. 85 crossover to the north, across from the rear entrance to Home Depot.

But Hovey-King said he doesn't like that temporary solution. It would be better, he said, if Concordia and the city work with Piedmont Properties, developers of 54 acres next door to the north, to provide access through Piedmont's land and provide the traffic light on Hwy. 85, so that shoppers visiting Concordia's center from the north would be able to enter it without using Pine Trail.

Marvin Isenberg, president of Piedmont Properties, said that's not a problem with him. "That was my idea in the first place," he said.

Isenberg offered months ago to negotiate joint access between his future shopping center and the one Concordia wants to develop, as a solution to the Pine Trail access debate. Although his project is in the pre-development stages, he said Monday that a temporary road through his land could still solve Concordia's access problem, and he has already received state approval for the traffic light.

City officials have been just as adamant about the frontage road as residents have been in their opposition to the Pine Trail entrance.

A frontage road not only could serve Piedmont's and Concordia's projects, but also Guthrie Plaza, and would provide access from giant Fayette Pavilion to all three areas without tieing up traffic on Hwy. 85, officials say.

"These two parcels, whether they want to be or not, are interconnected," said city manager Bryant.

Whether details that will satisfy all three parties can be worked out in a month remains to be seen, said Isenberg. "We're all on the same page, but not at the same level," he said. "It all comes down to timing."