Rick Flierl smiled as he looked over a map of his master plan for more than 300 homes, plus offices, retail shops, a park and a hotel, on 110 acres in Fayetteville.

"It's a pretty nice, green plan," said Flierl, a consultant with Cooper Carry, an international community design firm.

Flierl doesn't work for a developer trying to sell a high density plan to the city. He was hired by the city to design a workable master plan for the McElwaney property, a highly visible slice of acreage between Ga. Highway 54 and Fayette County High School.

A committee of city officials that has been working with Flierl on the project will present the plan to City Council in a special called meeting Monday at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

All council meetings are open to the public.

"We're still going to have the density issue," said Mayor Mike Wheat during last week's meeting of the committee. "There's a lot of stuff packed in a hundred acres here."

A lot of stuff indeed. Flierl envisions:

112 Charleston-style row houses, 55 village lots, 116 "park" lots and 22 "estate" lots arranged around a crosshatching of streets that leave space for numerous neighborhood parks;

10 acres occupied by about 120,000 square feet of class A office space;

Four acres of smaller offices, about 40,000 square feet arranged like a small village;

Five acres of neighborhood shops like dry cleaners' and coffee shops, about 90,000 square feet in all;

A four-story, 100-room hotel with conference center;

A city park of about 17 acres with picnic and other passive recreation facilities.

Use of terms like "park" and "estate" lots is deceptive. The largest of the estate lots would be a quarter acre or so.

"The answer to that [the density] is that we're in the middle of downtown," said developer Bob Rolader.

Rolader has an option on the property and has been closely involved in talks about its future.

Wheat agreed, saying the plan is designed for a downtown area, and high density is a key to one of its main goals, to build toward a pedestrian-friendly Main Street zone.

"The notion is that you'd be on your feet, not in the car," added Flierl.

The closely packed homes also allow for acres of green space, he said. It is even hoped that large portions of the old pecan orchard that occupies the parcel can be saved, creating a parklike atmosphere around the hotel and retail shops, he added.

Density, city officials on the committee agree, is an acceptable trade-off for the kind of downtown, mixed use development they're looking for, and for one other element the city will insist on high quality.

Minimum price for the homes should be $200,000, officials said, adding that street scape and construction standards should be top-notch. No rental units.

"If the average is $225,000, then density isn't an issue," said Wheat. "If the average is $170,000, then density is a problem."

Rolader said he hopes the city will reduce the density by purchasing more of the land for its park, expanding the green space to 30 acres or so. "We would be open to that," said Wheat. Developers will be required to pay impact fees, and some of that money can be used for the park, he said.

Flierl said the state has a new division devoted to "in-fill" projects, those that create "livable" communities in downtown areas, and grant money may be available.

Another nice perk, Rolader suggested, would be if some of the land could be set aside for saving historic homes from the wrecking ball.