When Mr. and Mrs. H. Emory Holbrook moved into their home on Sandy Creek Road in 1986, they thought it would be the last time they would have to move.

But that was before a busy, modern hospital became their back fence neighbor and emergency medical sirens began to wake the retired couple at all hours of the night.

Now they just want to get out, but the city of Fayetteville is asking them to hold on a few more months while officials put together a master plan for their property and others like it, where homes are likely to give way to professional office development because of the influence of Fayette Community Hospital.

"It wasn't our idea to move in the first place until they put the hospital there," Emory Holbrook told the City Council last week as the group discussed delaying his request to make his home part of the city and zone it O-I (office-institutional).

The couple already have closed on their new home in Stratford Station, an empty nester community on Ga. Highway 92. Due to his wife's failing health, they need to move as soon as possible, he said.

"It's been a mess," he added. Five days after the Holbrooks bought their new home, the old polybutylene water supply pipe burst and they had to replace it.

Now this delay is another fly in the ointment, Holbrook said.

It's not the first time the couple has been forced out by growing commercial or office development.

"We started out on Brown's Mill Road," said Holbrook in a phone interview with The Citizen. After they lived there about eight years, a Coca Cola plant sprang up near their home, so the Holbrooks moved to a new home in a quiet residential area along what is now known as Old National Highway, next door to the parents of Holbrook's wife, Dorothy. They lived there 30 years.

Longtime Atlanta area residents know what happened on Old National. Country living became city living practically overnight during the 1970s as shopping centers and restaurants turned Old National into a continuous commercial strip.

Mrs. Holbrook's parents (her mother came from the Mize family, well-known in Fayette County years ago) moved along with Emory and Dorothy to the Sandy Creek home.

Dorothy's mother "loved it back here in Fayette County after we got settled back in," said Holbrook, and, remembering her roots, referred to Jeff Davis Drive as Railroad Street (its former name), he recalls.

The elder couple passed away in 1990 and 1994, before the hospital moved in.

Holbrook said this week he can understand the city's need for a master plan, but he is paying taxes and maintenance on two houses right now, and the couple would like to get away from the noisy hospital.

"I can't really see why it's taken so long to go into the city," he said. "The hospital went in right away."

"We'll work as fast as we can," promised city manager Mike Bryant. But he said a master plan for the transitional area is a must.

"If we don't get it now, we'll get picked apart a parcel at a time," he said.

City Council conducted first reading of the Holbrooks' annexation and rezoning request Monday night, and a vote is scheduled for the next council meeting June 7. Fayette Dental Aesthetics, a dental lab, wants to buy the home and move its office there.

Meanwhile, city attorney David Winkle will attend a work session in advance of that meeting to address the possibility that council would approve the Holbrooks' request without waiting for a master plan.