In an article The Citizen dated May 21, [Peachtree City's director of planning and development] Jim Williams is reported to have said that city got involved in tenant matters because we lacked tenant interest for The Mews project at the intersection of Walt Banks Road and Ga. Highway 54.

Anyone who has been involved with this process since last fall knows how ridiculous that allegation is. We had a great outpouring of tenant interest in The Mews project. The fact of the matter is that the Planning Department of Peachtree City made a marketing decision last fall to push this project to the intersection of hwys 54/74, and as a part of that decision started a lobbying campaign against our zoning at Walt Banks and Hwy. 54.

After our zoning was denied, which was due largely to Jim Williams' public opposition — all of which is in the public record — tenants have had no choice but to choose an inferior, secondary site in Peachtree City or to make the decision to skip the Peachtree City market altogether, as some have done.

The irony of all this is that prior to ever pursuing the Walt Banks/Hwy. 54 site, we ourselves had considered the hwys. 54/74 intersection for our project.

However, we were in possession of an official letter Jim Williams personally had sent as far back as 1996 to the Coweta County government describing the stretch of Hwy. 54 between Hwy. 74 and Coweta County as “dangerous and congested,” and strongly advising Coweta County against considering any development in this area.

We never would have believed subsequent to writing such a letter to a neighboring government body, the Peachtree City Planning and Development Department would do an abrupt about-face and would endorse the development of some 300,000 square feet of retail development at the “dangerous” intersection of hwys. 54/74.

What is even more remarkable is that while a traffic impact study is required as a part of the site plan approval process on the development at that intersection, Williams admitted in the May 26 meeting that no such study had been conducted.

If the Peachtree City Planning and Development Department regarded the roads in that area as far back as 1996 as dangerous, how in the interest of public safety can they support the development of a large project in this area without so much as the benefit of a traffic impact study?

John W. Callaway, Ph.D.

Atlanta

[Editor's note: Callaway is the developer who proposed The Mews.

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