By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

On again and off again, a 152-home subdivision and 17-acre office complex at Ga. Highway 314 and New Hope Road is on again.

Fayetteville City Council Monday voted to override Mayor Mike Wheat's veto of its earlier approval of annexation and rezoning for the Argonne Forest development.

The project “is not in keeping with the current land use plan and we have no development agreement in place with the developer,” Wheat wrote in the veto letter he filed at City Hall Friday.

Councilman Al Hovey-King said all the points of a development agreement were worked out verbally before council approved the annexation last week, but he admitted the mayor had a point in insisting on a formalized, written agreement.

Lack of a written agreement “did present a concern” following last week's approval, Hovey-King said. After city attorney David Winkle outlined a formal development agreement Monday, Hovey-King said he felt better about the process. “This just really provides a significantly greater level of comfort,” he said.

Council unanimously reversed the mayor's veto and, in the same action, made the development agreement part of the city's zoning ordinance.

The action paved the way for developers Bob Rolader and Brent Scarbrough to build 152 homes on 127 acres, plus a 17-acre office park.

Rolader and Scarbrough agreed, among other concessions, to pay all costs necessary to bring sewerage to the site, to limit the number of office buildings to 14 and the number of homes to 152, to build homes of at least 2,100 square feet at a minimum price of $225,000, and to plant a 30-foot tree buffer between the homes and offices, with trees at least two inches in diameter.

“We agree to them in full,” said Rolader when council members questioned his willingness to abide by the points of the agreement. “I don't know of anything different that's happened since last week except that it's been put on paper,” he added.

To the mayor's contention that the development is not in keeping with the city's land use plan, council members admitted that's true — the land use plan calls for homes, not offices, and on one- to two-acre lots rather than the half-acre to one-acre lots planned for Argonne Forest. But Councilman Kenneth Steele said developments surrounding the site have rendered the plan obsolete for that area.

“The county effectively is leaning toward going O&I [office and institutional] up the 314 corridor,” said Steele. “We have mirrored the county's land use inside the city limits.”

Locking in a large residential development at the key intersection will block office and commercial development from spreading up New Hope Road, he added. “I'm very happy with it,” he said.

Fayetteville leaders last year refused to annex phase three of Fayette Pavilion because developer Stan Thomas proposed to continue the intense commercial development of phases one and two, while the city favored office development there.

Office development on the east side of 314 would have provided a buffer between the commercial growth and residential properties on the west side of the highway, city leaders argued. “We would have liked to have had the county enforce O&I on the east side of 314,” said Councilman Walt White.

But Thomas was able to develop phase three in the county over the city's objections, and council members have since expressed willingness to go along with office development on the west side of 314.

Wheat, who is out of town this week and unavailable for comment, has continued to argue for residential development on the west side and office development on the east side of 314.