By MONROE ROARK
Staff Writer

One of America's most recognizable symbols is moving up the street a little ways in Peachtree City.

The Planning Commission is scheduled to rule Monday night on a landscape plan for the new McDonald's restaurant on Crosstown Drive near Ga. Highway 74, and city planner David Rast says that is the final city hurdle the company must clear before opening.

The restaurant is near completion, and it could be open for business in a few weeks, replacing the existing eatery farther east on Crosstown Drive, near the Braelinn Village shopping center.

The burger giant takes great pains to remove any signs of its likeness when exiting a building, so the old restaurant “will be officially `de-arched,'” Rast said.

The new venue, next to Best Western, is expected to bring better exposure to the restaurant, and a newer building also will include an indoor play area that seems to have become a staple at the most modern McDonald's establishments.

It is not known at this time who or what will occupy the old restaurant space.

Another establishment becoming more recognizable in the area is moving one of its locations a few hundred yards, this time across Ga. Highway 54.

RAM Development has purchased the property that once housed a Morrison's restaurant next to Ruby Tuesday near the Peachtree Parkway intersection. The company plans to tear down the existing building and build a stand-alone structure with drive-through prescription lanes for motorists, something the current Eckerd across the street in the Peachtree Crossing shopping center does not have.

Harris Teeter, the grocery chain that is developing the old A&P site next to the current Eckerd, has already made it clear that it does not intend to make its store any larger than already planned. That brings up the question of who or what will occupy the old Eckerd space.

City development director Jim Williams told the Planning Commission at its Aug. 9 meeting that the city does not want a site such as that to remain vacant for an extended period of time. Rast said that the city will try to get assurances from Eckerd that the pharmacy chain will not hold onto its Peachtree Crossing lease for very long just to keep a competitor from moving in there.

A conceptual site plan for the new Eckerd store is being reviewed by city staff now, and it is tentatively on the Planning Commission's Sept. 13 agenda.

The city is working with the developer in an attempt to have the new building blend in with the surrounding establishments as much as possible.

Another item on the agenda for Monday's meeting is the landscape plan for the new McIntosh practice fields, for which Rast said grading, sodding and irrigation installation have been completed.

The city has completed work on the cart path, but there is concern about some of the perimeter work, such as steep slopes that need to be stabilized.

Neighbors in the surrounding residential areas have been watching the development closely since the beginning, Rast said, and the city has met with them as well to make certain that all relevant issues are being taken care of.

The school system needs to move forward with some of these final plans, Rast said, but it appears as though very little has been done in the past three weeks or so.

The city instructed the school system to place a guard rail along Walt Banks Road next to an embankment that leads downhill to the field. All that has been put there is an orange safety fence, leaving the potential for serious problems if a motorist ran off the road there.

The school has not begun using the field yet, choosing to wait and give the sod plenty of time to take root. But the embankment issue will be addressed before the field is in use, Rast said.

Other landscape plans on the upcoming Planning Commission agenda include the Peachtree City Distribution Center, a spec building at the corner of Hwy. 74 and Dividend Drive in the industrial park; the NAPA auto parts store on Petrol Point; and the Photocircuits parking expansion at 320 Dividend Drive.

Also on the agenda is a public hearing for a proposed change in zoning category from Limited Industrial to Limited Use Commercial for a tract on Clover Reach, as well as a buffer replanting plan for the Tiernan and Patrylo complex on Dividend Drive.

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