By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

The so-called “Lenox Manifesto” is back on the table.

Putting limits on residential growth was proposed by Peachtree City Mayor Bob Lenox two years ago, stimulating a flurry of discussion among local city and county leaders, but talk on the subject died down about a year ago as legal barriers became apparent.

But with the federal government putting a halt to transportation improvements in the area, officials not only need to resurrect Lenox's proposal that residential growth be limited to 4 percent a year, but also should talk about expanding the discussion to include commercial growth, said Fayetteville Mayor Mike Wheat during a meeting of Fayette's FUTURE Committee Monday.

FUTURE is a group of county and city officials working to improve efficiency and cooperation among the governments.

“The federal government has taken over transportation and road building for Fayette County,” said Wheat. “But we have 200,000 people from south of Fayetteville coming through the city every day. What can we do to limit growth on [Ga. highways] 314 and 85 given the zoning that we have?” he said.

“I think we need to get the Manifesto, in some form, cranked back up,” he added.

“What we want is some tangible, legally defensible way of changing the way we're doing things now,” Fayetteville city manager Michael Bryant added.

Dozens of acres of developable land along the major thoroughfares is already zoned for commercial building, Wheat said, and as new stores and shopping centers are built, traffic congestion will increase with no remedy in sight, Wheat said.

Peachtree City's Lenox said that city is working to develop an ordinance that requires developers to conduct traffic impact studies for any new development, and to include plans for road improvements that will eliminate any negative impact. “If [the development] is going to lower the performance of that corridor, then you have to come up with a mitigation plan,” he said, “and prove to us and our traffic engineers that you can put in the development.

“If you can't mitigate it, or won't,” he added, “we can't give you a building permit.”

Residential growth is not a big problem for Fayetteville, Wheat said. Most of the city's traffic and other problems are due to the thousands of people visiting the city's shopping centers, he said.

But residential growth all over the county does add to that problem, suggested County Commission Chairman Harold Bost. “Residential does have to come into the equation,” he said, adding that he wants to see rapid action on some limits.

“Every day that passes is a day that we have let an opportunity pass us,” he said.

But limits on development inevitably lead to lawsuits unless there are clear, legally defensible criteria in place, FUTURE members said. The federal moratorium on road building could provide some legal ammunition, they agreed.

The idea is not to stifle growth, said Lenox, just to slow it down. “If we let people build houses as fast as they want to, developers in this town could sell 2,000 homes a year, easily,” said Lenox. “We're saying holding that down to 1,200 a year, about 4 percent, would double or population in 18 years.

“If we leave it on its own, it's going to happen in nine or ten years,” Lenox added.

He suggested that laws requiring developers to mitigate their impact on transportation, schools and the environment could put some drag on the growth.

Consensus of the group was that staffs of the cities, the Board of Education and the county should get together and “create a plan for how this can happen and who gets involved.”