By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Fayetteville Planning Commission members say they need more time to study plans for The Village, a proposed 110-acre mixed-use development in the heart of the city.

Commissioners will discuss the plan, and a proposed new zoning category connected to it, in their work session this coming Tuesday at 7 p.m. They may then decide whether to recommend the rezoning to City Council during their regular meeting Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m. Both meetings are at City Hall.

“This is quite a radical change from what we have had. There are several things I would like to review,” said commission member Allan Feldman last week before offering a motion to table the matter.

Developer Bob Rolader is asking the Planning Commission to recommend and the City Council to approve a new zoning category, PCD (Planned Community District) to replace the current PUD (Planned Unit Development), and then attach the new category to the 110-acre former McElwaney property on Ga. Highway 54 and Tiger Trail.

City Council already has approved the basic concept of a plan for just over 200 homes in addition to a hotel/conference center, a small neighborhood shopping square, plus offices and green space.

A consultant hired by the city developed the plan with input from elected and appointed city officials in addition to the developer and other interested parties.

Council members balked at the original plan, which called for more than 300 homes, but approved it when Rolader and consultants whittled it down to 200 homes.

City leaders are hoping that development of the “neotraditional” neighborhood will bolster downtown revitalization efforts and create an upscale, pedestrian atmosphere in the city's center.

But Planning Commissioners have expressed some reservations about creating a new zoning category targeted for a specific development.

“This is an ordinance written for a project,” Feldman said during a work session early this month.

City planner Maurice Ungara said the new category is not tailored just to this development, but will be an overall improvement over PUD.

In its original form, developed in the `60s and `70s, PUD zoning was designed to provide for master planning of communities, city planner Maurice Ungara told the Planning Commission during a work session last week. But over the years, that original purpose has been perverted, he said.

“It's basically been used to replace the variance process,” he said, “for projects as small as five acres.”

The proposed PCD category, he said, will allow developers flexibility so they can be more creative in designing large developments, with the trade-off that the city will have more control. “The zoning is attached to the property and includes anything associated with that development,” he said.

“It would require everything to be documented. Natural resources, historic resources, etc., all have to be taken into account,” he added