Everyone now knows the rhetoric on the TDK Extension as a “traffic reliever” and “Braelinn Village Shopping Center savior” was nothing more than the party line of some opportunistic developers and their friends.

Even though many people were mislead by some unscrupulous individuals, the execution of their plot, enabled by the construction of the TDK Extension, will be far worse than the propaganda we were force-fed.

We are witnessing an attempt to build the city of East Coweta. This is not an exaggeration.

With the rural land available and a tool called the “Coweta County Zoning Ordinance Article 13 – New Community District,” our lives could change drastically. This “New Community District” has the capability to morph into something that is larger than Senoia, Peachtree City, Tyrone, Fayetteville and Fairburn combined.

Imagine all of the years of cooperative effort it took to finally get Ga. highways 34/54 widened, and then we lose it in a literal flood of automobiles.

Even if you widened Ga. highways 154 and 74 North, the volume will exceed the capacity of roads.

For years, the residents of East Coweta insisted on road improvements to provide congestion relief so they could travel east-west, but now the Coweta County Board of Commissioners is poised to ruin all the progress we have made by rezoning the McIntosh, LLC site and others.

The rezoning vote by the Coweta commissioners and the actions taken by Peachtree City and Fayette County will literally determine the well-being of our local transportation network for the foreseeable future.

Coweta’s Article 13 liberally allows very large scale developments to occur at an astounding five housing units per acre (gross acreage) and there are no restrictions on maximum building heights, no minimum lot width, depth or area and no minimum setback lines.

For example, 1,000 acres can legally render 5,000 housing units via apartments, condominiums, townhomes or single family units.

The 5,000-plus homes now on the table from Pathway Communities (DRI #923) and McIntosh, LLC (DRI #1191) are just the tip of our traffic-laden iceberg.

Section 130 of Article 13 clearly allows for additional land adjacent to current zoning to be added to the new community districts under the ultra-high density provisions, so the mega-developments can grow until the land runs out.

On top of the housing units, add in a massive Fayette Pavilion-like shopping center, and our traffic woes will be worse than they were before.

In addition, I could write an entire paper on the damage that will be caused to Falcon Field Airport with ultra-high density housing on the Peachtree City border.

In addition to the houses, the Coweta County Commission would be creating mostly retail-oriented jobs. Thus, a multitude of homeowners are added to the commute of the county with the longest commute times in the country, and retail employees and customers will be commuting in and out of the area as well.

Potential fallout from the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is being used as an excuse for building TDK. What most people do not know is GDOT projects are cancelled and moved all the time. Gwinnett County made a habit of picking up the funds from dropped GDOT projects to fund their insatiable need for roads.

An area with no direct access to an interstate highway, a few north-south state routes plagued with traffic signals, an anemic array of secondary roads, poor water supplies and low waste-water capacity is the last place you would want to build massive developments.

Neither the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority nor GDOT should be supporting such developments if they truly care about sustaining our local transportation network and our environment.

Now the question everyone is asking, “How did we end up in a situation where we are primed to create the most significant traffic congestion problems ever seen in South Metro Atlanta?” The answer is simple: developers using political greed.

Over the last several years, U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland and state Sen. Mitch Seabaugh have been responsible for applying the key political pressure for building the TDK Extension. Both men continuously cited “traffic relief” as the reason for extending TDK.

Unfortunately, Seabaugh’s official state biography fails to disclose that his new employer is Coweta-based homebuilder Raptis Homes. Coincidentally, Westmoreland also has financial ties to Raptis Homes.

The TDK Extension will enable one of the largest housing booms ever in the south metro area. Their list of campaign contributors looks like the attendee list for the real estate and builders convention.

Seabaugh and Westmoreland also received maximum campaign contributions from Doug Mitchell of Pathway Communities who received an overgenerous $2 million taxpayer buyout of his land adjacent to TDK.

Not surprisingly, hefty campaign contributions poured in from all of the owners of the TDK mega-development site: Doug Walker (Walker Concrete), Wayne Leslie (Leslie Construction), Tom Reese (Reese Development). The owners of the large Twin Lakes site, who need Peachtree City’s sewer down Rockaway Road, also made large contributions.

Numerous employees of the land owners’ companies, banks and land holding companies also made large campaign contributions. Even some family members of the property owners made contributions.

State records show Sen. Seabaugh made a “pass through” maximum contribution from his developer-heavy campaign account to a local politician in Peachtree City who has actively pursued TDK and diverting our sewer into Coweta County, thus enabling enormous growth and traffic congestion.

It is remarkable to see the coincidental similarities on the timeline of substantial campaign contributions from those interested in TDK development in relation to the various motivated efforts put forth by the elected officials.

Yes, indeed, you can buy traffic congestion, and we are getting the best gridlock that money can buy.

If you want the road gridlock and the political excesses to stop, e-mail the local officials in Coweta and Fayette now: council@peachtree-city.org, administration@fayettecountyga.gov, ldemoss@coweta.ga.us.

Steve Brown
Peachtree City, Ga.