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PTC Council’s big box vote: Yes or No?Tue, 04/17/2007 - 4:55pm
By: The Citizen
If the Peachtree City Council approves a rezoning for a proposed shopping center on Ga. Highway 74 South Thursday night, it will create the largest retail area in the city. An approval also would go against both the city’s planning commission and the city’s planning staff, all of whom say the rezoning should be denied. The proposal from Columbia Properties is to build a shopping center on an 49-acre tract that’s currently zoned for industrial use as part of the city’s industrial park. The project would include a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse at 138,000 square feet. The entire development, including a smaller “big box” soft goods store and a number of smaller storefront buildings, would total 216,000 square feet, not including five out-parcel lots along Hwy. 74. If approved, the development would be directly across Hwy. 74 from the existing Wilshire Pavilion shopping center, making it the largest retail center in the city. The developer is seeking a limited use commercial zoning so it can avoid the city’s big box requirements which are only for property zoned general commercial. The big box ordinance limits single stores to a maximum size of 32,000 square feet and any single development to 150,000 square feet. The city’s Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend to the City Council that the rezoning petition be denied. In his memo to City Council, City Planner David Rast noted that Wilshire Pavilion was rezoned from residential to commercial in 2000 to create a “neighborhood retail center” and not a village retail center. Rast is recommending that the city move forward with rezoning the out-parcel area along Hwy. 74 but leave the zoning intact for the area where Columbia Properties wants to locate the Lowe’s and the other big box store. Leaving the zoning intact would forbid those stores from being developed. Rast suggests in his memo that the site “would be more suitable for senior housing, professional and/or medical office space or light industrial use, all of which could be developed without changing the zoning classification of this portion of the property.” Columbia officials claim the LUC zoning allows the city to have more control over development than currently allowed by ordinance. The city’s land use plan calls for the parcel to be developed with single family homes at medium density, but a residential rezoning for a plan including a subdivision and several stores along the highway frontage was turned down by the City Council several years ago. Many residents in the nearby Wilshire Estates subdivision have vigorously opposed the rezoning, worrying about increased traffic near their neighborhood exacerbating current traffic problems and creating safety issues for pedestrians on Holly Grove Road. login to post comments
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