News | Peachtree City

74 south retail rezoning may be postponed

Thu, 04/19/2007 - 9:50am
By: John Munford

At the request of the developer, the Peachtree City Council tonight is likely to postpone consideration of a rezoning on Ga. Highway 74 south near Holly Grove Road for a 300,000 sq. ft. shopping center directly across from the Wilshire Pavilion shopping center.

The postponement is not guaranteed, but City Attorney Ted Meeker has indicated he expects Council will vote tonight to postpone the matter judging from input he got from each council member individually.

Because of scheduling issues, the earliest the rezoning could go back on the Council agenda is for the June 21 meeting, Meeker said.

Columbia Properties is requesting a rezoning of the property from light industrial to limited use commercial. The company plans to build a large home improvement store and a large soft goods store, with both buildings bigger than is currently allowed under the city’s big box ordinance.

However, Columbia proposed to skirt the big box rules by seeking the limited use commercial zoning designation. The big box regulations only apply to property zoned general commercial, according to city ordinances.

The home improvement store was proposed to be 138,000 sq. ft. and the entire development was to total 216,000 sq. ft. not including several retail outparcel lots along Hwy. 74.

The city’s planning commission had recommended denial of the rezoning, and City Planner David Rast had suggested the city rezone for commercial only the property on the highway frontage. Rast’s suggestion was to leave the remainder of the property — where the large retail stores were to be located — zoned for industrial use.

The city’s land use plan calls for the site to be developed with a medium density single family subdivision, so Columbia’s proposal for a shopping center doesn’t mesh, Rast indicated.
Columbia Properties built the nearby Wilshire Pavilion shopping center.

Residents in the nearby Wilshire Estates subdivision have opposed the rezoning, saying the resulting traffic will endanger kids who use Holly Grove Road to walk through the subdivision because there is no cart path along the road.

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Fight Sprawl
Submitted by Tex67 on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 5:59pm.

Regarding the postponement of the vote tonight, if elected officials must resort to "tactics" to work the system in order to arrive at a vote that is favorable to a special interest, then shame on them.

Regarding this vote, why are we letting Columbia Properties Inc. (http://www.columbiapropertiesinc.com/properties01.html) get away with using a loophole in the zoning law. Please go away. Go peddle your services to other communities that cannot live without being 2 minutes from fast food and big box harassment.

Here are two interesting web sites, there are many others: http://www.sprawl-busters.com/index2.html
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/_pvw370829/climate_change/sprawl.asp

Please, for the love of the PTC, do NOT let this area get rezoned. We moved here and love it here because these were not ever going to be built.

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Fantastic!!
ptcgv's picture
Submitted by ptcgv on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 10:43am.

First the nix from the Planning Commission and now a potential postponement.

Does this mean that maybe Holly Grove Road will NOT be turned into a NASCAR track? Let's keep our fingers crossed.


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NASCAR Rejects Holly Grove Road
tortugaocho's picture
Submitted by tortugaocho on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 2:51pm.

***** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *****

Speaking on behalf of NASCAR, America's premier stock car racing association, Bill LaFrance rejected rumors that Holly Grove Road would be considered as a NASCAR race venue. “We do not like to site venues too close together”, LaFrance said. “We already have the superspeedway in Hampton and a race course planned for Crosstown-Ebeneezer in Peachtree City and so Holly Grove is out of the running.” NASCAR officials indicated that with the TDK road being extended into Coweta County that the Crosstown-Ebeneezer-54-74 Connector will be a state of the art high speed course, sure to satisfy both open wheel and formula drivers and fans. “It may be a little rough on the elementary school but we plan on putting in a Med-First facility at Braelinn Village which surely boost retail spending.” NASCAR gave special recognition to Mayor Harold Logsdon for his continued support and funding of what is sure to be a “world class motorsports venue.”

# # #


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tortugaocho: my understanding
Submitted by dollaradayandfound on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 6:36pm.

I understood that the reason the NASCAR racetrack at Crosstown isn't being built was because of the Indian gambling casino to go in near the "Estates."
Enough of the Creeks have been found with at least 1/8 Indian blood to form the corporation and proceed.
There is some debate about the 1000 room hotel there with the above ground parking lot on 20 acres, but if that doesn't work out then a high speed shuttle, running every three minutes, will transport gamblers to the casino from the hotel to be built on lake Peachtree near the current PTC town hall.
The town hall people will be given the entire top floor of the new hotel.
The old hotel/motel tax on the rooms at this new hotel will finally pay the town back for the tennis center--to be owned by the Indians--and new constuction of a horse racing track near Brooks.
The casino, hotel and race track will supply their own police protection, power generation, water purification, and sewer treatment, so as not to cause the citizens any grief.
Employees of all these facilities will have private schools on premises for their children. The sports teams will be known as the Creek Gray Eagles.
The pig raising and slaughter house combos that were scheduled for Tyrone, will instead be located near the new lake in south Fayette for drainage purpose reasons.
Taxes from all these new wonderful rainmakers may keep each individual taxes down for years to come.

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The problem with postponing the vote is
bad_ptc's picture
Submitted by bad_ptc on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 12:16pm.

the people that were planning on attending tonights meeting will be gone on summer vacations June 12. No doubt the developer is counting on that fact.

The fewer people that show up and voice an objection, the easier it will be for the city council to pass the rezoning request. Their justification being, "well only a hand full of people objected to it".

If the meeting were held tonight, as it was supposed to be, several hundred people would have show up to object.

The developers lawyer, Mr. Lindsey, knows how to play this game very well.

I suspect that the mayor and council saw this coming and advised the developer to hold-off until there was less opposition available to contest the project.

It's common knowledge that the mayor wants this rezoning and the TDK project to go through. After all, the developers bought and paid for him to be mayor.

This is just another example of the "good-ole-boy" politics that this mayor and council are well known for.


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They'll show up tonight, and the 3rd week of June.
Submitted by McDonoughDawg on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 2:27pm.

I know I will and I don't live in Wilshire.

The entire city won't be gone, that's for sure.

I think this proposal is almost dead and gone, but we can't give up now.

This is a common tactic, and was expected by a few folks I know.

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Read the article closely
ptcgv's picture
Submitted by ptcgv on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 2:54pm.

"May be postponed"

"Likely to be postponted"

"Postponement not guaranteed"

Everyone that can, still needs to show up.


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Means they knew it was dead
nuk's picture
Submitted by nuk on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 12:43pm.

Developers understood that it was going to get denied by Council so they decided to buy some more time. I don't really know what they can do-even it's a major overhaul of the plan-to get approval. The political climate right now in PTC sure is not in their favor. This is one vote that no one who wants to stay a PTC elected official(yes, some must think that's a huge honor) is going to vote YES on.

I don't know about Lindsey's hand in all of this, except he's been on the other side a lot when he was City Attorney for PTC and most everything was approved.

NUK


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