A shopping center developer is making a second overture for state approval of a new traffic light on Ga. Highway 54 West.

Capital City Development wants the light to serve a 175,000-square-foot shopping center that will border Planterra Way but be served by a driveway that will be at the same location as the existing Line Creek Drive.

Although city staff have approved the application, if it is approved by the Thomaston office of the Georgia Department of Transportation, it will come back to the City Council for consideration, said City Clerk Betsy Tyler.

After that the application would be forwarded to the Atlanta office of the DOT for final approval, Tyler explained.

DOT rebuffed a previous application from CCD, saying the light would be too close to the existing lights at Planterra Way and MacDuff Parkway.

The new application was vetted by city staff and then forwarded to the DOT’s regional office in Thomaston for consideration. After that it will come back before the City Council before it’s submitted to the DOT’s Atlanta office for a final approval, said City Clerk Betsy Tyler.

Councilman Don Haddix said Monday that he still opposes the traffic light. He also opposed the shopping center, saying it’s too big and runs afoul of the city’s big box ordinance, which limits individual stores to 32,000 square feet and entire shopping centers to no more than 150,000 square feet. The size limit was circumvented by a 3-2 vote of council to allow the development to be up to 175,000 square feet.

Councilmen Doug Sturbaum and Haddix were on the losing end of that vote.

The 16-acre site is zoned general commercial.

Haddix is worried that somehow the latest traffic light application will be approved. Without the light, Capital City Development would have to return to the drawing board via the city’s special use permit.

In a development agreement that was approved in February, also on a 3-2 vote of council, the city stipulated that it would not oppose the traffic light.

Haddix said DOT regulations would allow for some new traffic lights to be allowed within the recommended 1,000-foot minimum distance between traffic lights “if there is minimal left turn traffic,” Haddix said.

“There’s going to be anything but minimal traffic,” Haddix said.

Haddix is also worried that CCD will try to build the shopping center with the main entrance being off Planterra Way, which was opposed by residents in the Planterra Ridge and Cardiff Park neighborhoods.

The DOT has recommended to CCD that the development be accessed from the highway by a right-in, right-out only driveway, closing the current median opening on the highway — which would prevent traffic from crossing the highway there — and having the shopping center accessed by Planterra and MacDuff Parkway.

“These options or a combination of these options would provide safer, more efficient access to the development, provide better internal circulation of traffic within the development, and have less impact on the operation of the state route system,” the DOT letter stated.

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