196 townhomes proposed for 86-acre site

A newly-tweaked proposal to change an 86-acre tract from industrial to residential zoning for a 321-home subdivision was presented to the Peachtree City Planning Commission Monday night.

Condominiums have been removed from the latest plan and replaced with townhomes, said Dan Fields, vice president of John Wieland Homes, which is seeking the rezoning.

The property is located off Ga. Highway 74 across from South Kedron Drive, and it’s adjacent to the Connector Village subdivision that Wieland plans to build, which was annexed and rezoned for 479 homes on 379 acres.

A vote on the latest annexation proposal was tabled until the commission’s Oct. 27 meeting.

The parcel is currently zoned for industrial use.

The plan includes 196 townhomes with another 125 single family detached homes.

Fields said its townhomes in the new Centennial subdivision have yielded .5 children per unit as opposed to the two students per household projection typically used by the Fayette County Board of Education to judge how many students will be created by a particular residential development.

While Wieland previously donated a school site to the county, construction must begin by April 2009 or the site reverts to Wieland’s possession.

Mike Satterfield, facility director for the Fayette County School System, asked if Wieland could extend the deadline until 2014 because there’s ample room in three nearby elementary schools to handle students from the new development for the next three years, with those schools being Crabapple Lane, Kedron and Peachtree City Elementary.

By 2014 there will definitely be a need for a school as the area approaches build-out, Satterfield added.

Fields noted that the townhomes will front on pocket parks and the price range will be in the neighborhood of $250,000 and up.

Resident Phyllis Aguayo, who served on the citizen task force that studied the site said she is “vehemently opposed to residential” in the area.

“High-density townhomes are not very much different to me than some multifamily we’ve turned down in the past,” Aguayo said. “... The pocket parks are nice ... but token parks don’t offset the impact of so many additional homes.”

Resident Beth Pullias echoed Aguayo’s comments.

“No other village in town comes close to the density of this entire village,” Pullias said.

Planning Commissioner Marty Mullin said he thinks leaving the site industrial would be “a disaster waiting to happen,” and though it could be zoned for office use, he doesn’t know how feasible that is, given the way it can’t be accessed directly off Hwy. 74.

Mullin said his main concern was that the subdivision be of high quality, and he thinks Wieland is up to the job.

The access issue is because CSX Railroad wants to close an at-grade crossing at Hwy. 74 and South Kedron Drive. The city is asking the railroad to leave it open but only for emergency vehicle access, so a fire station can be built on a site that Wieland would donate to the city.

The townhomes will range from 20 to 45 feet wide and some of the homes will be set just 10 feet from the street.

Wieland originally planned to donate some of the land to the city for use as recreation fields, but city staff led the company to decide the area would be best used as a passive park.

City staff also balked at accepting ownership of that site, which is the former location of the Peach Pit landfill. According to minutes of an internal city meeting with Wieland, there was concern over the liability the city might incur for accepting the site.

Fields said Wieland paid for an environmental assessment of the land that showed there were no contaminants. The site was used to dump the old asphalt from the relocation of Hwy. 74 many years ago, he said.

Fields said Wieland could conceivably build on that site, but it would be costly to dig all the concrete up.

Should the city choose not to accept the park, it will be maintained by a mandatory homeowners association, Fields said.

The company has pledged to contribute $250,000 towards development of restroom facilities and other improvements for the park, such as a parking lot.

Fields said the minimum heated flooring area of each unit would be 1,800 square feet.