Over the recent couple of years, I have been increasingly concerned that our small-town community spirit is being eclipsed by overdevelopment, retail sprawl, and increased traffic.
Once we had a citywide focus on a village concept, in which small retail centers served a local population within the city.
Now, we are seeing larger and larger retail centers being proposed. The larger centers are not intended to serve a Peachtree City village population, but, rather, to draw from outside the community.
I am a 10-year Peachtree City resident, engineer, business owner, wife, and mother of three. My husband and I moved our family to Peachtree City in 1999, not because of a job change, but for the Peachtree City quality of life, pure and simple.
The cart paths, recreation, city events, and just the small town community spirit we found here were exactly what we had been searching for in a place to raise our family and call home.
Big box retail creates an increased cost burden to Peachtree City taxpayers to provide infrastructure, public safety, water and sewer, and other services. Big box retailers generate more truck traffic due to increased volume of merchandise. Oil runoff from larger surface parking lots can have a direct impact on water quality in local streams.
Big boxes often have the effect of increasing commercial vacancies throughout a region, as they compromise the economic position of smaller, locally owned retail establishments. Big boxes involve increased lighting, traffic, noise, and crime.
Big boxes involve high visibility from major streets, impacting the visual appeal of the surrounding area. Big boxes undermine the spirit, integrity, and uniqueness of our community. They bring a national chain culture to our mom and pop town.
Peachtree City has a comprehensive plan intended “to promote our status as a pre-eminent planned community ... while embracing and preserving greenspace, aesthetics, and the overall character of the community” (2007-2027 Update).
Stick to the plan, and we maintain the greenspace, aesthetics, and character that we all came here for in the first place. Diverge from the plan, and there is no end to our planning problems.
The more we let developers march through our Planning Commission and City Council meetings with a patchwork of requests for exceptions to our city rules, the more tax dollars we waste in months of reviews and negotiations, and the more we open ourselves as a city to potential future lawsuits.
A current case in point is the Capital City Development (CCD) Line Creek Shopping Center proposed at Ga. Highway 54 West. Peachtree City has already awarded a long list of concessions to this developer, who has now returned, hat in hand, with yet another request to substantially increase the size of one of the retail anchors, and the center as a whole.
Previous discussions with CCD have taken months of our planning staff’s valuable time; this discussion should take about 10 seconds.
As a City Council member, I will support strict adherence to our city ordinances and our land use plan. Consistent administration will assure Peachtree City is, and always will be, a place where we can all “Plan to Stay.”
Kim Learnard
Candidate, City Council Post 3
www.KimLearnard.com
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