Zoning and set-backs: Guarding a city’s future

In the spring of 1971, we were about to move our family to Georgia. I was charged with house-hunting while Dave was already at work at Owens Corning in Fairburn. Driving through southside towns and neighborhoods I thought we could afford, I saw a mishmash of faulty or no zoning which allowed an unseemly mix of small houses and convenience stores, shopping centers and apartment complexes, jammed and seedy neighborhoods.

Asphalt or concrete sealed off the good earth everywhere. Bars on the windows of schools and churches suggested high crime rates, and interstate highways split communities.

What parks and playgrounds there were received little if any care. Trees were falling at a distressing rate. And the concept of setbacks seemed nonexistent.

We didn’t know many of the people who lived here then, but soon discovered the Southern credo, “Nobody’s going to tell me what I can or can’t do with my property.” That doctrine, we learned, covered everything from pickup trucks on cinderblocks, to clear-cutting residential lots, to year-round flea markets in the front yard.

Then Dave heard about Peachtree City and we discovered rural, green Fayette County, and its brand new planned community. We are only two of hundreds of prospective residents who had the exact same conversation at the intersection of Ga. highways 54 and 74:

“Well, here we are.”

“Where?”

“In Peachtree City.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“Exactly.”

Not exactly nothing. There was a meat-packing plant, a convenience/grocery store, McWilliams’ country store, a TV repair, a gas station, enough houses for 650 or so residents, a few churches, an elementary school, and a strip of offices which contained the developers’ office, a post office, and an insurance business.

With Peachtree City’s expanses of lawns and dense forest still covering most of its 15,000 acres, and its use of “earth-tone” colors and split rail fences, we described the place to friends up north as resembling state parks we used to take the kids to, only we could live here.

We could live here. As we began to educate ourselves on the concept of master plans, planned communities and covenants, it became apparent that this town was serious about developing and maintaining a plan we could live with.

Clean industry was separated from residential communities by a railroad ridge. For golfers, an upscale neighborhood clustered amidst the greens. For fishermen, a recently filled lake lapped at the edge of their lawn. And tennis courts beckoned.

We could live here. Slowly but surely, real grocery stores were built, middle and high schools completed, churches proliferated. Apartments offer affordable housing surrounded by azaleas and oaks. Office complexes gather around pretty ponds, and ribbons of cart paths tie it all together.

The only elements missing to make our town complete were old people and good medical services. In what seemed the blink of an eye, we were ourselves filling that demographic, retiring and staying right here where the kids grew up. Other seniors were moving here to be close to their adult children and grandbabies.

Our calendar, once full of social functions, has been taken over by blood work, MRIs, and stress tests. Social centers and assisted living facilities fill the needs of seniors whose numbers increase as the first residents of Peachtree City get older.

We could live here. When our kids fledged the nest, we moved into a smaller house on the east side of Lake Peachtree. We love this sunny house, wrapped in new leaves and birdsong this time of year. But we remember, sometimes a bit wistfully, old friends who still live in the neighborhood we left.

The population on the west side of the lake has been very stable. Hardly anyone leaves, except by dying.

When there are fewer than 1,000 residents in a town, nearly everyone knows everyone else. If there are any sinister “good ol’ boys” in the ’hood, we’d have known who they were, and they would have mended their ways before the next neighborhood Tripoley (Rummy Royal?) party.

There are still three former mayors (including Joel Cowan, the first), the widow of another, several ‘70s-era city council members, and a longtime city clerk living in that core neighborhood. So, once, did Doug Mitchell. These are the people who carefully thought out this town, and made its green beauty the reason most of us live here.

We don’t mind sharing. What most of us do mind is that there are those relative newcomers who see a stand of trees and think, “What a great place for a drugstore,” or “We could put parking spaces there.”

The percentage of green space and buffering between different land uses was set early on – I think it was 15 percent, but the memory is faulty. Truth be told, I believe we’ve kept it more like 20 percent.

The force of law stands behind the zoning ordinance, but only if it is consistently applied. There is some flexibility built in, and perhaps the city could negotiate swaps where people don’t live.

But don’t change the character of Peachtree City’s core neighborhood. Don’t replace pine trees and azaleas with parking spaces, and don’t shrug away variances or reduce setbacks because someone’s measurements were off by 8.5 feet.

Is it possible that City Hall has forgotten – or never knew – what setbacks and buffers are for?

They are guarded by law, and they protect green space, our city’s best quality.

Don’t cave to plans that threaten them. Honor the Master Plan, and defend it with your political lives.