A decision by Community and Housing Development Corporation (CHDC) on the proposed 264-unit Ashton Park Apartments at South Fulton Parkway and Ga. Highway 92 and the 80 percent low-to-moderate residents that would call the complex home has been temporarily put on hold. A June 7 public meeting on the proposal was met with resounding opposition by area residents.

CHDC Chairman Benny Crane said the proposal was put on hold at the board’s June 20 meeting for a 45-day period to give the developer and community leaders time to work out a compromise.

“We didn’t want to usurp that opportunity,” Crane said.

Crane said CHDC will conduct two more public meetings on the issue prior to the proposal going before Fulton County Board of Commissioners August 16. As yet unscheduled, Crane said one of the public meetings would be held sometime in July and the other in early August. CHDC board members will make their recommendation to the commission after the second public meeting.

The June 7 meeting at Fulton County’s Stonewall Tell facility was attended by approximately 125 area residents who could not have been more adamant in their opposition to the proposed apartment complex that came with provisions for low-to-moderate income residents. The proposal included the provision that residents would be provided with public transportation for a two-year period. Area residents opposing the move centered on the perspective that viewed the proposed apartment complex as an extension of a housing project, one that would bring issues that some in the audience had grown up with and had left behind. Other residents insisted that the developer put up the funds for the project rather than relying on government-backed bond financing.

More than anything, resident after resident sent the message that they moved to the pristine area of South Fulton to raise their families and live their lives. For them, the business-as-usual approach to development and local governance is no longer something with which they are willing to contend.

“This is the new South Fulton,” Daniel Blanks said emphatically. “The only reason there are not more of us here is because we didn’t get the word. We are going to face every challenge you (and the school board) bring before us. We are upset, we are fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

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