The Peachtree City Council will decide Thursday whether it wants city staff to study a proposed 52-unit assisted living development in the Lexington Circle commercial center off Ga. Highway 54 at Walt Banks Road.
Council has the luxury of saying “no” outright to the development, thanks to the city’s moratorium on rezonings for multi-family uses such as apartments and multi-unit facilities.
According to developer The LaSalle Group, the facility is expected to have about 30 employees once it is fully up and running. The building is targeted specifically for Alzheimer’s and “memory care” patients, according to city staff.
The site is located directly across Walt Banks Road from the Holy Trinity Catholic Church and a stone’s throw from McIntosh High School.
Even if council decides to lift the moratorium, it would only mean that the developer can work with city staff to provide information on the project prior to the proposed rezoning votes by the planning commission and the council. The planning commission’s vote would be advisory only, as the final say on all zoning matters rests with the council.
There is another hurdle the project will have to cross, according to city staff, as the zoning documents for the Lexington Circle property from March 2000 do not list an assisted living facility as a permitted use, though a development agreement in 2001 does list it as a potential use for the tract. That agreement, however, does not appear to have been voted on by the full council, and amendments in 2003 and 2004 also lacked an allowance for assisted living as a permitted use, according to city staff.
If council decides to lift the moratorium, staff would work to amend the existing Limited Use Commercial zoning for the tract so they can be considered for approval by the planning commission and city council, according to a memo to council authored by City Planning and Zoning Administrator David Rast.
In other business, council is expected to approve the use of its eminent domain powers to acquire permanent easements on three small parcels for stormwater improvements in the Wynnmeade and Preston Chase subdivisions. The easements total less than 200 sq. ft. each.
For two of the parcels, the homeowners have cooperated with the city but their lenders have been non-responsive, according to City Attorney Ted Meeker. The city has not even gotten a response from the property owner of the third parcel, located at 110 Wynnmeade Parkway, Meeker wrote in a memo to council.
The use of eminent domain was considered as a last resort to obtain the easements.
