A Peachtree City Planning Commission public hearing on Dec. 10 came with a 5-0 vote to recommend approval of the annexation of 30 business and a future residential parcel on 105 acres along Ga. Highway 54 East.
In the works for some time and the subject of potential arbitration with Fayette County, the parcels include Peachtree East Shopping Center, the Peachtree Court and Governors Square retail and office areas and a 50-acre undeveloped parcel for residential use.
Senior Planner Robin Cailloux at the meeting noted that the revised application by applicant Brent Holdings changes the requested zoning district of the 50-acre undeveloped property at the end of Governor’s Square from LUR (Limited Use Residential to allow 94 dwelling units) to R-43, which has a 1-acre minimum lot size. No other changes in the original application were changed.
The change in density translates into one lot per acre rather than the previous 1.9 lots per acre in the original proposal.
The Fayette County Commission on Dec. 13 agreed with county staff and voted not to object to the annexation.
“The original annexation application was approved by the Planning Commission at the Aug. 27 regular meeting. The County Board of Commissioners officially voted to object to the annexation at their Aug. 23 meeting. The Ga. Department of Community Affairs began on Sept. 5 to assemble an Arbitration Panel per the State’s mandatory Arbitration Process. Even after an approved extension in the timeline by all parties, the DCA sent an email on Oct. 22 stating that they were unable to satisfy the statutory requirements and could not provide enough panelists for the arbitration panel,” Cailloux said.
Rather than moving forward through the judicial system with a potentially protracted case, the applicant amended their application as submitted, Cailloux said.
Cailloux said the annexation utilizes the 60 percent method of annexation.
The 60 percent method allows for petitioners representing owners of at least 60 percent of the property in the area to be annexed and at least 60 percent of the resident electors in the area to be annexed to sign a petition to have their property annexed into an adjacent city, according to the Ga. Municipal Association.
It was noted at the meeting that the Publix grocery store, which anchors the Peachtree East Shopping Center, was not interested in annexing. Nonetheless, the annexation request included the required 60 percent threshold.
Cailloux said the commercially-developed properties would not change as a part of the annexation request. The Peachtree East shopping center (Publix and Steinmart), the Governor’s Walk shopping center, and other individual commercial businesses in the annexation territory were not requesting any changes to their current development configurations. There are no active applications or known plans to develop the undeveloped commercial lots along Peachtree Court, she said.
