When did Peachtree City get a new Village Center for developers to use to buttress annexation requests? —
Twice-denied 52-acre, 23-lot eastside annexation request comes up again at the Thursday Peachtree City Council meeting.
Denied in 2010 and in 2020, the latest attempt by developer Mike Hyde to get his residential plan for near-million-dollar homes off Stagecoach Road and near the new Booth Middle School on Carriage Lane is on the agenda again after a postponement earlier in September voted for by Mayor Kim Learnard, Mike King and Phil Prebor.
Prebor’s support for the proposal, he said, arose from his concern that absent the blocking action of bringing in the subdivision, traffic would increase from as-yet undeveloped large tracts outside the city limits. King expressed similar concerns about future traffic from areas outside the city. There was no discussion how the annexation would “block” the feared traffic.
The Peachtree City Council turned down two previous attempts at annexing the Mike Hyde property. In 2020, then-Mayor Vanessa Fleisch joined councilmen Mike King and Terry Ernst in negative votes against the annexation. Current Councilman Phil Prebor and former Councilman Kevin Madden favored the annexation three years ago.
The nearly identical annexation proposal received unanimous negative votes from the Planning Commission in December 2009 and unanimous negative votes a month later from the City Council — including then-Councilwoman Kim Learnard.
At that Jan. 7, 2010 meeting, Learnard said the city had worked with the county “on the area to figure out how the shared borders should look. The citizen input had been unified and very clear. The City had a qualified staff that had done the homework and research and had recommended the annexation not be approved. There needed to be a compelling reason to overrule the recommendation and she had not heard one,” Learnard said in the Jan. 7, 2010 meeting minutes. Learnard seconded the motion to deny the Hyde annexation request at that meeting 13 years ago.
A second annexation request also is on the council’s agenda for Thursday night. It’s for 11.3 acres on Deanwood Trace at the rear of Shiloh Mobile Home Park, which is adjacent in unincorporated Fayette County.
The developer, Daniel Fields, wants to bring the property into the city to 20 residential lots, wich would extend the existing subdivision of Towson Village. Current zoning for the property in the county is manufactured home district (MHP).
The application says the property to be annexed borders what it calls “the village center known as Lexington Village Center as noted on the city’s Comprehensive Plan.”
The so-called Lexington Village Center has not been acknowledged by the City Council as one of the officially recognized village centers of Aberdeen, Glenloch, Braelinn, Kedron and Wilksmoor.
The applicant’s proposal says “the annexation would support the city’s goal to develop and redevelop land in the city based on the Village concept and the surrounding uses.”
The nearest officially acknowledged village center — Glenloch — lies nearly a mile westward at the intersection of Ga. Highway 54 and Peachtree Parkway.
At the same meeting, the council will consider the rezoning proposal for two office lots on Ga. Highway 54 East and Sumner Road. The plan there is to combine the adjacent lots to accommodate a single commercial car wash business.
Both lots contain structures that were once single-family houses and were zoned for office use when the city annexed them in 2013.
The applicant wants to build a Foamworks Auto Span on the combined lots. The company has several locations around Georgia, including one in Fayetteville.
Both the planning commission and city planning staff were against the rezoning.
