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OPINION — Mayor Kim Learnard is back at it. Yes, she wants more apartment units on prime real estate near the Ga. Highways 54-74 intersection.
We keep calling Learnard out on her efforts, but she keeps denying them, and then she is exposed again.
PTC landmark site in the crosshairs
The city government has discreetly notified the public about a proposed apartment complex on the 39-acre Crowne Plaza site on the peaceful wooded Aberdeen Parkway. Residential neighborhoods and well-appointed office buildings abut the site.
The city scheduled a meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, September 23, at City Hall for a “public discussion” on the rezoning request to allow the apartment complex on Aberdeen Parkway.
Mind you, this is the same Mayor Learnard who previously said she has no intention of adding more apartment units to the city (a statement she made after voting to add stacked multi-family units on Highway 54). Learnard’s actions speak louder than her words. Never trust her.
[Here are Mayor Learnard’s own words in an email to a fellow council member Oct. 20, 2023 just prior to a city election 11 months ago: “Apartments: Other than senior living at Somerby and Hearthside, no apartments have been built in more than 20 years. No apartments are planned. No apartment proposals are in the pipeline. Nobody on Council and nobody running for Council wants more apartments in Peachtree City. Two years ago, I enumerated the number of apartments in Peachtree City at 1,760 units; that’s approximately 14 percent of our households. The national average is 15 percent. You might say we are at equilibrium. No apartments are coming to Peachtree City.” [https://thecitizen.com/2023/10/20/mayor-kim-learnard-lays-down-the-law-to-councilman-holland/]
If you live off the parkway or drive on it, I strongly suggest you attend. If you are tired of the attempts to force more apartments into the city, you must attend.
The site currently houses a hotel and conference center and is an excellent location for a revenue-positive, high-salary corporate headquarters campus.
After the city government sacrificed some of our prime corporate locations on MacDuff Parkway for more residential and multi-family developments, you would think preserving the Aberdeen Parkway site for revenue-positive corporate development and higher-paying jobs would be a no-brainer.
Don’t let them lie to you
Know your history. Our citizens moved to Peachtree City for a reason, and most are determined to save our high quality of life from unscrupulous out-of-town real estate developers.
In the late 1990s, during the Bob Lenox administration, out-of-town real estate firms began to want to overload Peachtree City with apartment complexes. The citizens rebelled, and the Lenox crew aptly responded with a moratorium on apartment complexes. The moratorium and its philosophy stood for over twenty years. I gladly defended it during my administration of the city.
Around 2018, developers wanted to construct big-money Peachtree City apartment projects, and our real estate agent Mayor Vanessa Fleisch, was all too happy to give them everything they wanted. Fleisch proclaimed that we were “being stuck in our ways” and that our ultra-successful community needed to listen to her friends in the development industry. They even proposed a crazy, extensive multi-family complex at the end of our local airport runway.
The Fleisch administration terminated the moratorium and began pushing the horrific Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) plan to add thousands of stacked multi-family units in the city. Many of those proposed complexes would have been on protected greenbelts and replaced city parks and recreation facilities.
The LCI plan was a major wake-up call for local citizens to start getting vocal.
I exposed the LCI plan in The Citizen, which received nearly 7,000 reads and directed a lot of righteous anger at the city government (see https://thecitizen.com/2020/11/01/lci-meeting-insult-to-peachtree-city-residents/). Learnard attended the meetings on the LCI and never uttered a word of disapproval.
At the August 18, 2022, city council meeting, the Learnard administration decided to alter our future land use plan through the state’s mandated comprehensive plan review process to include more apartments all over the city. This puts us in legal jeopardy when a developer applicant files a plan that adheres to the new plan (see: https://thecitizen.com/2023/05/30/opinion-tell-mayor-council-stop-the-dense-residential-growth/).
It was also reported that Learnard received in-kind campaign contributions on two different occasions, October 5, 2021, and November 21, 2021, from the local business owner and real estate developer requesting a zoning change to build multifamily housing. I verified both campaign functions on Learnard’s campaign Facebook page, which now serves as her mayoral page.
At the June 16, 2022, city council meeting, Learnard refused to recuse herself and moved forward to vote on the contributor’s development.
Learnard’s behavior was so problematic that a citizen went to the public microphone, looked directly at the mayor, and asked if there was “anyone who had an ex-parte relationship with the applicants” for the rezoning, and if they did, they “should recuse themselves.” This citizen went so far as to name some of the alleged in-kind offerings to Learnard’s campaign without mentioning the mayor’s name. (See: https://livestream.com/peachtreecity/councilmeeting/videos/231682386).
The mayor just sat up on the dais, cold and unmoved, and did not disclose anything. No doubt she knew the campaign disclosure law and was even given a second chance to divulge the contended financial relationship at a public meeting. She chose silence and got the job done, voting for her campaign contributor (see: https://thecitizen.com/2022/09/12/mayor-was-deciding-vote-to-ok-rezoning-for-unreported-campaign-contributor/).
The trickery was enhanced by the creation of a low-to-the-ground, almost clandestine, political action real estate front group disguised as a group of concerned moms called “Plan for PTC” (see: https://thecitizen.com/2021/07/28/plan-for-ptc-pac-funding-candidates-intent-on-remaking-peachtree-city/). This group supported the construction of more stacked multi-family complexes.
All of this is on the public record. Learnard keeps issuing statements of denial, but we have read the public record and know the truth. She refuses to reinstate the moratorium on stacked multi-family complexes even though she admits we currently have more units than many Georgian cities as a percentage of total residential dwellings.
Now, Mayor “No Apartments” Learnard is at it again, this time on Aberdeen Parkway near the Highways 54-74 intersection. Learnard claims the new apartments are for seniors, but you cannot believe a word she says, and we do not need them in that location.
Apartments are not like single-family homes
Apartment complexes are businesses similar to office complexes. Nearly all apartment businesses are owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and the owners might live in other parts of the country or the world and never actually visit the complexes. They do not care about our community, just the profits.
The office complex market is currently in a destructive down cycle. Apartments go through the same cycles.
REITs are all about profitability and tax advantages. Apartment businesses are susceptible to housing and economic cycles. During down leasing cycles due to the economy or overbuilding leading to overcapacity, cost-cutting can affect the maintenance schedules of apartment complexes, causing blight.
Down cycles can also lead to lower standards for filling vacant units, especially in older apartment businesses. When the standards decline, bad things can happen, as recently witnessed when local police upended an embedded criminal enterprise, investigating several units of a local complex.
While rental houses can sometimes become destructive in a subdivision, the local government can more easily isolate them and control the situation. However, when tenant leaseholder problems occur in apartment complexes, the trouble can quickly get out of hand.
I have many stories about local tenant issues and Section 8 problems I have dealt with, and maybe another column in the future.
To be clear, no one is saying we should not have apartments in our local cities. Overbuilding is a critical issue and a significant risk to the city. The problem is that Peachtree City and Fayetteville do not recognize the scale of our multi-family market and the extent to which overcapacity exists.
Pushing low-income housing
Mayor Learnard, continuing her “deny and press on” strategy, has issued a one-sided low-income housing survey on social media. This is the direction the developer-friendly political action committee Plan for PTC, a Learnard ally, wanted to pursue.
The Learnard administration, a big proponent of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), went on a fishing expedition with a community survey designed to gain support for adding more low-income units in the city.
Entitled “New survey for Peachtree City residents,” the survey probes the community for acceptance of low-income housing development and people of “all backgrounds.”
I contacted Council Member Suzanne Brown, and she did not know that the city was sending out the survey. Apparently, the effort is subverting at least some city council members, and city staff do not have to seek approval from the elected officials before launching such rubbish.
The survey also asked for the respondent’s email address. Guard your safety and identity, and never give your email address or other personal information to the survey contractor Zencity.
Time to act
Email the entire city council with this email address: [email protected].
Tell the city council you want no more new multi-family complexes.
Tell the city council to use that fantastic site for a revenue-positive, high-salary, and less disruptive corporate campus.
Tell Mayor Learnard that you want the 20-year moratorium on multi-family complexes reinstated, no excuses.
And remember that three of the city council seats are up for grabs in November 2025.
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]
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