RAM Development and Peachtree

City Mayor Bob Lenox signed a development agreement yesterday allowing

for construction of the planned Wal-Mart and Home Depot stores on Ga.

Highway 54 west across from the Planterra Ridge subdivision.

But as of Tuesday afternoon

the agreement had yet to be signed by officials from Wal-Mart and Home

Depot, said city public information officer Betsy Tyler. The document

will be sent to the corporate offices of Wal-Mart and Home Depot for their

review, she noted.

City Attorney Rick Lindsey

said attorneys for Wal-Mart and Home Depot don't anticipate any problems

in signing the development agreement. The document could be signed by

officials from those companies as early as the end of this week or the

beginning of next week, Lindsey said.

The agreement stipulates several

conditions regarding the slate of road improvements the developers are

required to fund, including:

All the road improvements

must be completed prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy

The developers shall fund

the connection using fiber optic cable of traffic signals on Hwy. 54 from

MacDuff Parkway to The Avenue at Peachtree City; all these lights shall

also be sequenced with all other traffic signals on Hwy. 54 extending

eastbound to the intersection of Willowbend Road and Flat Creek Parkway.

If construction on the road

improvements isn't underway by Aug. 15, there will be a meeting no later

than Aug. 22 to determine a new date for construction to begin.

If permits and approvals from

the state Department of Transportation cannot be obtained for a particular

road improvement project, other projects may be chosen with approval from

the city and the city's traffic engineer as long as the new project complies

with the traffic impact ordinance.

Two out-parcel stores shown

on the final site plan cannot be developed unless each property complies

with the city's traffic impact ordinance.

There were no significant last-minute

changes to the agreement, Lindsey added.

"Basically, this is the

same document I drafted back in October," Lindsey said.

The recent negotiations dealt

with including John Wieland Homes as one of the companies which will fund

a traffic improvement project that is crucial to Wal-Mart and Home Depot

meeting the guidelines of the city's traffic ordinance, Lindsey said.

The agreement stipulates that John Wieland Homes will fund the construction

of a eastbound right turn lane on Hwy. 54 beginning 200 feet to the west

of Planterra Way and ending at the intersection of Huddleston Road, Lindsey

said.

The other issue in the recent

negotiations dealt with language requiring the status of the final site

plans, which were approved by two members of the Planning Commission Monday

night, Lindsey said.

At last week's City Council

meeting, council unanimously authorized Mayor Bob Lenox to sign the agreement

on the city's behalf.

Estimates for the traffic improvement

projects slated for the area total over $1.5 million, all of which will

be paid for by RAM Development according to the agreement.

The development agreement almost

hit a snag Monday night as two planning commissioners reviewed the final

site plans for both stores. Robert Ames and Jim Finney originally said

they felt uncomfortable signing the documents since they only learned

they were to review them earlier that day. Ames specifically said he would

prefer to have several days to review the plans since the Planning Commission

hasn't seen them in months.

Lindsey told Ames and Finney

if the final site plan wasn't approved by the next morning, it would hinder

the signing of the development agreement because that was one of the requirements

listed in the agreement. Lindsey said he needed a concrete decision to

bring