At its meeting Thursday night,

the Peachtree City City Council will consider selling a piece of prime

real estate on Ga. Highway 74 without a formal bidding process so a local

business can expand its parking lot.

Frank Cawood and Associates

(FC&A) has agreed to purchase the property at the corner of Hwy. 74

and Paschall Road for its appraised value, according to city documents.

FC&A, a direct marketing and book publishing firm, will also donate

funds to the city to build and maintain a park in memory of former Fire

Chief Gerald Reed and the volunteer fire department.

FC&A is owned by Frank

Cawood, who is also one of the directors and major stockholders of Fayette

Publishing Inc., the parent company of this newspaper.

In a strongly-worded memo,

City Planner David Rast recommends against selling the property to FC&A

since its current design would require a number of variances. The plan

is also not aesthetically pleasing, Rast indicates in the memo.

"It appears that the idea

of utilizing this property to develop a memorial to Chief Reed and the

Volunteer Fire Department is being compromised by the addition of a large

and impersonal sea of asphalt," Rast wrote.

The city has received numerous

offers from developers, organizations and businesses who were interested

in purchasing the tract, which is just under an acre and is the former

site of the old Leach Fire Station, Rast said. Service stations, banks,

restaurants and various office-related businesses have inquired about

the property and city staff have been instructed to tell them it's off

limits.

But according to a memo from

City Attorney Rick Lindsey, the city "probably can convey the property

without taking bids."

Lindsey cited a state law that

allows the city to bypass the bidding process if it is selling real property

in "established municipal industrial parks" or in "municipally

designated industrial development areas" for industrial development

purposes.

The property is currently zoned

for light industrial use.

Another state law allows the

city to circumvent the bidding process if the parcel is "... so shaped

or so small as to be incapable of being used independently as zoned,"

Lindsey advised. In that case, the city must give all abutting property

owners an equal opportunity to purchase the property, Lindsey wrote.

The proposed site plan for

the parking lot would require a number of variances to the city's building

setback and buffer requirements, Rast wrote.

In January 2001, the city council

agreed to develop the site as a passive park area including a memorial

to Reed and the volunteer fire department. Since then, there hasn't been

enough funds on hand to dedicate to the project, although the old fire

station has been demolished.

Reed was the city's first full-time

fire chief who led the transition from an mostly-volunteer squad to a

mix of career and volunteer firefighters.

The city had also considered

using the property as a site for the satellite auto facility or for extra

storage space and staging areas for the public works and recreation departments.

But because the property was such a visible location "it was determined

that the property would not be appropriate for those uses," Rast

wrote in his memo.

The city's buffer ordinance

requires a minimum 60-foot tree save and landscape buffer off Hwy. 74

and a similar 50-foot buffer off Paschall Road.

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