After some two years working

on the Southside master plan, Fayetteville officials are apparently going

to take a bit longer.

City staff has recommended

that all agenda items relating to the plan scheduled for tomorrow night's

City Council meeting be tabled until Feb. 6, so that issues relating to

the two development agreements can be ironed out.

"We want to make sure

all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed," said Mayor Kenneth

Steele.

The council reached a consensus

at its Dec. 19 meeting to go forward with the plan, saying that it would

be a great improvement over what is currently zoned there and the city

would exercise stricter controls over the development as a whole than

having it develop piecemeal.

"Everything I've heard

has been extremely positive" since December, Steele said. "I've

had no negative comments."

The discussion at the December

council meeting came on the heels of the fourth and final meeting of the

Southside master plan task force, a group that met for about two months

with Urban Collage representatives in an attempt to find out what all

interested parties landowners, developers and existing residents want

in the area and come up with a solution that benefits everyone.

"The task force was the

smartest thing we ever did," Steele said Tuesday. "The results

from that group are so far superior to the original proposal, there's

no comparison."

Even if they are tabled, the

Southside issues are still on tomorrow night's agenda, and a public hearing

must be conducted. Steele will allow further comments at that time.

"It's not going to be

extensive," he said. "We've been down this road, for nearly

two years."

Changes in the city's zoning

ordinance during the past few years have helped the south side of Fayetteville

immensely, Steele said in December, beginning with an attempt by Wal-Mart

in the mid-1990s to locate a supercenter at Pine Trail, on the north end

of town near where the Uptown Square shopping center currently sits. That

led to the development of Fayette Pavilion, and a series of zoning changes

that restrict further "big box" development, Steele said.

Steele said that the recommended

establishment of commercial nodes in such locations as the corner of Hwy.

92 and Jimmie Mayfield Boulevard is preferable to long strips of commercial

development such as those already in existence on Hwy. 85 North. These

are complemented in the Southside plan by open space, ample buffers and

step-down zoning, he added.

The townhouse zoning now available

in the area was split into a couple of locations. Steele noted that the

townhouse area next to Kingswood has been reduced from a possible 120-plus

units to about 48.

The Southside master plan now

consists of 267.2 acres of land on the south edge of Fayetteville, encompassing

portions of Ga. Highway 85, the Ga. Highway 92 connector, Jimmie Mayfield

Boulevard and Bradley Drive. With the exception of a few residences and

the Ingles supermarket on Hwy. 92, this land is still mostly undeveloped.

The site currently includes

97 acres of commercially zoned land and 170.2 acres of residential zoning,

with 21.3 acres of that zoned for townhomes and the rest for single-family

houses. The 53.2-acre Simpson tract is in unincorporated Fayette County,

zoned residential-agricultural.

The task force was formed early

in the fall after a large number of residents in the area came to the

City Council with concerns about proposed development in the area, specifically

from previous Southside master plan proposals. The council tabled all

action relating to the master plan for 60 days, then for an additional

month when last week's final task force meeting became necessary.

The final master plan includes

a land use plan, a conceptual site plan displaying potential development

patterns and a development agreement between the city and the relevant

property owners and developers. It calls for 124.5 total commercial acres,

19 total office and institutional acres, 109.2 total residential acres,

and 14.5 acres of open space.

Commercial property under the

plan is consolidated along Hwy. 85 and at the corner of Hwy. 92 and Jimmie

Mayfield (long-term plans include extending the connector from Jimmie

Mayfield to Jeff Davis Drive), and a small office-institutional node is

suggested at the corner of Jimmie Mayfield and Bradley Drive.

The rest is residential land,

bisected by a 300-foot greenway along Perry Creek north of the Hwy. 92

connector. The plan includes three significant open spaces: a 4.8-acre

parcel on the northwest corner of Bradley and Jimmie Mayfield; a parcel

of 3-plus acres to the west of Jimmie Mayfield at the city limits; and

2-plus acres on either side of Perry Creek north of the Hwy. 92 connector.

The proposed pedestrian paths

literally wrap around the entire Southside master plan, running through

the large greenway along Perry Creek and along the southern edge of the

site, as well as north across Bradley Drive where a portion of the proposed

townhomes would sit. At the westernmost portion of the tract, the proposed

Publix shopping center, which would have an access point on Hwy. 85, is

also accessible via a series of interconnected streets from elsewhere

in the section north of Hwy. 92, giving accessibility between various

residential and commercial sites without venturing onto the highway.

According to the report, 97

acres of commercial land currently exist within the city with the ability

to accommodate about 550,000 square feet of commercial space. Also, the

Fayetteville Towne Center shopping center across Hwy. 85 has set a precedent

that forced the task force to assume the probable county rezoning and

commercial development of the Simpson tract, which would bring the entire

commercial area to about 120 acres and some 650,000 square feet of total

building area, the report stated.

The master plan does not decrease

the total acreage of commercially zoned land, but it relocates commercial

zones to create a node at Jimmie Mayfield and Hwy. 92, "rather than

a sprawling mass of commercial buildings along Jimmie Mayfield and Bradley

Drive," the report said, and the master plan and accompanying development

agreement would allow the city to regulate the size, type and character

of commercial buildings "to create more of a neighborhood/village-oriented

commercial node rather than a regional marketplace."

Representatives Urban Collage

briefly reviewed what was accomplished by the 22-member task force during

four long evening meetings the past two months. They emphasized the four

key objectives outlined in the report: minimizing the impact of commercial

zoning on residential areas; limiting high-density housing to specific

areas; developing a meaningful open space; and encouraging development

north and south of the Hwy. 92 connector to be self-contained with interconnected

streets and paths.

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