Welcome to Peachtree City!

That's the unmistakable

impression city leaders hope the proposed West Village/Ga. Highway 54/Livable

Cities Initiative redevelopment project will make on motorists coming

from Coweta County, if and when the ambitious plan is completed.

The Peachtree City Planning

Commission got the first look at the detailed guidelines and site plans

for the West Village LCI Monday night, approving development plans for

three commercial buildings that will mark the initial phase of the project.

What started as an idea tossed

about by a loose gathering of city staffers and interested residents has

resulted in a redevelopment proposal that has won multiple grant awards,

earned the adoration of the Atlanta Regional Commission and led state

highway officials to reconsider their entire approach to road-building,

said Mayor Steve Brown.

City Planner David Rast was

admittedly gleeful Monday that the years-long effort had finally come

to the building phase.

"Peachtree City is a planned

community, and this is the premiere plan within the entire planned community,"

Rast boasted. "We wanted to make it look really special."

If all goes as sketched out

on giant boards in Rast's office, it will be "special"

because it will all have been "planned" - from concrete

ornaments adorning the new bridge over the CSX Railroad tracks to the

color of light poles, traffic signal swing arms and even the awnings above

every doorway.

Among the visual images Rast

related Monday:

- Coming from the west,

motorists will one day cross the county line on a new four-lane bridge

over Line Creek, and suddenly find themselves on a wide boulevard, with

a 40-foot-wide raised median lush with mature landscaping.

- At night, the median

will be illuminated by decorative light posts, shining up toward the sky.

Cooper Lighting, the big lighting manufacturer in the city's industrial

park, will design those, along with streetlights to line both sides of

Hwy. 54 from the county line to The Avenue. the designs will be unique

to Peachtree City.

- On both the north and

south sides of the highway, motorists will be encouraged to park and walk

spaces and set back from the roadway at varying positions.

- Connecting the commercial

"villages" will be a meandering multi-use path, appropriate

for walking, biking or driving the golf cart, set beyond the highway amid

new trees and buffer vegetation.

- To cross from one side

of the highway to the other, residents will access the "Gateway Bridge,"

which appears as a cable-supported span in early proposals. It will be

one of two such bridges in the neighborhood, the other running parallel

to the highway crossing over the CSX Railway tracks, providing easy access

to the West Village from The Avenue.

- Visitors will know where

they are going with the aid of decorative "monument" signs situated

at each of four intersections along the route from Line Creek to Hwy.

74.

- The four "lighted"

intersections at McDuff Parkway, Line Creek Parkway, Planterra Way and

Huddleston Road will provide the only allowable curb cuts for the one-mile

stretch, reduced from the 17 that exist today.

Huddleston Road one day will

be extended as a loop "access" road to provide an additional

approach to Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

Rast's presentation was

greeted positively by the commissioners, who weren't asked to act

on anything Monday night. Design details will be brought