Motorists looking for Home Depot or the Peachtree City Tennis Center

or one of a number of new upscale shops and restaurants in the village-type

commercial buildings planned for the area will know where to turn, thanks

to "monuments" placed at just three intersections allowed along

the stretch of highway.

Rast, who has spent two years working on the Westside Overlay District

design guidelines with a citizen's advisory panel, believes the end

result along Hwy. 54 will be so positive, the community will want to apply

the same attention to detail to redevelopment efforts throughout the community

as Peachtree City ages.

A final look at the working proposal will be offered in a public hearing

on Thursday at 6 p.m. at City Hall. The City Council is scheduled to take

up formal adoption of the guidelines later Thursday in the regular business

meeting, starting at 7 p.m.

The Westside development plan, sometimes referred to as the "Gateway

Project" or the "Westside LCI" project, was really made

possible by support from the Atlanta Regional Commission, said Rast.

The ARC awarded the city more than $1 million in various grants over

the past two years to conceive the plan, including a controversial $480,000

offer to build the bridge across Hwy. 54 near Wynnmeade that was quickly

dubbed "the bridge to nowhere" by opponents.

Rast said a team from the ARC will be at Thursday's public hearing

to share their vision for LCI, or Livable Cities Initiative, a unique

campaign to apply new, creative uses to old, ugly urban spaces throughout

metro Atlanta.

The city's planning commission gave its endorsement to the plan

in November, after members expressed some concerns about whether the proposal

was a little too heavy-handed.

The beauty of the project, Rast has said, lies in the fact that legally

there is little the city can do to compel existing property owners to

comply with the design controls, but most seem excited about the potential

to improve their investments.

"We're letting people know about it and finding out that there

is very little opposition out there to this," he said, acknowledging

that property owners aren't being forced into redevelopment right

away.

Instead, the entire project, if completed as perceived by Rast and the

ARC, will be a "work in progress" for several years to come.

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