The Cobb Board of Commissioners has approved a site plan change for Mt. Bethel Christian Academy to add an access point at its campus on Post Oak Tritt Road.
Commissioners also approved in a 5-0 vote to raise the enrollment cap to 850 students over the next five years as the private school makes plans to move all of its operations there in the next few years.
The school wants to purchase 9.7 acres of land at the northwest corner of Post Oak Tritt and Holly Springs Road, and add a right-in, right-out access point on Holly Springs, to add to nearly 34 acres it owns there.
Currently there are two access points on Post Oak Tritt, near an already-bottlenecked intersection. Local residents opposed to the request said existing traffic issues would grow worse.
Mt. Bethel Christian has an overall enrollment of around 700 students at all grade levels, but is anticipating long-term growth as it consolidates is operations from its original location on Lower Roswell Road.
When commissioners approved a master plan for the school last year, it capped enrollment at 625 students. At Tuesday’s zoning hearing, the school was seeking a cap of 1,100 (you can read the final zoning analysis here).
Mt. Bethel Christian has operated a high school campus there since 2014, with an enrollment of around 200 students, and will be adding middle school grades next year with another estimated 200 students.
The school was started by the former Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in 1998 but became a separate entity in 2021, right before before the church’s departure from the United Methodist Church. Since then, the academy has leased space from the church for Grades K-8 on its grounds on Lower Roswell Road.
In 2023, Mt. Bethel Church decided to terminate the school’s lease by 2028, prompting the academy to find new facilities. The K-5 enrollment currently is around 300 students.
Neil Dougherty, who lives in the Mabry Manor neighborhood off Holly Springs, said Tuesday traffic is already bad enough with the current school enrollment, and that Cobb DOT has rated the intersection service level as an “F.”
He asked that school expansion be delayed until the improvements are made, and that the school provide bus transportation to alleviate traffic.
“The real issue here is scale, timing and responsibility,” he said, “specifically, whether it makes sense to expand further, before the existing and well-documented traffic problems are fixed.
“There is no funded or approved fix in place. In other words, this intersection is already broken, and there is no clear plan to fix it.
Cobb DOT has held open houses to collect public feedback on the intersection improvements, but hasn’t decided what that might look like. It concluded that a double roundabout, similar to what’s at the entrance of Pope High School, wouldn’t work there.
Robin Washington, a resident of the Hampton Park neighborhood, located off Post Oak Tritt, asked for a delay until February. She said “this is not about opposing the education of young people, this is about ensuring that the school’s long-term success is supported by infrastructure that can safety and sustainably handle the traffic it will generate.”
In her motion to approve the Mt. Bethel Christian request, Commissioner JoAnn Birrell asked that Cobb DOT conduct another signalized traffic study after the first of the year, when classes resume following the holidays.
She also wants the right-out lane on Holly Springs to extend to Post Oak Tritt.
Kevin Moore, Mt. Bethel Christian’s attorney, said the school currently has bus service for the Lower Roswell Road campus, and will continue to do so on Post Oak Tritt, with designated pickup and dropoff spots in the East Cobb area.
Dr. Jim Cianca, Mt. Bethel Christian’s head of school, said the academy needs to know its enrollment cap now so it can begin planning for the lower school relocation “that would allow us to make our 2028 deadline.”
He said next year’s projected enrollment across all grade levels is 750 students, and that the 850 figure is what’s expected in its immediate five-year plan.
Mt. Bethel Christian agreed to a several stipulations, including a right-of-way donation for the Post Oak Tritt-Holly Springs intersection improvements.
The school doesn’t have any plans to develop on the additional property now, but if it wanted to do in the future, it would have to come back to the county.
Related stories:
- Church withdraws variance request in East Cobb neighborhood
- Mt. Bethel Christian Academy expansion gets initial OK
- Opposition mounts to church plans on Oak Lane
- RaceTrac withdraws NE Cobb rezoning; 7 Brews Coffee delayed
- Church eyes East Cobb neighborhood for new worship facility
- Cobb to hold Unified Development Code open houses
- Drive-through coffee proposal on Sandy Plains Road continued
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