Cobb Planning Commission continues NE Cobb rezoning cases

The Cobb Planning Commission heard three major rezoning cases in the Northeast Cobb area on Tuesday, and decided to delay making a recommendation on all of them.

All three were continued to the November zoning calendar.

Among them is a proposal to build a 105-home single-family detached subdivision on Sandy Plains Road near Kincaid Elementary School in an area that’s a flood plain.

The nearly 20-acre site on Ross Road is includes Little Noonday Creek, and the site plan reflects that nothing would be built on a sliver of the property to the west.

But the applicant, Toll Southeast LP Company, is also asking for variances that would substantially reduce the minimum lot size, set and front setbacks and width between homes and increase the impervious surface maximum to 70 percent.

(You can read the case file by clicking here; and the site plan can be found here.)

The new homes would be built adjacent to another subdivision near the Scufflegrit Road intersection, and Toll’s attorney, Kevin Moore, noted that nearby subdivisions in Cobb and Marietta city limits have similar or less dense zoning categories.

“We’re simply asking to be treated equally by what has been approved by this county and the city that you legally have to acknowledge,” Moore said.

But Laurie Wood, who lives in the nearby St. Charles Place subdivision, said the land is in a wetlands, and that the Toll development design does not include a deceleration lane, unlike other communities along Sandy Plains Road.

A traffic study done earlier this year does not factor in other subdivisions under construction for a total of 90 homes.

Planning Commissioner Deborah Dance, who represents District 3, wants to see a more detailed traffic study, and said she’s concerned about the variances.

*Quick Trip wants to build on a former Rite Aid site, but nearby businesses are objecting.*

A few minutes before that, she asked for a continuance for a proposed Quick Trip gas station and convenience store at the intersection of Canton Road and Jamerson Road.

It’s on a 1.6-acre site that was formerly a Rite Aid pharmacy, and next to a retail center that includes Vespucci’s Italian Kitchen, a Planet Smoothie and Ray’s Donuts. (case filings here).

The shopping center’s attorney and Vespucci’s owner told planning commissioners the shared entry and parking lot on Canton Road would adversely affect their businesses.

“This represents an existential threat to these businesses,” attorney Lawton Jordan said. “These are small neighborhood businesses.”

He said a traffic study showed there would be three times as much traffic coming the Quick Trip than the pharmacy “that’s going to have a negative effect” on his clients.

Carol Brown of the Canton Road Neighbors civic group said there are 11 gas stations in a five-mile radius along Canton Road, and two are within walking distance.

“The neighborhoods love these restaurants,” she said of efforts to recruit more “destination” businesses to a corridor saturated with automotive enterprises.

But Moore said 75 percent of the access to the Quick Trip would be along Jamerson Road.

“We love the local businesses they have, but we think this can work very well,” Moore said. He said that long-term vacancies such as the empty Rite Aid building “is devastating to a community.”

*Nearby residents are opposed to warehouse/distribution buildings in a proposed mixed-use development at Chastain Road and I-575.*

Another request would level one of the largest remaining wooded tracts in the area for a mixed-use development with townhomes, senior apartments, retail and distribution warehouses off Chastain Road.

A request by SDP Acquisitions LLC has been delayed before, but after nearly an hour of presentations and questions, the Planning Commission voted to wait for a traffic study and for the developer to meet with community leaders concerned about the proposed industrial buildings.

SDP has proposed 145 townhomes, 220 apartments for 55 and over residents and nearly 30,000 square feet of retail space fronting Chastain Road near I-575.

Citizens opposed to the project have no problem with that, but objected to plans to build three large buildings totalling 425,000 square feet along ChastainMeadows Parkway for what SDP attorney Kevin Moore described as office space (case filing here).

But Tullan Avard of the Bells Ferry Civic Association said the site plan is too intense for the property, and the distribution warehouse usage that’s proposed doesn’t fit the office category that’s being sought.

They’re to be operated 24/7, she said, and each building will have 30 loading docks, unlike other office/service facilities in the area.

“There would be almost a million—a million—square feet of speculative industrial space on nearly 60 mostly impervious acres,” Avard said. “Warehouses are not permitted under the OS office-services category” that’s in the county’s future land-use map for the property.

Dance said that the proposed uses “as shown are appropriate,” but said more time to work out traffic and other details.

All three cases were held by 4-0 votes, with Planning Commission Chairman Stephen Vault absent.