The Mt. Bethel Church Community Center that’s been up for sale since last fall could be converted into a small office building.
A local real estate development firm has applied for rezoning the 1.13 acre site at 4608 Lower Roswell Road for that purpose, and a zoning hearing has been scheduled for July 5 before the Cobb Planning Commission.
MRE Properties & Investments, LLC is seeking low-rise office (LRO) zoning, which would permit professional office uses. The current building, which housed various Mt. Bethel Church activities and non-profits, including Aloha to Aging, is a single story on land zoned in the RA-4 residential category.
A preliminary site plan filed with the application (agenda item here) indicates that the structure would remain relatively the same, except for some upgrades inside and to the exterior.
The office hours would be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. MRE has hired noted zoning attorney Kevin Moore.
The land on which the community center sits is one of four parcels Mt. Bethel Church put on the real estate market following its controversial departure from the United Methodist Church last year.
Mt. Bethel paid the UMC’s North Georgia Conference $13.1 million as part of the legal settlement.
In March, Mt. Bethel sold nearly an acre with a day care center that’s adjacent to the community center $1.55 million, according to Cobb property tax records. No forthcoming use for that facility has been announced by the purchaser, a local asset holding company.
The building was a day care center before Mt. Bethel Church purchased it in 1990. Mt. Bethel closed the day care center in December.
Mt. Bethel is also selling a vacant home across Lower Roswell Road and a wooded lot next to the U.S. Post Office.
The community center site was once the home of the Poss family, which owned a farm and was prominent in the area before East Cobb became suburbanized.
The community was then known as Mt. Bethel, and we spoke with members of the Poss family in 2019 about those memories.
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