Paper Mill Road rezoning case held by Cobb Planning Commission

The developer of a proposed single-family subdivision on Paper Mill Road made a last-minute reduction to the number of units he wants to build, but all it got him on Tuesday was some more time.

Zoning attorney Garvis Sams told the Cobb Planning Commission that his client, Mohammed Visagh, had agreed to build six homes instead of seven on 3.4 acres he owns at Gateside Place, and presented a revised site plan.

But neither the board nor neighbors in the Column Gate subdivision had seen it before Tuesday’s hearing, and the commission voted 5-0 to hold the application for another month.

The request by Visagh, who’s also the property owner, to rezone the land from R-20 and R-30 to R-15 was continued from December. (Here’s the original request, which was recommended for denial by Cobb zoning staff.)

Sams said he and his client met with neighbors and Cobb Planning Commission member Andy Smith at the offices of Retail Planning Corp. in Paper Mill Village, a commercial real estate developer, and Joe Gavalis, a resident of the nearby Chattahoochee Plantation community.

(Retail Planning founder G. Owen Brown and Gavalis are the only identified individuals associated with an effort to create a City of East Cobb, and they have paid for a feasibility study and have hired a lobbyist to press for local legislation that would establish a referendum.)

Sams said the proposed homes on the Visagh property would cost between $1.5 million and $2 million and range in size between 3,000 and 5,000 square feet.

The triangular-shaped land is between the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection and the Column Gate subdivision. It’s also directly across Paper Mill Road from the North Atlanta Soccer Association fields.

Sams said the revised site plan for the subdivision (see map below) would reduce the density to 1.73 units an acre, in line with those in Column Gate. The seven-lot proposal came to 2.02 units an acre.

But Fred Wachter, a Column Gate resident who spoke in opposition, said his subdivision and what’s being proposed are nothing alike.

He said five existing houses would be directly impacted by the new development, which proposes a 20-foot buffer, and “the topography slopes directly toward my house.”

The R-15 request also runs counter to the very low density residential status of the Visagh property in the Cobb Future Land Use Plan. Column Gate was zoned R-15 in 1989, before there was a future land use plan.

Smith, who represents District 2 in East Cobb, initially made a motion to recommend denial of the request, but others on the board suggested they wait to let the developer continue meeting with the community.

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