A proposal to rezone a portion of the Sandy Plains Village shopping center for townhomes is being delayed at least for a month.
The Cobb Zoning Office sought the continuance after initially recommending denial of an application by the retail center’s owners, Site Centers Corp., for 41 residential units, plus some additional retail space (previous ECN post here.)
That case was to have been heard Tuesday by the Cobb Planning Commission. Instead, consideration has been pushed back to the planning board’s Aug. 4 meeting.
Site Centers wants to convert a vacant 67,000-square-foot retail space that was to have been an indoor entertainment center into the residential development.
(You can read the filing and staff analysis here.)
In its analysis, zoning staff said the proposal doesn’t conform with the Cobb County Comprehensive Plan. Site Centers is seeking a planned village community (PVC) designation at a property zoned for neighborhood retail commercial (NRC).
The staff said that other residential and commercial properties are zoned for a lower density and would be adversely affected by the townhomes.
The nearby Chatsworth subdivision has single-family homes zoned for 1.68 units an acre. The townhome density as proposed would be 2.57 units an acre.
Traffic issues also concerned zoning staff, which recommended the applicant conduct a traffic study to gauge the impact for a heavily used trio of roads that surround the shopping center—Sandy Plains Road, Woodstock Road and Mabry Road.
The latter is being recommended as the entry point for the townhomes, but zoning staff said that’s too close (20 feet) to the intersection of Mabry and Woodstock, and suggested the applicant make significant changes to provide “uninterrupted access distance.”
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