Last Friday Sprayberry Crossing Action group leaders met with Richard Aaronson of Atlantic Realty, which is proposing a mixed-use development at Piedmont Road and Sandy Plains Road to replace the blighted, mostly abandoned shopping center there.
On Tuesday Shane Spink, one of those community leaders, reported on the meeting, and said he was impressed with the developer’s willingness to listen and make changes and adjustments to the plan.”
He said Atlantic Realty “took a few of the suggestions to go back to the drawing board.”
While the news about Atlantic Realty’s proposal has generated a positive reaction—for the most part—on the Sprayberry Crossing Action Facebook page, the most sensitive part of the project remains over some of the details of the residential plans.
Spink admitted his “top concern” was whether the townhomes would be for sale or rentals, since Atlantic has built some of the latter, but said he was “very pleased to hear that the townhomes will be ‘for sale’ ownership homes.”
About the overall development, here’s what Spink said they were shown:
“Please let me emphasize that what we looked at was a true mixed-use property and not a giant apartment complex like others have tried to describe this as. Here is the preliminary breakdown of what we saw:
- For Sale Townhomes
- Luxury Apartments w/Pool
- Senior Living
- Senior Living Amenities Center/Pool
- Ground Floor Retail/Restaurant Space
- Office/Workshare Space
- Large Front Lawn Green-space
“In my opinion it doesn’t get more ‘Mixed-Use’ than that.”
Spink said none of the apartments will have three bedrooms and there will be more with one bedroom than two. That’s similar to what’s being built in the Powers Ferry Road corridor, mostly to prevent school overcrowding.
More exact details, Spink adds, are coming next week, and a community meeting will follow in the fall. Spink told East Cobb News there isn’t a set date for that meeting, but it could happen in October.
Understanding the concerns some have over the apartments, Spink urged residents to keep in mind that “this an opportunity to transform our area for the better. In a few years we will come up on the 50th anniversary of Sprayberry Crossing being built and that’s a long time for any shopping center but especially for one that has been so neglected for so long.”
Back in the 1970s, land was more abundant in Cobb and “sprawling retail centers were all the rage. Fast forward to today, retail is dying, land is scarce, populations are growing and new ideas for use have transformed areas all over the country. This is one of those new ideas.”
You can read his full post here, and check out what’s been a very vibrant comments section.
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FAMILY IS BURIED IN THE CEMETERY THAT YOU WANT To move
From their home move your loved ones and leave ours alone
Joe and Shane, please justify deleting and closing posts on your Facebook page when faced with posts that don’t agree with your opinion of how great this project is. If you don’t have a good justification of the deletions I would expect your immediate resignation as you can’t delete comments and close postings and call yourselves representative of the community. Expect this to be issue number one if you ever actually have a community meeting. Several of us are up in arms over your handling of this situation.
We don’t need Sandy Plains to be another Powers Ferry Road which is mostly townhomes, apartments, traffic, and crime. But that’s what they want as stated above.
Cobb needs more high-density housing like it needs a hole in the head. The infrastructure simply isn’t there and Cobb has no intentions on creating it. These developers come in and pay off the commissioners and anyone else they can to spin it in their favor. Then once they are done, they had back to their cushy McMansions and leave us with the mess.
Atlanta is out of control with the high-density housing and simply put it needs to stop. The new express lanes are pretty much useless now during peak hours, and rush hour lasts from 5am – 11 am and 3 pm – 7pm provided there are no accidents. Enough is enough.
Agree with Craig. And what’s this about the main opposition being rental townhomes when they know the main opposition is apartments. No one even considered the townhomes would be rental. These people who are supposed to be community leaders seem to be more on the developers side than the community. Please report more on the opposition because we heard enough from these so called leaders.
This is not really a fair representation. This is a builder wanting to build apartments in an area that is not zoned for apartments, is not set for apartments in the Future Land Use plan, and sees tremendous opposition to apartments by the community. The authors of the noted facebook page routinely block opinions that run counter to apartments. This caused the creation of a 2nd Facebook page called, “Residents Against Apartments at Sprayberry Crossing.” This is a development that is not supported by the community. It waits to be seens whether the BOC will allow the unzone and unpopular apartments in.