For several months, residents of an older East Cobb community—proud of their long-standing roots, and embracing those who’ve come to live there more recently—have felt increasingly cut off.
Cut off by increasing congestion at a major intersection. Cut off by vacant commercial and residential properties fronting their neighborhood that have become eyesores.
And, most of all, cut off in a matter between Cobb County and the City of Marietta over a rezoning and annexation request they worry may be settled next week without their input.
UPDATE: The mediation has been called off, and Cobb commissioner Bob Ott will hold a town hall meeting on the matter on Monday. Click here to read more.
For residents of Sewell Manor, a proposed development by Traton Homes for townhomes and urban-style single-family homes is more than just incompatible with their homes.
It’s become what some believe could be a troubling bellwether for the kind of high-density development that they moved there to avoid.
A small-town feel
Sewell Manor is “the closest thing to Mayberry that you can find in Cobb County now,” said Theresa Gernatt, who grew up in Sewell Manor and lives there again, as a caregiver for her mother.
The small brick ranch homes that line Indian Trail and Worthington Drive were built in the late 1950s, as what became known as East Marietta suburbanized.
Most of them are valued at less than $200,000 today, bargain prices in highly affluent East Cobb, where new homes are routinely sold for $700,000 and up.
She said she and her neighbors understand the empty lots next to their neighborhood will be redeveloped, and they’re not opposed.
“Change is good,” Gernatt said Wednesday at a meeting she and her neighbors called at the Sewell Mill Library, just down the street on Lower Roswell, and that drew around 50 people, many from nearby subdivisions.
However, she said, “real progress is not always change,” and especially what one of the most powerful residential developers in Cobb County has in mind for their community.
The proposal by Traton would plop 37 townhomes and 15 single-family homes on less than eight acres at the northeast corner of Lower Roswell and the Loop.
The land includes three commercial parcels on Lower Roswell annexed by Marietta, as well as property on which six former homes stood in Sewell Manor.
The residential tracts are in unincorporated Cobb County—which Traton is proposing the city also annex—as is the rest of Sewell Manor.
Traton has come down from its initial proposal of 63 townhomes and one single-family home, dropping the density from around 12 units an acre to 6.95.
That’s still above the threshold of a state law that allows counties to object to annexations when rezonings include density of more than 4 units an acre.
(Read the revised case file here for Z-2019-04.)
City-county conundrum
When Traton submitted its plans earlier this year, Cobb officials did object. However, they didn’t formalize their opposition until it was almost too late.
Earlier this month, as the Marietta City Council was to vote on the Traton request, the county asked for a delay for mediation.
The city agreed, and they’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday with retired Cobb Superior Court Judge James Bodiford.
While the Sewell Manor residents are temporarily relieved, they don’t think their concerns are being taken seriously.
“This is a city creating a problem for us, after we bought into the county to enjoy,” said Robin Moody, a relative Sewell Manor newcomer, who’s lived there 15 years.
She’s urged her neighbors to lobby Bob Ott, their county commissioner (who’s meeting with them on Monday), and to turn out in force for the mediation hearing.
Sewell Manor residents are asking Traton to reduce density down to four units an acre, which is still more than twice the density of their neighborhood.
But that’s hardly all of their objections to a proposal they say runs counter to city and county land use plans and basic rezoning standards.
Tration is asking for 15 variances. They include waiving landscape buffers along Lower Roswell and a waiver to build deceleration and acceleration lanes at the Indian Trail access point.
No traffic plan has been submitted by Traton, another requirement.
Some of the townhouses are only 900 square feet, well under the city’s minimum of 1,400 square feet for townhouses. No square footage sizes have been indicated for the single-family homes.
At the intersection, there’s a massive billboard owned by Ray Boyd, the property owner, that Sewell Manor residents want taken down.
They also want minimum open space to be 25 percent, and a 60 percent maximum for impervious services.
“This is not a good site plan,” said James Rosich, who lives close to nearby Sedalia Park Elementary School. “It’s just not.”
Site plan markup
Rosich, who has an urban planning degree from Georgia Tech and governmental planning experience in Florida and North Carolina, dubbed the Traton plan “Stack-A-Shack.”
It’s lingo in his profession, he says, for high-density development jammed especially closely together. There’s not room for school buses to turn around in the new community, nor for residents to place trash for curbside pickup.
He annotated Traton’s plan to incorporate the community’s requests to get it to something they could accept.
Sewell Manor residents say Marietta City Council member Michelle Cooper-Kelly, who represents the potential annexed land, has told them she’s against the project.
So is the Marietta Planning Commission, which voted in March to recommend denial.
That’s the only vote that’s been taken on the yet-unnamed Traton proposal tabled twice by the council.
Setting a trend?
Ott, who will be the county representative at the mediation, has said that Marietta could eventually exercise home rule and rezone and annex as it pleases without Cobb’s blessing.
(East Cobb News has left a message with Ott’s office seeking comment.)
East Cobb residents in other communities said they’re concerned about a precedent, similar to what’s taking place in the Powers Ferry corridor, if the Traton project goes through.
“If we don’t push back now, that’s what’s going to come along Roswell Road and Johnson Ferry Road,” said Hill Wright, who lives in the Spring Creek neighborhood off Holt Road.
“It’s not just about this neighborhood. It’s the first battle in a war” to maintain a traditional suburban setting, he added.
Related stories
- City, county set for mediation on Lower Roswell rezoning/annexation
- Lower Roswell Road townhome project delayed again
- Residents still oppose revised Lower Roswell townhome plans
- Cobb opposes Lower Roswell rezoning/annexation request
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