Udpating our previous posts (here and here) about the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford master plan survey, which has been revised following an outcry from citizens about the options in the original version: You’re running out of time to have your say about what you think future development in the community should be like.
The deadline to fill out the image preference survey is July 6, and you’ll need some time to do so. It’s 89 questions long and asks citizens and business owners to state their preferences about the look, density and feel of residential and commercial development, as well as landscaping, streetscapes, greenspaces, stormwater management and more.
A community meeting in August will summarize the findings. More on the JOSH project can be found here. Like other small-area plans, the JOSH master plan will be added to the Cobb 2040 Comprehensive Plan
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After an outcry by some respondents to high-density choices in a questionnaire that’s part of a new Johnson Ferry-Shallowford master plan, county officials overseeing the project will send out a revised survey next week.
(Here’s our post from earlier this week about the pushback).
An “image preference survey” designed to get public feedback about possible residential and commercial buildings will be reworked to include more “suburban-style” options (as seen above), especially for housing, according to Jason Gaines.
Gaines, the planning director for the Cobb Community Development Agency, told members of the East Cobb Civic Association on Wednesday that he’s prepared a new survey that’s in draft form.
Many of the buildings shown in the survey were several stories high, alarming some residents who felt that their choices may be limited to structures that are better suited for urban areas.
“The goal was to learn whether people like or don’t like” the styles of buildings, Gaines said. “We’ve got to a little bit more to do but that’s okay.”
Gaines, who is spearheading a series of public meetings about the master plan (called “JOSH” to indicate the main street name in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford corridor), said around 200 people have responded to the survey online, and the feedback has been wide-ranging.
The image preference survey has been a similar component of other master plan updates. Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, whose District 2 now includes the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford area, asked for a new survey to be drawn.
He told East Cobb News that the original survey was approved by a 20-person stakeholders committee that includes citizens and business owners in the JOSH area.
Ott said there are no outside consultants influencing the survey options, and that the work preparing the materials is all being done by county staff.
This is the fourth master plan project he has requested for his district, including Vinings, Powers Ferry and Johnson Ferry (whose design guidelines were adopted this week).
“We’ve done this three other times, and every time the community has been supportive,” Ott said. “It’s not about what we or the staff thinks. It’s what the community thinks.”
He admitted that sometimes the staff selections for a survey are “a shot in the dark,” but they’re done as much to learn what a community doesn’t want as much as what it prefers.
The final JOSH public input meeting was supposed to have been May 9 but Gaines said there will be another meeting, on May 23, to give citizens time to respond to the new survey.
In addition, Gaines said two stakeholders meetings will take place in June to analyze all of the public response before any formal action is taken to update the master plan.
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One resident quipped in reference to the question and photo above included in an image survey about future development in the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford community: “Did Cobb lose a war to Romania?”
When Cobb community development officials recently asked Johnson Ferry-Shallowford residents to respond to an “image preference survey” of potential future development in the area, the blowback was swift, angry and occasionally sarcastic.
Suggested photos contained in the lengthy survey (see examples below) included plenty of high-rise residential and commercial buildings that are typical in urban areas, sunny resorts and even other countries.
Residential high-rise building.
What they didn’t look like to a good number of those responders was anything like what’s in the suburban Johnson Ferry-Shallowford area now, or what they want to see in the future.
That’s just one of the many subject areas that community development staff is surveying. A final public input session is scheduled for May 9 at the Chestnut Ridge Christian Church (2663 Johnson Ferry Road).
To be sure, the image preference survey did include some photos of single-family dwellings and low-rise office and retail space that looks fairly typical for what’s in the East Cobb area that’s the subject of an ongoing evaluation by county officials.
Residential development.
But many posts over the weekend at the East Cobbers Against High Density Development Facebook group (which has around 1,000 members) tore into much of what the survey was serving up, fearing that there weren’t going to be many other choices besides the high-density options they were asked to comment on.
A few examples of the sharp replies:
“Basically they’re saying we don’t have a choice in the sense of no traditional housing on normal sized, decent lots. They are steering us in their direction, none of which is desirable to the vast majority of us who prefer no high density and more neighborhood like.”
“Even the single family options were right on top of each other.”
“I don’t know why there is a question about what people want. We want what we had when we chose to move here. Single family homes, large lots with room for kids to play, good schools and low crime, libraries that were open etc., and that is slowly disappearing.”
“I tried to make sure they knew they were reaching: ‘Did Cobb lose a war to Romania?’ “
Office/retail/commercial building.
Cobb commissioner Bob Ott, whose District 2 now includes the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford community, weighed in on the Facebook group page, saying he had nothing to do with the survey selections and that what was being suggested was only to solicit feedback.
“This is not some consulting firm telling you what you have to accept. Let’s give staff some credit for taking this to the public for their thoughts,” he said.
To which a resident replied: “Then please give us choices that reflect homes on one acre lots. Nothing remotely resembling that was offered in the pictures presented.”
Similar image preference surveys have been done in previous corridor studies in Ott’s district, including the Powers Ferry Road area and Johnson Ferry Road.
We posted yesterday about the Johnson Ferry design guidelines that are coming up for commission adoption tonight, five years after they were presented. Those guidelines incorporate community feedback, and some of the generic photos in that presentation were included in the JOSH image preference survey.
Public space.
Some of the image survey responders simply asked that future development conform to the current and future land use plans in the area.
Ott said he would have the image survey redone. The original still exists, for now, and includes suggestions on sidewalks, cycling paths, greenspace, public space, stormwater retention ponds and more.
He also reminded citizens who thought their feedback was being sought for political reasons with primaries next month that he’s not up for election this year.
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