Most of the Williamsburg-style buildings at Paper Mill Village are painted in an airy, light color, with some occasional canary-colored trim and furnishings.
With spring abounding, the mixed-use retail, restaurant and office complex at Johnson Ferry Road and Paper Mill Road may also be getting a rezoning refresh soon.
Healey Weatherholtz Village LLLP, Paper Mill Village’s manager, doesn’t want to change anything about the open-air, pedestrian-friendly complex, which has been operating in a neighborhood-focused fashion for more than 40 years.
But it wants to revise what had been some court-ordered zoning categories that it says are out of date, and make it more challenging to maintain the facilities and attract future tenants.
Healey Weatherholtz Village has filed a rezoning application to convert 6.83 acres from future commercial (CF) and two low-density residential designations, R-40 and R-80, to neighborhood retail (NRC).
(You can read the application and zoning analysis by clicking here.)
That request is scheduled to go before the Cobb Planning Commission on Tuesday, and it’s on the consent agenda, meaning that there’s not known opposition.
In filings with the Cobb Zoning Office, Healey Weatherholtz Village says the shops, stores and businesses located there now fall into the NRC category, and the land has been designated as a Neighborhood Activity Center in the Cobb Future Land Use Map.
In a stipulation letter dated April 27 (you can read that here), Healey Weatherholtz Village attorney Garvis Sams wrote that “over the years, scores of developers, builders, lenders, property owners and others have sought clarity with respect to the governance of Paper Mill Village,” which was zoned into the unusual mix of categories following 1973 and 1982 orders in Cobb Superior Court.
(Among those involved in the legal proceedings was Sams’ father, who was the Cobb County Attorney.)
The zonings included the CF use—sort of a placeholder for future development under specified commercial categories—which is no longer an active zoning category.
“In the interim decades, the BOC has approved amendments to certain uses by amending the Court Order through the submission of Applications for Rezoning, Other Business Applications, Special Land Use Permits and/or Variances, dependent upon the individual circumstances concerning each property thus revised or amended,” Sams continued in his letter.
He said that Healey Weatherholtz Village is proposing no new construction, but getting NRC designation would enable it to address future utilization of the property “with relative ease rather than the cumbersome process of proceeding through a Rezoning or other types of Entitlement applications and the attendant process every time a prospective tenant presents itself.”
Sams said he has met with county staff, notified all property owners within a thousand feet of the property and discussed the application with neighborhood officials from Chattahoochee Plantation, Hampton Farms and the East Cobb Civic Association.
His stipulation letter also includes a number of prohibited uses, and the architectural style of the 11 commercial buildings will remain the same.
The Cobb Zoning Office is recommending approval of the request, including a new site plan submitted in March (you can see that here) and adherence to the Johnson Ferry Design Guidelines.
The Cobb Planning Commission meets at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building (100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta).
The full agenda can be found here; a link to the summary agenda can be found here.
The hearing also will be live-streamed on the county’s website, cable TV channel (Channel 24 on Comcast) and Youtube page. Visit cobbcounty.org/CobbTV for other streaming options.
The board’s recommendations will be forwarded to the Cobb Board of Commissioners, which will hold a zoning hearing on May 17.
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