By a unanimous vote Tuesday county commissioners approved an East Cobb Restaurant Row rezoning request to transform a long-existing eyesore in the Powers Ferry Road corridor.
After a lengthy discussion, which included a history of the area’s changing demographics, commissioners made few changes to the request by Powers Ferry Road Investors LLC to convert 8.8 acres to a regional retail commercial category that’s used for large mixed-use projects.
In moving to approve the request (agenda item packet here), District 2 commissioner Bob Ott included conditions that reduce the maximum number of apartment units from 290 to 280 and senior living units from 181 to 171.
The development will contain 578,885 square feet, all but 10,000 of it for residential buildings, with the rest for restaurant and retail space. The multi-family building will be six stories, and the senior building will have five stories. A 3-story parking deck and other parking on the property will provide 711 spaces.
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The only business that is there now is the Rose and Crown Tavern, which is surrounded by three other empty former restaurant buildings occupied by Sal Grosso, Famous Dave’s and TGI Friday’s.
Some of them have been sitting empty for years. Ott noted that the Rose and Crown, which opened in 2013, is different because it is a bar as well.
The land is adjacent to the Wildwood office park.
The restaurants did well during lunch hour because of its proximity to Wildwood, but suffered during dinner hours.
“Restaurants don’t survive,” said Ott, who lives in the nearby Terrell Mill Estates community. “It is a blighted property.”
While the Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance supported the request, some citizens living in the nearby Horizons at Wildwood condominiums were opposed, citing density, environmental, traffic and safety reasons.
Eric Meadows, a Horizons resident who has led the opposition, took issue with a claim by James Balli, an attorney for the applicant, that there aren’t any hazards to citizens walking along Windy Ridge Parkway.
As he stated at a Cobb Planning Commission hearing earlier this month, a resident was struck walking his dog on the road, which surrounds the back of the Restaurant Row land, and went to the hospital
“Does it take us for someone to be killed before we do something?” Meadows said.
Ott said the Restaurant Row property has been eyed by potential developers for more than two years. Located at Powers Ferry and Windy Hill Road, it once was seen as the nucleus of the corridor.
But that core area now, he added, is Powers Ferry at Terrell Mill Road, where commissioners approved the MarketPlace Terrell Mill mixed-use project earlier this year.
Another key change over the years has been the string of apartment complexes in the corridor. Many of them were built as adult-only, but were forced to open their doors to families after a court ruling in the 1970s.
That affected nearby schools in the Wheeler cluster, especially Brumby Elementary, but also things like restaurant patronage.
Another condition for the rezoning is for future residents to be notified in their least agreements of potential noise issues, since the area is in the flight path of nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
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