If you plan to attend Tuesday morning’s Cobb Board of Commissioners zoning hearing, you need to get there well in advance. The proposed Powers Ferry-Terrell Mill development is the first item on the agenda, and it’s expected to attract a full house.
Two homeowners associations on either side of the Z-12 application by SSP Blue Ridge LLC are urging their members to show up early. The hearing (agenda summary here) starts at 9 a.m. in the 2nd floor meeting room of the Cobb government building at 100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta.
After more than a year’s worth of delays since the initial filing, the proposed development by Eden Rock Real Estate Partners for what’s being called the MarketPlace at Terrell Mill may finally get a resolution.
The 24 acres at the northwest corner of Powers Ferry and Terrell Mill currently includes Brumby Elementary School and an aging office park and strip shopping center. The proposed $120 million project would include a Kroger superstore, restaurants and retail space, and the most contentious parts of the application, a 298-unit apartment complex and self-storage facility.
The Cobb Planning Commission recommended approval of the application on Feb. 6, but made some significant changes to a last-minute zoning category request by the developer. The board approved rezoning to community retail commercial (CRC) and RM-16.
The latest agenda released on Thursday, the deadline for making any formal changes, didn’t include anything new.
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To the Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance, a citizens group that supports the project, the planning board “tweaks” do not make the proposal viable. The organization sent out a notice over the weekend that saying that Z-12 “is not a cinch to be approved. There is a real risk the community could lose this huge opportunity for long-overdue revitalization of its commercial core.”
The group is asking the commissioners to approve the project as the developer submitted, with a request for the planned village community (PVC) designation.
The alliance warned in its message that if the MarketPlace at Terrell Mill project is not approved, “the developers will have no choice but to walk away.”
Eden Rock partner Brandon Ashkouri said at the planning commission hearing that the latest site plan is the 61st version of the project, which has taken more than three years to put together. The relocation of Brumby to Terrell Mill Road next year was the final piece of the puzzle, and that’s where the Kroger store would be located.
The Powers Ferry Corridor Alliance is gathering at the Cool Beans coffee shop (31 Mill Street) near the Marietta Square, from 7:30-8:30 Tuesday morning before the zoning hearing.
The Salem Ridge Homeowners Association represents residents in a condominium complex next to the proposed development, and in particular the apartments and storage facility they say are too dense and too close to their homes.
They’re also urging their members to attend Tuesday’s hearing to protest a project they also say will add too much noise and traffic to a clogged intersection:
“We care and support regulated development. Redevelopment is a necessity. We only ask for the zoning commission to comply with the Powers Ferry Master Plan, established codes/statutes and laws already in force for parcels like MarketPlace at Terrell Mill.
“The developers have been cooperative, yet unless our objections and stipulations are recorded and in writing, we will not be protected.”
The storage facility request will be taken up later in the hearing, and the case number is SLUP-8. Cobb requires self-storage facility requests to be granted special land-use permits, even if they’re part of larger developments.
Another special land-use permit request for another proposed storage facility in East Cobb is on the commissioners agenda Tuesday. SLUP-3 would permit a three-story building on the site of the former Mountain View Elementary School on Sandy Plains Road.
It would be part of mixed-use development approved last fall. Despite community opposition, the self-storage facility was recommended for approval by the planning commission (previous East Cobb News post here).
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