Several hundred Northeast Cobb residents living near the run-down Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center turned out Wednesday night to hear county and elected officials sympathize with their plight to rid their community of a long-standing eyesore.
Although they explained an ongoing process to get the property owner to comply with a new “blight tax” ordinance and urged the citizens to keep applying public pressure, some in attendance in the theater at Sprayberry High School weren’t always satisfied with the answers they got.
That’s because they were told that despite their frustrations, the property owner, NAI Brannen Goddard, can’t be forced to sell the 17 acres at 2692 Sandy Plains Road that has sat nearly vacant for the last two decades.
“We have tried to market this property for years,” District 3 Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell told the standing-room-only crowd. “The owners have property rights. We can’t force them to sell. But we can enforce the code.”
Commercial property owners cites for substandard properties under the new ordinance, passed last fall by the commissioners, could be subject to seven times the county general fund millage rate value of their properties.
Some residents groaned when they heard that the maximum NAI Brannen Goddard could be taxed is $17,000. That’s because of the eight parcels making up Sprayberry Crossing, only one of them, the site of a long-closed bowling alley, would be subject to the blight tax. Its assessed value is around $367,000.
But it’s an involved process, ultimately requiring a court ruling to assess the tax. Cobb community development director Dana Johnson said that process is about halfway through.
For now, only the bowling alley land is eligible for blight tax action since criminal activity has been documented. Johnson said dozens of law enforcement calls have been made in recent years to the site at the back of the Sprayberry Crossing site, and alleged gang activity also has taken place there.
The four other buildings on the property remain much as they did after the retail center began losing tenants in the 1990s, especially a Bruno’s supermarket.
A few businesses are there, but the parking lot is riddled with potholes, walls and doors have holes in them and power lines have come down.
The property owner was invited to attend the meeting Wednesday but did not show up.
Resident Lynn Palazzo asked Birrell how the county could impose something more than “marginal compliance” after so many years. She also asked what the community’s options are as the blight tax process is underway.
“Your options are to stay engaged and keep doing what you’re doing tonight,” Birrell said.
Palazzo responded that “none of that appears to be working,” and the crowd erupted with applause. Birrell reminded her that the ordinance is still new.
Cobb commission chairman Mike Boyce, who said he has toured the former bowling alley and “I understand what your concerns are,” said the county has to be careful in what it says publicly with ongoing negotiations.
“Your community voice makes a huge difference,” he said. “Why it hasn’t happened in this case, I have no idea.”
Joe Glancy, a resident who started the Sprayberry Crossing Action Facebook Group 14 months ago to galvanize public action, said NAI Brannen Goddard is a well-connected, savvy real estate firm that is waiting to sell to maximize its investment.
The property owner, Glancy said, has chosen to be “selective” in what is shared with the community. He urged his fellow citizens “to make life a little more difficult for the property owner.
“How do we engage them and make them want to be done with us and move on?”
Birrell said she met with a potential developer of the property in 2015 and “was ready to close” on a deal that would require rezoning. But NAI Brannen Goddard, she said, “wouldn’t sell.”
The county has estimated that Sprayberry Crossing has a current estimated value of $3.4 million. When a resident asked if the county would “just buy the land” for a public park, he told her it’s unlikely that would happen in a commercial area with high real estate value, and stated a figure estimated between $14 million and $17 million.
When he quipped that citizens should raise the money, a man walked up to the front of the theater holding up a dollar bill and gave it to Glancy, as the crowd broke out in laughter.
Also complicating the Sprayberry Crossing property is that a cemetery is located there. Associate county attorney Debbie Blair spelled out another laborious process for identifying next of kin of those buried there, as well as two public hearings before any exhumations and relocations can occur. Sandy Plains Baptist Church has offered to provide perpetual care.
Glancy was at his most adamant when explaining that NAI Brannen Goddard understandably wants to sell the land with the cemetery issue resolved.
However, he said, “they bought a shopping center that had a cemetery in it. . . They cannot be excused for using that as an excuse for not selling the property.
“It is up to all of us to make everyone involved uncomfortable until this is resolved.”
Johnson said “remediation” discussions with the property owner are continuing, but declined to elaborate. If terms cannot be worked out, he, said, the county attorney’s office would prepare to go to court for a blight tax ruling.
“There is no code for ugly,” he said. “I wish there was.”
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