Sprayberry Crossing rezoning approved

By a 4-1 vote Tuesday, the Cobb Board of Commissioners approved the long-awaited redevelopment of the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center.

The proposal by Atlantic Realty Acquisitions LLC would convert a blighted retail center into a mixed-use residential and retail development that drew as much opposition as support in a community eager for its redevelopment.

That was the conclusion of District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell, who said during a lengthy explanation for her motion to approve that while the plan isn’t perfect, “no plan is perfect.”

Most of the concerns expressed at Tuesday’s zoning hearing concerned traffic issues, especially the development’s main access point on Sandy Plains Road at Kinjac Drive.

The developer had been negotiating with the owner of the Sprayberry Bottle Shop to use part of that store’s parking lot for an entrance.

But those discussions came to an impasse, and on Friday Atlantic Realty filed a new site plan (see below) and a traffic route (shown in the map above) for an offset traffic signal that would contain traffic stacking or backup internally within Sprayberry Crossing.

Commissioner Keli Gambrill of North Cobb was the only vote against, citing the number of parking spaces being below county code.

Her comments drew applause from opponents attending the zoning hearing in person, and after the vote, and a 90-minute discussion, they vocally thanked her for her vote.

The Sprayberry Crossing development calls for 132 senior apartments (ages 55 and older), 102 fee-simple town homes and a 34,000-square-foot grocery store.

In presenting his clients’ case to the commissioners for the first time, Atlantic Realty attorney Kevin Moore said Sprayberry Crossing has been “an anvil around the neck of this community” that has been on the county’s redevelopment list since 2013.

Rejecting Atlantic Realty’s proposal, he said, would “condemn this site and this property” to many more years of blight.

But opponents said the development would add more traffic to an already congested corridor of East Cobb.

Maureen Ritner of the Ashbury Point neighborhood said the redevelopment would add 3,500 trips a day to a portion of Sandy Plains Road—between East Piedmont Road and Post Oak Tritt Road—that averages more than 41,000 trips a day.

“That’s a comparison to Barrett Parkway,” she said.

Cobb DOT says that also level of service is an “F.”

Tony Raffa, who operates a McDonald’s on Sandy Plains at Post Oak Tritt, said he’s against a Cobb DOT recommendation to prevent a left-our traffic turn from a Sprayberry Crossing access point onto Post Oak Tritt.

DOT officials explained that’s a necessary safety measure because of the Sandy Plains-Kinjac offset signal, and Birrell agreed.

In her presentation, Birrell said that anything developed at Sprayberry Crossing is going to increase traffic.

“Sprayberry Crossing has been an eyesore for 25 years,” she said, adding that she’s been working on the matter during her 10-year tenure as a commissioner. “There have been numerous attempts to redevelop this in the past” but none have come to fruition.

She noted that “the obstacles to this are very challenging.”

In 2019, a judged imposed the first “blight tax” ruling in the county on Sprayberry Crossing, which was built in the 1970s but has sat largely vacant for many years.

During its decay, Sprayberry Crossing was the subject of numerous complaints made to police and code enforcement.

Birrell entered into the record details of those incidents, which she said included 127 calls to police from June 2016 to this May. Since 2004, she said, there have been 391 complaints to Cobb code enforcement staff.

Atlantic Realty’s request was made under what’s called a Redevelopment Overlay District, which is considered separate from typical zoning requests.

There are several stipulations, including that a rezoning on such property is not considered to set a precedent for the area.

ROD was enacted in 2006, but Sprayberry Crossing is the first case to be requested under that category.

Birrell prompted it to be removed from the zoning code during recent code amendments, saying Tuesday that “to me it’s flawed.”

She also said she was against multi-family apartments that were part of the initial Sprayberry Crossing request and were dropped from the site plan in March.

Some opponents of Sprayberry Crossing, in addition to being opposed to market-rate apartments, also feared loopholes for senior apartments could be exploited to rent to the general public.

The Cobb County Attorney’s office has concluded that cannot happen.

“They will remain 55 and older age restricted,” Birrell said. “Our attorneys know the law. I’m relying on our expert staff and attorneys for this one.”

In a message to the Sprayberry Crossing Action Facebook group, local resident Joe Glancy, who’s led a citizen effort to redevelop the shopping center, said he’s expecting more traffic and other changes to be made as the site plan goes to final review.

Birrell read off a number of stipulations that include her approval of a traffic plan and townhome design elevations.

“The developer has cleared a major hurdle, but this is not the end of the process,” Glancy said. “I believe there will be further revisions to the access/egress point near Kinjac Rd (Sprayberry Bottle Shop), and possibly Post Oak Tritt as well.”

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