Category Archives: Alpharetta

Prospect Park developer faces jail time

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Stan Thomas, the developer responsible for the failed Prospect Park development in Alpharetta, Georgia could be facing jail time for contempt of court. The legal case is unrelated to the foreclosure of the Prospect Park development but it does shed some light on the man the city trusted with our future.  The Times- Herald of Coweta County reports:

According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Scheindlin on Oct. 12 issued a $13.5 million judgment in the case in favor of Jerde. Since that time, according to Scheindlin’s contempt order, Thomas transferred a $6.5 million promissory note, backed by real estate Thomas owns in the Cayman Islands, to an unrelated lender, in violation of the judgment. Scheindlin ordered Thomas to transfer $6.1 million and other considerations to Jerde. If Thomas didn’t comply by Dec. 30, he would be fined $10,000 per day. If he doesn’t comply by Jan. 20, he will be jailed.

You can read the whole article here.

If you want to know more about the man responsible for Alpharetta’s dirt mound on Old Milton Parkway you may also want to read here about Mr. Thomas’ dealings with former Governor Sonny Perdue:

That same year, Perdue sold off the family farm and invested his $2 million profit in 20 acres in Florida near Walt Disney World. Perdue never saw the land before buying it from developer Stanley Thomas, who Perdue had just appointed to Georgia’s Board of Economic Development, a plum choice for any state developer, and just after Thomas had given $250,000 to the Georgia Republican Party. The land was assessed at just $185,000, substantially reducing Perdue’s tax burden.“Perdue ethics charges linger,” Associated Press/Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, Dec. 27, 2006.(20)“Perdue ethics charges linger,”

And you may recall that the city of Alpharetta investigated ethics charges involving Mr. Thomas last year as reported here in the Alpharetta Revue:

At the time, Thomas said he saw no conflict of interest with the donation. Later when he became aware of the size of the value of the work and the proximity of time between the in-kind contribution and the vote, Thomas said he would have probably advised DeRito “in an abundance of caution” to recuse himself from the vote.

I know Councilman Derito. He seems like a nice guy with a nice family and he was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident reported above. And though I have no reason to believe Councilman Derito did anything illegal or acted with anything other than the best of intentions it was disturbing to find out about the events that took place regardless of how noble the cause.

The past few years have been unkind to Mr. Thomas and I take no pleasure in seeing a businessman struggle. But the city of Alpharetta and it’s community development department allowed Stan Thomas to turn the most important parcel of land in the city into a wasteland. It is instructive to see who they were dealing with.

Alpharetta Planning Commission supports 500 more condos

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Thursday I wrote about the next step the city of Alpharetta is taking to transform itself into an urbanized concrete jungle similar to the Perimeter Center in Sandy Springs. You can read that post here.

As I predicted the Alpharetta Planning Commission unanimously approved the high density development that directly conflicts with the comprehensive land use plan. Since the city of Alpharetta typically ignores the land use plan the action comes as no surprise but it is disappointing nonetheless. The MetLife project is now scheduled to go before the Alpharetta City Council for final approval on Monday, January 24th.

I will write more about the details of this mega-project later but for now I would like to point out what disappoints me most about Thursday’s decision: Not one person on the planning commission stood up to defend Alpharetta from this continued urbanization. Not one? Not one single person on the planning commission stood up to represent the Alpharetta residents that want this urbanization moderated if not completely stopped. That is sad.

But I don’t blame the planning commissioners. They are simply doing what they think is best. I happen to know several of them and while they rarely represent my family’s best interests, there is nothing wrong with good people disagreeing. 

The real problem is that not one city councilperson has nominated a commissioner that represents my family’s best interests. Not one city council member nominated a planning commissioner that would vote against a project that adds 500 condos to the Milton High School district and puts 12,000 more cars on the road between downtown Alpharetta and GA 400.  Not one. So let’s be clear, the urbanization of Alpharetta continues because not even one city council member wants it to stop. 

Soon the campaigns for Alpharetta’s new mayor along with several city council seats will begin. If you are unhappy with what is going on I suggest you pay close attention.

In the meantime you should call city hall and let them know what you think: 678 297-6000

Alpharetta faces the fork in the road

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Today there will be a very important meeting of the Alpharetta Planning Commission. The commission will review the request by MetLife to convert their property on Haynes Bridge Road from an office complex to a high density Mixed Use Development.

This will be the third such mega development to have been brought before the planning commission in the last few years. The first two projects were Prospect Park on Old Milton Parkway (the enormous dirt pile which serves as the entrance to our fair city) and the Windward Mill project which was approved on Windward Parkway. Neither of those projects complied with Alpharetta’s long term land use plan and neither one has yet to be completed. In fact it is extremely unlikely that they will ever be developed as proposed given the drastic changes in the commercial real estate market in the past two years. But that won’t stop the city’s Community Development Department from foisting another of these projects on the unsuspecting citizens of Alpharetta.

I hope that as the City of Alpharetta considers approving the MetLife project they will take the time to read this article which was originally published in the Atlanta Journal when MetLife first came to Alpharetta:

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. held a grand opening this week for its headquarters in Alpharetta. The 81-acre campus, at Ga. 400 and Haynes Bridge Road in the Georgia 400 Center, is expected to hold some 800 employees in about two years. MetLife will occupy four of six floors and lease the rest. MetLife’s business in metro Atlanta includes pensions, brokerage, group insurance, real estate investments, disability insurance, securities and corporate investments. The company moved its corporate headquarters from Perimeter Center because of the increasing traffic problems there. MetLife sold Perimeter Center last year for $336 million.

The key section of the article says,”The company moved its corporate headquarters from Perimeter Center because of the increasing traffic problems there. MetLife sold Perimeter Center last year for $336 million.”

So in 1998 MetLife came to Alpharetta because they had developed the Perimeter Center of Sandy Springs into a concrete jungle with disastrous traffic. Now they would like to do the same here. The Atlanta Regional Commission’s review of the proposed MetLife project shows that it will take road improvements that cost 10’s of millions of dollars just to accommodate the extra 12,000 cars a day at that intersection.

I fully expect this project to be approved because influential business interests support it and our community development department is determined to cram enough people into Alpharetta to justify a billion dollar expansion of MARTA into this city. But it is sad to see this happening in my adopted hometown.

As a community we have come to a fork in the road. We can choose growth that compliments our attractiveness as a quiet place to raise families or we can choose growth that turns us into the next Perimeter Center.

I hope we choose the path less traveled but I’m not optimistic. Wonder how long it will be before we read an article notifying us that MetLife has sold their gridlocked property on Haynes Bridge Road and moved to Forsyth County?

If you care about this decision please contact city hall today 678 297-6000.

SRTA’s informational meeting about the GA 400 toll projects

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I stopped by the State Roadway and Toll Authority’s meeting in Alpharetta tonight. The handful of residents there were outnumbered by consultants about 4-1 but I did see a few locals I knew.

I walked away thinking that the SRTA folks and their supporters are probably very nice, earnest people that believe they are just doing what’s best for us but they are completely oblivious to how angry taxpayers are that SRTA just appropriated millions of our dollars against our will to do it. They just don’t get it.

GA 400 Toll meeting in Alpharetta

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The State Roadway and Toll Authority will be in Alpharetta this Wednesday to hear how the public wants them to spend the $67 million they will take from North Fulton County residents. 

The toll collectors plan to be at the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce 11605 Haynes Bridge Road, (Suite 100, Alpharetta, GA 30009) on Wednesday, January 5th from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. As I pointed out in this previous post, some Georgia legislators aren’t too happy about the way the Georgia Department of Transportation and SRTA circumvented their authority so the meeting may be more entertaining than you would ordinarily think.

Either way you should come out and see how the bureaucrats plan to spend your money

High School Redistricting in North Fulton

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Here we go again. School redistricting in North Fulton county has been an ongoing game of musical chairs for the past decade and the next round is about to begin.

One of the down sides to living in an area perfect for raising children is that the board of education has had a hard time accomodating the influx of families relocating here because of the great schools. The latest effort to make room for our new neighbors is the high school being built at the corner of Bethany Bend and Cogburn Roads in the city of Milton. The school is expected to open in 2012 and will be the fourth new high school to open around here since 2002.

The new school will draw most of its students from the Milton and Alpharetta High School districts but the changes will undoubtedly impact the other high schools in the area. The Fulton County Board of Education knows this and will try to address everybody’s concerns but it just isn’t possible to satisfy everyone. Some families on the borders of attendance zones have been rezoned numerous times over the years and may not want to be moved again while other families will be disappointed that they aren’t rezoned to a school they would prefer. History shows that the process can get testy at times but one way to avoid conflicts is to address concerns early through participation in the public forums which will be held.

That is why the public forums for the new school redistricting will begin in a couple of months. The first such meeting will be held at Alpharetta High School on February 23, 2011. That is nearly a year and a half before the new school opens and should give everyone involved more than enough time to hammer out an acceptable agreement.

If you have children in any of the public schools in North Fulton County I urge you to get involved early. Even with a year and a half to prepare there will be people that don’t get involved until they are upset by the board’s decision and by then it is too late. You can get the latest information at the board of education’s website dedicated to this process.

For those of you that are interested in this topic you can find more on the subject at these other local blogs: newmiltonhighschool and rootsinalpharetta

Discussion of Mixed Use Developments

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One of the local blogs I frequently read is Bob Strader’s liveinalpharetta.com. Bob is also a real estate agent in this area and his blog is primarily a real estate blog. In a recent post Bob extolled the virtues of mixed use developments in North Fulton County.

The current mixed use fad happens to be one of the topics that really gets my attention so I posted a rather long comment on his blog. But I didn’t want to wear out my welcome and still have more to say so I brought the conversation back here to GA Jim.

You can read Bob’s post at the link above and below is the comment I left on his website:

“Couldn’t disagree with you more on this one Bob. Smart growth is a charade being pushed by developers because it quadruples the density of their speculative parcels thereby quadrupling their profits.

Mixed use with townhomes? That was the good old days. A few years ago Penn Hodge got a 13 story condo tower zoned on Windward Parkway. What’s an extra 12,000 car trips on one of the most congested intersections in town?

And keep in mind that if 24% of people want to live in mixed use developments that means 76% don’t. Vickery Creek and Prospect Park were supposed to be the wave of the future but they were both in trouble long before the economic collapse.

Alpharetta has been the jewel of North Fulton because it is perfect for young families raising children. You say that the demand for our schools will always be there but you overlook the impact of high density development on those schools. If you don’t believe me check the test scores for any elementary school with high density mixed use in the district.

You are right that in the future there will be mixed use developments for the 24% of people that want them. Young, single people and empty nesters will support mixed use in areas like Atlanta, Sandy Springs or Vinings that have already run off the young families.

But high density mixed use won’t succeed in North Fulton until the developers have driven out the families that live here now.”

To give you a little background, my neighborhood was faced with a mixed use zoning in our children’s school district a few years ago. In the course of that zoning battle I learned a lot.  

When I talked to politicians, developers and their circle of defenders I would ask a direct question like,”How can adding 12,000 car trips to a horribly congested intersection improve traffic?” The response was usually some silly talking point like “Mixed use developments reduce traffic” to which I would ask, “How?” and repeat the original question. At that point the other party would usually hem and haw and act as though I were an idiot for not understanding the conventional wisdom of the development community. But I’m no fan of “conventional wisdom” because I find it is rarely conventional or wise. In the end it was clear that nobody could satisfactorily answer the most basic questions.

Another thing I learned is that developers and land speculators spend a fortune promoting the concept of “livable” and “sustainable communities” in Atlanta. There are entire groups like the Livable Communities Coalition devoted to promoting the livable concept and governmental entities like the Atlanta Regional Commission accept their  sustainability as gospel. The thing that struck me as most odd was that sustainable always meant increasing the density of undeveloped land. Not once has the conventional wisdom been that a developer should build four acre parcels with a density so low that traffic would be nonexistent. Wonder why that is?

Some people may think my position is anti-mixed use development but that is not the case. I was glad to see the Vickery development in Forsyth County because it is mixed use with a very low density much like my neighborhood of Windward. And I had no problem with the Milton Park development on Northpoint Parkway. Milton Park is higher density but it is in an area that is  primarily retail.

What I oppose is the simplistic conventional wisdom that “sustainable” mixed use is some kind of panacea. If people wanted these “sustainable” communities so bad the market would demand them organically and developers wouldn’t have to create front groups to advocate for them.  I also don’t believe that high density mixed use is appropriate for suburban areas like Windward and I have yet to find a single piece of evidence that they can succeed in that environment.

Kudos to the City of Alpharetta for reducing fees as an incentive for new businesses!

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I am quick to criticize government when they get it wrong so let me be one of the first to congratulate the City of Alpharetta for getting this one right. I dream of the day when the kudos outweigh the criticisms.

Read the whole thing by Rachel Kellogg in the Alpharetta Neighbor.