Tag Archives: zoning

I smell a rat…

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This afternoon I checked the mail and found a flyer under my mailbox that was offensive… and I smelled a rat. The flyer used repulsive and inflammatory language to describe people who are currently trying to rezone land in our neighborhood for the Amana Academy charter school.

But there is something fishy about that flyer. It doesn’t pass the sniff test. It smells like a rat.

The note is purportedly from a group identified as the “Milton County Tea Party Patriots Citizens Council”. Why would a group name themselves after a county that doesn’t exist? They wouldn’t. There is no such group.

According to Google there is not one single mention of such a group anywhere on the web and there is no such group identified on the Teapartypatriots.org website. I pay pretty close attention the political groups and figures around Alpharetta and not once has anybody ever mentioned the existence of such a group.

So what would be the purpose of distributing an inflammatory flyer and attributing it to a group that doesn’t exist? Could it be an attempt to get the attention of all the Federal Department of Justice investigators who have swarmed into Alpharetta looking for signs of prejudice after last year’s mosque case?

Perhaps. It would certainly make sense. Obama’s minions have been swarming around Alpharetta like killer bees looking for any evidence they can find to prove how racist these North Fulton conservatives are. What better way to get their attention than to distribute an offensive flyer and attribute it to the Tea Party?

I do know some people that oppose having the Amana Academy dropped on their doorstep. Some of those people also opposed the Windward Mill project, The Metlife project and the subsidized senior housing project. But none of the people I have spoken to would ever be associated with the stuff circulated in our neighborhood today. In fact the people that object to the school zoning on reasonable, legal grounds had previously expressed fear that something like this would be used to discredit them because it only serves to offend people in our community.

So that leads me to two possible conclusions.

The first possibility is that there really is a lone nutjob out there stupid enough to think name calling and making up groups would help stop the school zoning. That rules out anyone around here that has voiced opposition to the school because they know this will hurt their cause. It also rules out anyone around here smart enough to tie their own shoes because you would have to be an absolute moron to think such a flyer would help your cause in Windward. But it is possible that such a person does exist so I can’t rule it out.

On the other hand the flyer could have been distributed by a person or group of people that thought distributing such material and falsely attributing it to a Tea Party organization would achieve some other goal. Perhaps smearing legitimate zoning opponents, drawing media attention, influencing lawsuits or attracting the Justice Department.

I don’t know and probably never will know who distributed the flyer in my mailbox today. It could have been one dumb person or a conniving opportunist with a hidden agenda. But based on personal experience I’d say the conniving opportunists in Alpharetta outnumber the people dumb enough to pull a stunt like that by about 1404 to 1.

I smell a rat.

P. S. I hope that if anyone knows the real source of the flyer send me a note.

Fulton County tax dollars at work

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Last night the Alpharetta Planning Commission took up the issue of taxpayer subsidized apartments for seniors. The commission voted to deny the petition but the Alpharetta City Council will eventually have the final say.

The subsidized senior housing will be an important decision for Alpharetta because it would once again ignore our land use plan in favor of adding more high density residential housing. It would also lower the city’s ratio of owner occupied properties to rental properties even further below the 85% as required by law.

But even more than the fact that the proposal is bad for Alpharetta, what bothers me most is that my tax dollars are being used to lobby my elected representatives against my own interests. As I mentioned in this previous blog post, employees of the City of Alpharetta used public resources to circulate emails in favor of the proposal and offered to give bus rides on to seniors that were willing to attend zoning meetings in support of the proposal. I found that use of public funds inexcusable and to their credit it seems that the City of Alpharetta put a stop to the activity.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Fulton County. Someone emailed me the picture below that shows a Fulton County bus from the Dorothy C. Benson Multipurpose Complex which brought seniors from Sandy Springs to the Alpharetta zoning meeting last night. In case you didn’t make the connection the Sandy Springs senior center is named after the leading proponent of the subsidized housing project, Ms. Dorothy (Dot) Benson.

So who paid to bring people from Sandy Springs to lobby a planning commission meeting in Alpharetta? Was it the developer? Was it Ms. Benson? Or was it the taxpayers of Fulton County footing the bill to support this advocacy?

I respect Ms. Benson and all of the private citizens that support the developer’s zoning proposal. They have every right to come from anywhere they wish and lobby my representatives. But I should not be forced to pay the bill for them to do so. If Fulton County has money to spend on this kind of activism I am sure there are seniors in Alpharetta that would love an air conditioned ride to the next Tea Party rally.

Senior housing shenanigans

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In case you hadn’t noticed there is a developer trying to get land zoned for low income, federally subsidized senior apartments at the corner of Morris Road and Webb Bridge Road in Alpharetta. The proposal is being championed by local senior activist, Dot Benson, and you can read more background in this article from the Alpharetta Revue.

Despite Ms. Benson’s campaign to support this rezoning there is a great deal of opposition to the project from Alpharetta residents and I have received a number of emails from people explaining why it is a bad idea. Curiously the majority of the emails have come from people I would consider to be seniors themselves. At some point I will address this zoning issue in more detail but right now I would like to point out something about the senior housing proposal that I find unconscionable. City employees are actively lobbying on behalf of the senior center and using my money to do it.

Below is an email apparently sent from a Parks and Rec employee which outlines the use of public resources to champion the developer’s proposal:

For those of you who missed the wonderful AGAC luncheon, we want to thank the AGAC BOD for supplying the food and the speakers for today, we had a wild day!!

We wanted to inform you of a topic we discussed today and invite you to a town hall meeting regarding plans for a Preston Ridge Senior Community. Fulton County Strategies for Healthier Community, chaired by Ms. Dorothy Benson, has enlisted the assistance of Atlas Development Group and Carlisle Development Group to undertake the development of the much needed AFFORDABLE HOUSING, age-restricted “senior” RENTAL housing in Alpharetta. The development will be located at the intersection of Webb Bridge and Morris Rd.  They have applied to the City of Alpharetta for a rezoning of the property which will enable us to move forward with the contemplated development.

This development will provide 90 senior apartments at affordable rents as well as a wide array of amenities and social/recreational activities. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT in petitioning for rezoning of this property. To show support, please meet in the lobby of the AAC either on Thurs. June 2nd for the Alpharetta Planning Commission Meeting, leaving here at 6:45pm or Monday, June 20th at the City Council meeting, leaving here at 6:45pm as we will be providing transportation.

If you are in favor of this and cannot make any of these town hall meetings, please come to our office and sign a petition. Thanks!

***** ***** ******

Administrative Assistant 1

Alpharetta Adult Activity Center at North Park

13450 Cogburn Rd.

Alpharetta, GA  30004

678-297-****

www.alpharetta.ga.us/recreation

I have removed the sender’s name and phone number from the above email because I have not yet been able to verify the validity of the letter from an independent source. But the people who forwarded the note to me have been impeccable sources in the past and I have no doubt about the accuracy of the email.

People can disagree about zoning issues. It happens all the time. But the thought of tax dollars being used to finance a political agenda infuriates me. My money being used to provide free transportation to seniors so they can lobby on behalf of housing subsidized by more of my money? Are you kidding me?

The Alpharetta Parks and Recreation Department is generally a fine group of people and they have done a great job building an organization that we can be proud of here. But there is absolutely no excuse for city employees being allowed to use public resources to fund lobbying activities on behalf of a developer, especially when the project in question will require even more tax dollars.

I hope the Parks and Rec department will get to the bottom of these shenanigans soon.

Is the arbitrary application of justice just?

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Last week I wrote this post about the federal Department of Justice investigating the City of Alpharetta over a zoning case which involved a local mosque. I understand that some people believe the mosque decision was a case of religious discrimination but I followed the case closely and there has never been one shred of evidence produced to support that claim. The Justice Department may find some evidence of discrimination and if so I expect the city would immediately reverse their decision. But why did the feds choose to investigate that particular case without any evidence of discrimination?

I bring this up again because the Roswell Neighbor contains this article by Joan Durbin about a zoning case that the City of Roswell decided against a Christian school. As far as I am concerned that case and the case involving the mosque are both zoning issues that just happen to involve religious organizations and when the Roswell case was originally decided against the school it also sued the city. In the case of the Christian school the article says:

The court stated it was “within the purview and discretion of mayor and council to determine the factors of the preservation of the residential neighborhoods.”

Funny though… the article doesn’t mention a federal investigation over that case. Surely the Justice Department wouldn’t single out zoning cases involving mosques for special scrutiny would they?

It just so happens that my son plays baseball on a field with no lights because the neighborhood stopped a Christian school from installing them… but the justice department never investigated that case. So how is the Justice Department deciding which zoning cases to investigate when there is no evidence of discrimination?

If they are going to investigate cases involving mosques or temples shouldn’t they be investigating ones which involve churches too? I am not seriously suggesting that every zoning case involving a religious institution should be investigated by the federal government but it does seem blatantly discriminatory to bully local governments about cases which involve an Islamic mosque while ignoring similar cases which involve Christian churches. If all religions are protected equally then every religious organization should get the same level of protection afforded to mosques, right?

Otherwise people might get the idea that some religions are more equal than others and that wouldn’t be right because the arbitrary application of justice is no justice at all.

Where are the 15 story condos?

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Yesterday I mentioned that the City of Alpharetta didn’t bother promoting the open house for the new Comprehensive Land Use Plan on their website and compared it to making residents play a game of Where’s Waldo to find vital information. Now it looks like the city has decided to take that game to a whole new level.

A few years ago the city rezoned a piece of property at the corner of NorthPoint Parkway and Windward Parkway to mixed use. The project was named Windward Mill and still sits undeveloped. At the time the property was zoned for office space so the change allowed the developer to add about 500 condos to the site. Many of the condos were to be built in 5 story buildings but the developer couldn’t cram them all in without putting 180 of them in a single 15 story building.

So imagine my surprise when I saw the pictures Alpharetta is now using to portray the “Desired Character Images” of the Windward activity area:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice Anything Missing?

 

 

 

 

 

Where’s the 15 story condo tower? It’s possible that the 5 story buildings could be hidden by using a street level view but a 15 story building? Wouldn’t 15 stories still be visible? And wouldn’t a 15 story building be the kind of detail that residents need to know about?

But what do I know? I’m just some crazy blogger that actually lives in Alpharetta as opposed to an erudite urban planner that doesn’t.

 

 

The city wants to expand the use of high density mixed use all over town so this is important. The proposed comprehensive plan expands mixed use in Windward, calls for condos or apartments all over the Northpoint area and it surrounds a good portion of Wills Park with the same stuff. That is a complete change in the character of our city and residents deserve to know that the pictures being used to sell it are accurate representations.

It’s sad that Alpharetta’s Community Development Department is allowed to mislead residents and even sadder that they use our own tax dollars to do it. I look forward to asking this year’s mayoral and city council candidates why they allow this to continue.

Alpharetta continues urbanization to attract MARTA

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Tonight the Alpharetta City Council voted to approve another high density mixed use project with nearly 500 condos. The vote was unanimous and it was embarrassing to watch how council members fawned over the developers. The council toothlessly imposed ownership restrictions but MetLife balked at an amendment that would prevent the property from converting to 500 apartments within five years so council decided to take their word for it.

Below are my comments to the council.

Good evening. My name is Jimmy Gilvin and I live in Alpharetta. I’ve come to speak against the Peridot project being proposed by MetLife.

Tonight this council will decide whether to continue urbanizing the city of Alpharetta by adding dense housing. The MetLife parcel is currently zoned for more than a million feet of office space which would provide more than 3300 badly needed jobs for the people of Alpharetta. The new proposal replaces 1800 of those jobs with 500 condominiums.

Why would this council trade $123,000,000 in annual salaries for 500 condos? This letter from MARTA’s Office of Transit Planning explains,

“MARTA is also working with the City of Alpharetta to initiate an LCI for the North Point Mall area as part of a north line rail extension… the city of Alpharetta had inquired from MARTA on the feasibility of having the proposed rail station at a location across SR 400 from the mall in the vicinity of the development site. MARTA has not yet made a firm decision on the station location but believes this development will add density in the area, making for better transit supportive environment.”

So for more than 5 years Alpharetta City officials have been quietly but methodically urbanizing this city in the hope of attracting MARTA. Was it happening when current City Councilman Chris Owens was working for the developer of Prospect Park as the civil engineer of the project? I don’t know. But it was happening when the city approved a 12 story condo tower in the Alpharetta High School district and it will continue tonight if you approve this MetLife proposal.

This year Alpharetta voters like me will elect a new mayor and several of you will be up for reelection. With your votes tonight you will help make those choices clear. We can either choose leaders that continue to urbanize our city in the hope of attracting MARTA or we will elect people that will protect what already makes Alpharetta a great place to live.

Alpharetta is a special place. We enjoy a fantastic quality of life with great public schools and low crime rates. As a result we are one of the finest places to live in all of Georgia.

I stand here asking you not to throw that all away. Despite what consultants, developers and land use attorneys may tell you the majority of people that live here don’t want Alpharetta urbanized to attract MARTA. Many voters don’t want MARTA here at all. All of you live here and in your hearts you know that is true. I am asking you to vote accordingly. Please vote no on this project.

The council members that voted for the project were: Douglas Derito, Jim Paine, Cheryl Oakes, Chris Owens, Mike Kennedy and DC Aiken in addition to Alpharetta mayor Arthur Letchas.

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.

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.