The Curious Incident of the Subdivision at Wessyngton and North Highland

Tom and I went to the the NPU-F meeting a couple of weeks ago, when the request for the subdivision of the two lots where the apartments are at Wessyngton and North Highland was up for discussion.  Various owners of this property -- and there have been several different ones over the last 10 years -- have wanted to put three houses on these two lots. There have been multiple applications for subdivision, going back I know to 2005 and probably farther back.  I knew there was some drama about all of this, but I didn't know how much.

Current zoning on Wessyngton Road is R-4, which requires 70 foot lots, among other things.  Most of the houses on the street were built before that requirement was in place, so in order to do any work on a nonconforming house (and few if any of the houses on the street are conforming to R-4 requirements) the owner of the house has to apply for and receive a variance, which is permission for a structure to not be in compliance with current zoning.  The variance process does consider how impacted neighbors feel about the proposal, and if you really hate it, you can show up at the meetings -- there are a whole series of meetings -- and speak in opposition.  I don't know what happens when neighbors show up in opposition, but this is another good reason to get to know your neighbors.  They are far less likely to be unhappy about your new second story or larger garage if the first time you talk to them is not to ask for a letter of support for your variance application.

The images that follow are from an earlier subdivision request, but they make the point.  Here's the current property lines with the footprint of the existing structures outlined:

And here is what's being requested:

The new lots will be similar in size to other lots on the street, which would be fine if the houses that were going to be built there were going to be the same size as the typical house on the street, but of course they won't be.  But to build a nonconforming house, there will have to be a variance, and I don't think that either the MLPA or NPU have been particularly happy about how all this has played out.  There had been an earlier subdivision request filed in late 2005.  In 2006 the City Council did not approve it, but somehow in spite of the request having not been approved, these two parcels subsequently showed up on the city's zoning map as R-4A, which would allow smaller lots.  Apparently someone just made a mistake.  During the time that the parcels were shown as R-4A, the property was purchased with the intention of subdividing it (as allowed with the R-4A designation) and building 3 houses.  That request was denied and -- not surprisingly -- it ended up in court.  It went all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court; the City of Atlanta lost the case.

By the time the legal issues were resolved the housing market had tanked, and so the apartment residents stayed put.  But since then the economy has gotten better and the tenants were evicted last year, and then new "For Sale" signs appeared.  New owners bought the property last fall.  They applied for a subdivision in January.  It was presented to NPU-F and the decision was to defer.  It will go before the city's Subdivision Review Committee in March and at that point -- regardless of the non-decision by the NPU -- I expect it will be approved, given the prior court decisions.

Notably, what the court ordered was that the subdivision should be allowed, not that the property had to be zoned R-4A.  So any structure that is not in compliance with R-4 requirements will require a variance.  We'll see what happens with that.

And one more thing.  At the NPU meeting, the owner's representative referred to the property as "rat-infested."  It that's true, it seems to me that a professional exterminator should eliminate the rats before the current buildings are demolished.  

Especially if they are going to come back in a couple of months requesting a variance.