Rezoning Elizabeth Ann Lane

The developer's request for a variance at Cumberland and Wessyngton was on the agenda for the Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) meeting on Monday night of last week.  It's not that I thought it wouldn't go through, but I was curious what would happen.  It ended up being passed with very little discussion.

But there was a huge crowd -- a fill-up-the-sanctuary at Virginia-Highland Church-sized crowd -- and long lines to get in because they were verifying addresses on the way in. The reason for the big crowd was a rezoning request in the Lindridge Martin Manor neighborhood, which is part of our NPU.  (Lindridge Martin Manor is one of the neighborhoods that's been doing great work with the South Fork Conservancy on trails.)  Even though this didn't really have anything to do with Virginia Highland or Morningside, the notice went out widely through the neighborhood email lists that this proposed rezoning was a threat to our neighborhoods and we should show up. 

Elizabeth Ann Lane is a dead-end street off Sheridan, behind FedEx Plaza (on Cheshire Bridge, just south of I-85). 

There is commercial development to the north and west of it, a development of barely detached houses and another development under construction to the south, separating it from the strip mall where the Tara Theater and the Publix is.  So this street is nearly surrounded by commercial development.

All of the homeowners on Elizabeth Ann Lane and the adjacent area of Sheridan Road want to sell their houses to a developer who is proposing to put 89 townhomes on the site.

I didn't go into the NPU meeting with any particular opinion about this, although maybe I was included to oppose it on general principle, since the Virginia Highland Zoning Committee seemed to feel so strongly about it. 

The developer's representative made a brief presentation and implied that the houses were run down and an eyesore and they were doing the neighborhood a favor by getting rid of them.  On the subject of traffic, he said that there are fewer cars on Cheshire Bridge now than there used to be, and really, this wouldn't really make it worse.  Personally, I did not find this a highly persuasive argument.

But then the representative of the homeowners spoke.  They want to sell their houses to the developer, and the implication was that they are being offered enough for them that they can get the bigger houses they need for growing families, including accommodating other family members with special needs.  It was a good deal for them, but it wouldn't happen without the rezoning.  And already there is commercial development on two sides of them, so really, the site probably shouldn't be zoned R-4A anyway.

Then the opposition spoke, led by a (I think) a spokesperson for one of the zoning committees.  The arguments were (1) it's not consistent with the Comprehensive Development Plan; (2) it will take away some relatively affordable housing in the neighborhood; (3) the homeowners have no right to expect to make more from the sale of their homes than their value as single-family detached homes, given current R-4A zoning; and (4) the traffic is bad.  Then a man who identified himself as a professor of urban planning at one of the local universities said very emphatically several times that this was just "bad planning," without ever saying what about it was bad, and someone from the neighborhood said that traffic is so bad that the trucks that pick up trash sometimes skip his home.

While the discussion was going on, I looked up Elizabeth Ann Lane on Google Maps on my phone, and saw the map that I inserted above.  If this is what the Comprehensive Development Plan wants for this particular street - well, my thought was, that's bad planning.  And if the concern is affordable housing, the city could require the developer to provide some below market-rate units to school teachers, firefighters, and police officers.  And although the traffic may be bad, in the long run we do need density, and the developer cited in their proposal the proximity to bus lines on Cheshire Bridge and Lindbergh.

Last weekend, I went to Elizabeth Ann Lane.  Contrary to what the developer's representative implied at the NPU meeting, there was only one house that was in bad shape, and it was boarded up, unlike the derelict house near us on North Morningside.  Most of the houses look like the original houses on my street. 

Across Sheridan Road is a development called Sheridan Place, with pretty big houses with double garages that are really close together, and a new development called Sheridan Estates, with luxury homes "from the $800's" with (according to the signs) super pantries, mud rooms, and European appliances (I hope they work better than our Bosch dishwasher).  Incidentally I note that Sheridan Estates is being marketed by Muffley & Associates, along with their Dream Home program, which is where they pay a premium to buy up older homes that can be knocked down and replaced with other houses.  Given the discussion at the NPU meeting, apparently this is only permitted if the houses to be built are large, really expensive ones.

So I sided with the residents of Elizabeth Ann Lane, but the combined influence of all those opposing neighborhood associations had pretty well packed the meeting, and it was defeated, 189 to 124. I'm not completely sure this is the end of the story; I think the ultimate decision belongs to the city, and the developer's proposal concluded with the statement that any action other than approval would violate the developer's constitutional rights under the Georgia and U.S. Constitutions, so once the city makes a decision, it may still not be done. So we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I have to wonder if anyone else looked at Google Maps before weighing in on this.

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.