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.

A Request for a Variance

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I didn't get the letter, but one of my neighbors who did get it send me a photo of it. It was a request to support a variance to reduce the secondary side yard setback from 17.5 feet to 7 feet for a new home to be built at the corner at Wessyngton and Cumberland.  There's a duplex there now; it's been a while since I knew any of the people living there.

The variance request went before the MLPA Zoning Committee a week ago Monday.  Once we saw the site plan, it was clear that the 7 foot setback was not from the curb but from several feet inside the curb; the proposed house will be similarly placed on the lot as the existing house, although it will be facing Wessyngton.  There will be about a 15 foot setback from the curb, unlike the 35 feet setbacks for other houses on this side of the street.

A lot of us from Wessyngton Road came to the zoning committee meeting.  The spokesperson for the developer that was requesting the variance said that the more than 3,000 square foot house that they proposed to build would be in the style of an English cottage that would fit into the neighborhood.  (I am unaware of other English cottages on our street, but maybe I've missed something.)  There were questions about the trees that would have to be removed for the two car garage and the driveway. The speakers for the developer said they'd distributed some letters; they hadn't heard much back, they said.  There was a neighbor who was supportive, they said, and maybe they said (I'm not sure) there was one on Cumberland who had expressed a concern about rental houses.  The neighbor they'd said was supportive was there in person, and he said he was being misquoted, that he'd said he'd have to see the plans.

But there were a lot of us there from Wessyngton Road, and there were questions about sidewalks and a suggestion that they back off on the comments about rental houses.  And there were questions from the zoning committee members about why the house couldn't be farther from the curb, and about the trees that were going to have to be removed.  They ended up forwarding it to the MLPA board contingent on having the elevation and the footprint of the house on record with the city, and to see if a sidewalk was feasible.

Last night it went to the MLPA board and the developers' team was back to present it again, this time with the updated plans that had been submitted to the city.  They were talking among themselves before the meeting, and one of them was saying that the neighbors (that would be us) had come to the zoning meeting because we didn't understand what was proposed, and once we saw the plan we were all fine with it.  I told him that that at least some of us still had some concerns about having a house facing Wessyngton so much closer to the curb than any other house on the street.

The board ended up approving it.  One of the neighbors was strongly in favor of it, and one was strongly opposed.  The rest of us didn't say much.  It seemed pretty much inevitable.

Since then, I've done some thinking about what's really important to me about my street.  Honestly, the houses -- whether they are new English cottages or 1950s ranch houses or the apartments that used to be at the other end of Wessyngton -- don't matter that much.  What matters are the people who live in them; it's the people that make the neighborhood a good place to live.  Some of them are renters and some of them are homeowners.  Some of the renters have been some of the best neighbors, over the years, like our friend Mark, who was the best guitar player on the street.

So, fine, they can build whatever they want. Just find us a really good neighbor to buy the house.

Extra points if they can play guitar.

Without a Trace

The apartments at the corner of Wessyngton and Highland are long gone.  Here's the sequence.

This photo was taken last August, before the tenants were evicted.  There was a larger wood-frame structure on the corner, a long brick structure on the Wessyngton lot, and in between a small wood-frame building (attached to the larger one) that looked too small for someone to live in (but I'm pretty sure someone did).

By November, the buildings were empty and boarded up.

This photo - also from November - shows the sidewalk that extends from the corner down Wessyngton but does not extend all the way to the end of the second lot on Wessyngton.  Between the sidewalk and the street are the elm trees that were planted years ago by Trees Atlanta during a neighborhood tree-planting day.

By mid-May, when I took the pictures below, some of the erosion control fencing was in place and a large piece of equipment with a big shovel on the end was in place.  It was clear that demolition would begin soon.

On May 19, the demolition began.  That first day, the white frame structure was reduced to a large pile of rubble.

By the weekend, the corner lot was cleared off and leveled, and demolition of the brick building was well underway.  It looked like it had been bombed, without the fire.

Two weeks later, there was only a little rubble left from the brick building.  Mostly, there was a big hole.

By the following week, the rubble was pretty much gone, and all that was left of the brick building was the far wall, which was serving as a retaining wall for the property behind the lot.

The stairs remained at the corner lot, even though there no longer was anything at the top of them except for an empty lot.

A number of beautiful trees have been left.  With all the excavation around them, I don't know if they will survive, but it is encouraging that they aren't marked with fluorescent orange "X"'s and that there is no sign notifying neighbors that trees are about to be removed.

I was out of town the next week, but when I came back I was surprised to see a brand new sidewalk, extending the existing sidewalk along Wessyngton to the edge of the property.

Between kids being home and travel for work, I have not had time to attend any of the neighborhood meetings where I might have learned what is planned for the site.  We do know that the two lots have been or will be subdivided into three -- the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the City has to subdivide the property -- and that it will remain zoned for single-family homes.  But we don't know what will be built.

Myself, I'm not so worried about what the houses look like.  I'm more concerned about who will buy the houses and be our neighbors.  I'm hoping for the kind of neighbors who will pick up your mail or or newspaper if you are out of town for a few days and maybe even feed your cat and definitely call 911 if guys in an unmarked truck show up and start loading up your stuff.  

But of course that's still some ways away.  In the meantime, I'll take it as a good sign that there's a new sidewalk and pretty effective erosion control measures in place.  We'll see what happens.

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.

This Week in Real Estate

Lots of real estate-type activity on the street.  The house that had been owned by the family that is moving to Japan has sold, as has the house of the couple that is moving to New York.  Another house was just put on the market, so there will probably be new neighbors there, too, before too long.  The duplex had been under contract, but now the "For Sale" sign is back up; I guess the sale didn't go through.

I am sure that if the duplex does eventually sell, it will be knocked down and replaced with something much larger and well outside the budget of the former residents of the duplex.  Of course that's the plan for the apartments at Wessyngton and North Highland, too.  The "For Sale" signs there have been gone there for a long time, and the new signs are about the owners' request to subdivide the property into three lots instead of two.

I don't know that it's readable in my photograph but the meeting is on February 17.  Here's my question -- is the property big enough to build three houses that meet current zoning, or are they going to come back and ask for variances to zoning, since the lots are too small?  Tom and I hope to make it to the meeting next week.  We'll see what happens.

There's a sign at Angela's old house too (I still think of it as "Angela's house" even though she wasn't the last tenant there.)  

This one is a public notice that the trees marked with an "X" have been approved by the city for removal.  The date for public comment is past, and I think was already past by the time I saw the sign.

I figured if they had been asking for public comment it was okay to go onto the property and see what trees were being removed, so over the weekend I went into the backyard to see.  

It was depressing.  All the large trees in the back yard were marked with large orange X's.  Just one of them is in the photo below -- I think there were 5 trees that were marked for removal.  Several of them show, I think, in the photo above of the house; they are the trees that are closest, behind the house.  They are all going to be cut down.

It's not all bad news, though.  This house on Cumberland -- my favorite renovation in the neighborhood -- briefly had a "For Sale by Owner" sign in the front yard.  Yesterday while I was walking the dog I had a chance to ask if it had sold.  Yes, I was told.  Three days on the market, three offers.  

And I don't think they removed any trees.

The Neighborhoods We Want

It's a good thing that people want to live in Atlanta's older walkable neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that were built as streetcar suburbs in the 1920s or even earlier.  These older intown neighborhoods have many lovely older homes, and many have within them small commercial areas that provide walkable destinations, with neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and small shops.  As more people want to live in these kind of neighborhoods, there's demand for housing in them.  Some people want to live in the neighborhood but want a bigger house with all the modern amenities.  So older homes are being purchased, demolished, and replaced with bigger houses.  In most parts of the city, the only requirement for newly-constructed houses is to comply with the city building code.  They are not required to be of the same scale as adjacent houses, to be of the same design as adjacent houses, or to be compatible in any way with the neighborhood.  All they have to do is meet the current building code.

This is an issue in many parts of the city as well as in Decatur.  There's currently an effort in Virginia Highland to explore Historic District Overlay Zoning for two subdivisions in the neighborhood.  This has already generated vigorous discussion on the neighborhood email list, with an active opposition group formed that opposes the designation.  Decatur's City Commission recently considered a moratorium on demolitions of single family homes.  They ended up voting against it.  In the Oakhurst neighborhood, the demographics of the neighborhood are changing rapidly.  Commissioner Kecia Cunningham told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “For me, it’s not about ‘McMansions,’ it’s the loss of racial and economic diversity, the loss of affordable housing."

On our street, the apartments at the corner of Wessyngton and North Highland are being vacated and will be demolished soon.  I don't know what will be built there, other than that I am certain it will be three large expensive homes.  Lynsley found designs on line that a local architecture firm has proposed for the street (see this link and this one).  The two houses are contemporary, "fusing modern luxury with holistic sustainable design."  The architects note that the proposed location for these houses is "one block from some of Atlanta's best shops and restaurants."  What it doesn't say is that Wessyngton Road is still mostly made up of small ranch-style homes built during the 1950s and that these new houses that are proposed don't look anything like most of the houses on the street.  

But not all the houses on our street were built in the 1950s.  There are newer houses, some dating from a few decades ago; one of them has a quite contemporary design and is for sale now.  There also has been demolition of older homes and new construction on the street in the last few years.  Some older homes including ours have been renovated and second floors added.  It's not that small 1950s ranch-style homes are architecturally important and should be preserved; it's that demand for lots for new construction threatens existing neighborhoods by forcing out longtime residents when property values become too high.

And it's not just that.  A neighborhood is a complex adaptive system, and changing one thing can result in major and unanticipated changes in other areas.  Part of what makes Atlanta's intown neighborhoods interesting is that different kinds of people live in them, that everyone is not just alike.  Interesting neighborhoods require housing to be available across the income spectrum.  Already Morningside is not nearly as interesting as Virginia Highland, which is not nearly as interesting as Poncey-Highland, and that is why.  

I love Atlanta's intown neighborhoods, and I'm glad other people do too, but at the moment it feels to me that we are at risk of loving them to death.  The city doesn't require a Social Capital Impact Statement for new development; all there is is the permitting process.  But building codes and even Historic District Overlay Zoning are pretty blunt instruments.  We need additional and sharper instruments if we are going to shape the direction that our neighborhoods take.  Incentives and disincentives are preferable to regulations, if they'll do the job, and if there are things that the market will do without incentives, even better.  (My impression is that many of the new large intown mixed use developments do include a range of housing types; whether that's due to requirements or incentives, I don't know, but I am pretty sure it's not market forces.  Market forces are leading to an increased focus on walkability in commercial areas, according to a recent study, but not to what the authors called "social equity," which included affordable housing and accessibility.)  My guess is that new houses that look like they belong in the neighborhood probably sell for more than houses that don't, and not all the new construction is dreadful.  But the city and county need to use tax policy to help people on fixed incomes be able to stay in their homes when property values are rising.

This is my new favorite house in the neighborhood.  It was on the market in 2011, after its owner moved into assisted living.  A couple bought it, and after that work started out the site.  I assumed it was going to be demolished and replaced with a much larger, new home.  One day after that I saw them standing in the yard, and I asked.  They seemed surprised at the question.  No, they said, they they planned to renovate it.  The work is ongoing, but one of the things they've done already is enlarged the front porch.

I wish our neighbors in Virginia Highland well, as they continue the discussion about the Historic Overlay District Zoning.  But unless everyone in the two subdivisions wants it -- and that seems pretty unlikely -- it will be a tough sell.  So the discussion continues about the kind of neighborhoods we want, and what -- if anything -- we are willing to do to maintain them or improve them.

Staying the Course

The Eastside Trail on the Beltline had its official opening on Monday.  I've been wanting to get out and walk it again, including the segment north of Virginia Avenue, but I just haven't had time.  But even though I've not explored it as much as I'd like, it's clear it's an amazing opportunity and can lead to private sector investment that can revitalize neighborhoods around our city.

What kind of development revitalizes neighborhoods?  It's not so difficult.  The kind that encourages walking and gets people out of their cars.  If there must be parking, put it behind the housing and retail, but build for density so there are enough people who can get there without driving that you are not relying on huge numbers of cars that demand so much space for parking that things are too far apart and too ugly.  It's diversity, so there's places for all kinds of people to live -- students and young people just out of school, families with kids, empty nesters, retired people.  And diversity too in what's there -- coffee shops and bakeries and farmers markets and neighborhood taverns and art galleries restaurants and local retailers.  All built to human scale, not for cars.  I'm not a city planner, but this is clear to me, and I am sure it's even clearer to the people who do this for a living.

I went to the MLPA Board meeting a couple of weeks ago and there was a report about a recent City Council vote on a requested change to the city's master development plan for the Lindbergh area.  Lindbergh is already home to too many big-box stores and parking lots, and a developer wanted to but a WalMart Superstore there.  There might be a way for a WalMart to work in a location like this (but this is awfully close to an existing Target store) but not with a huge footprint and a huge parking lot surrounding it.  It is currently zoned for high-density residential, and the City Council did not have enough votes to change it.

One of the new neighborhoods in Atlanta that has benefited from the right kind of redevelopment is Glenwood Park.  There's thoughtful design, community involvement, and "nearly ideal walkable density."  It had been an abandoned industrial site that had most recently been used as a concrete recycling facility.  Now there's houses and apartments and retail and public space and (as best I can tell) it's a great neighborhood and a terrific example of how to do redevelopment right.

Now just to the west of Glenwood Park, a developer has proposed to build a WalMart.  This is in the Grant Park neighborhood, and the proposed development -- with at 155,000 sq ft store and more than a thousand surface parking spaces.  The Neighborhood Planning Unit opposes the development, which is inconsistent with the Beltline Master Plan.  For NPU-W, Chairman Edward Gilgor wrote, "This kind of aggressive ignorance is indicative not of an enlightened view of new urbanism, but rather a rather common and pervasive view of old-style suburbanism."

We have wonderful neighborhoods in Atlanta, and with the right kind of development we can have even more of them.  But big-box stores, regardless of the retailer, are just not the right kind. More from Chairman Gilgor:

More fundamentally, the proposal fails in nearly every way to comply with the goals and ideals adopted by Council in committing to the construction of the Atlanta BeltLine and Council’s bold vision of connecting and revitalizing Atlanta. Instead, the proposal seeks to wedge a typically suburban big box store into historic neighborhoods and communities that have strived for true intersection of the live, work play ideal represented by new urbanism. NPU-W urges the Office of Planning to exercise its discretion and deny the application as it had been submitted. Should the applicant decide to submit an application that does meet with the BeltLine Overlay and the Subarea 4 Master Plan, then it will find the surrounding communities, as well as this NPU, to be active partners and supporters in its endeavor.

What kind of neighborhood do you want to live in?  There's an on line petition on the Glenwood Avenue rezoning.  The Beltline is a great opportunity, but let's stick with the plan and do it right.