by Jim Martin
james.martin@me.gatech.edu
For the second time in two months we came very close to ending the NPU-D meeting on time. My perfect record of never quite being able to do this was preserved by the timely arrival of Mary Norwood just as we were wrapping up the business of the day. Mary took questions from the group for half an hour or so, and this pushed us over the unattainable goal of a 9:00 PM adjournment. Although the agenda looked pretty full for the meeting, it was actually fairly light because of some last-minute changes. These may have also motivated the low turnout (by recent standards) of only 25 or so neighbors. We had two controversial rezoning cases on the agenda. One of these was for the property at the corner of Huff Rd and Foster St (currently the home of No Mas ). The developers of that property had proposed to rezone the site to MR-5A, which would have doubled the zoning density standard for the area. Prior to the meeting, they agreed to reduce their request to MR-4A. This was consistent with other rezoning in the area and was unanimously approved with relatively little discussion. The other controversial rezoning case was for 1011 Collier Rd, which is in NPU-C bordering the edge Underwood Hills in NPU-D. The developers there had requested an MRC-3 zoning classification, which is obscenely dense for the area – more than ten times the density of any zoning around it and more than 20 times the average density of surrounding developments. Just before the meeting, the developers requested a deferral of their rezoning application because of overwhelming community opposition. They did not come to the meeting. As a matter of prudence, we voted unanimously to deny the application for an MRC-3 zoning. This leaves open the possibility that we will consider a more reasonable rezoning request for the site at a future meeting, but puts our position regarding the current request on record for the city. In this way, the deferral, which we expect to be granted, should not be interpreted as time to “work out a few minor details,” as such things often are, but rather as an opportunity to rethink - or shelve - the entire proposal.
Mary Norwood had come to speak to us about rezoning ordinance for R-4A, R-4B and R-5 districts, which she and our city planner Karl had both been involved in drafting. Unfortunately, she arrived after we had already voted to approve the ordinance, after a very confusing discussion, by a margin of 7-for a slightly amended version, 3-opposed to it, and 8-abstentions. The slight amendment was to increase the allowable FAR in R-4A from 0.5 to 0.6. At least one of the three dissenting votes (mine) was in opposition to this amendment rather than the content of the ordinance as it was originally written. Since we had moved past this subject when she arrived, Mary answered questions on a variety of other topics most of which were related to the ongoing revision of the tree ordinance.