by Jim Martin
james.martin@me.gatech.edu
The September 22 nd NPU-D meeting was a pretty quick one. Attendance was way down because the flood waters had receded just a few hours before the meeting began. Bolton Rd leading to the Agape center had been under four or five feet of water earlier in the day. The center itself, despite being next to a creek, was spared any flooding.
Our only zoning case was for the old Whittaker School on Huff Rd. The adjoining Howard School had contracted to buy this property in order to incorporate it into their campus. Oddly, the site was zoned I-1 although it had once been a school. Thus, it needed to be rezoned (they were asking for OI zoning) in order to be a school again. Our biggest problem with all this was that they did not have an actual plan for the site. Most developers would have been promptly denied under these circumstances. However, the Howard School has been a good neighbor since opening a few years ago so we were willing to give them considerable leeway. We voted to grant them the OI zoning with the condition that they must have NPU-D approval in order to remove a stand of mature trees on the site. This was because they had indicated that they might want to do this if their plans “required” it, but they had no plans and nothing to document any such requirement (they also have poor history of tree preservation). After some whining about how they wanted to keep all their options open, they agreed to this condition.
The only other business on our agenda was our vote to readopt our current bylaws for 2010 and our vote to approve a set of revisions to the city's sign ordinance. We wrapped things up a little after 8:30. We would have finished sooner but some folks wandered in late so we looped back through the agenda items that we had missed earlier.
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