GAINESVILLE – Standing-room-only greeted commissioners Thursday evening as Chairman Dick Mecum attempted to gavel into session the Hall County Board of Commissioners voting meeting.
The continued cacophony of voices from the energetic audience required Mecum to use his microphone to ask for silence. “We need everyone to quiet down, please.”
“You’re going to have to hold the noise down otherwise it reverberates through the sound system,” Mecum explained. This time the audience responded, settling quickly into their seats.
A public hearing for a rezoning request made by Mincey Marble Manufacturing was on the agenda and neighbors wanted to share their feelings on the company’s proposed expansion onto an 11.63-acre site located across Browns Bridge Road from their current location.
Many of those neighbors wore red shirts with the word “Cresswind” printed across the front. Cresswind at Lake Lanier is an active adult community, also located on Browns Bridge Road; residents from that community were concerned about Mincey Marble’s expansion plan.
“Whatever comes out of tonight there’s going to be some people that are happy and some people that are not so happy,” Commissioner Billy Powell said prefacing the start of public hearing.
But Powell had an additional tidbit of information that he knew would be of interest to the Cresswind residents, something unrelated to Mincey Marble’s rezoning request.
“The item that Randy is going to bring before us, I hope, will help make up for some of those that won’t be as happy,” Powell stated.
Randy is Randy Knighton, Hall County Administrator. His announcement was that the county, the city of Gainesville and the developer of Cresswind had agreed “to share the cost of a traffic warrant analysis…to determine if a traffic light is warranted” at the main entrance to the huge subdivision. That is something Cresswind residents had been seeking for a long time.
“To provide a safer access, ingress and egress, to the Cresswind subdivision,” Knighton said about the study.
That news was welcomed by the Cresswind residents, but they were at the meeting primarily to speak out on the expansion plans of Mincey Marble.
As the zoning request was read to the audience, Chairman Mecum announced (as had been reported here) that officials with Mincey Marble requested their application be tabled until October.
This marked the second tabling request by the applicant and added to the frustration of the growing number of neighbors who repeatedly attended commission meetings in the hope of expressing their opposition to the project.
Since Mincey Marble is in his district, Powell made the motion to re-table the application, but Commissioner Jeff Stowe asked to add to the motion words that seemingly expressed the frustration of those in the audience.
“Mr. Powell, do you mind if I add a little friendly amendment to that?” Stowe asked Powell about his motion to table.
Powell nodded his consent and Stowe continued, “On October 13th there will be a public hearing at that point or it (the rezoning request) will be withdrawn by the applicant; one of the two.”
The thunderous applause that followed Stowe’s amendment testified to the audience’s desire to have the issue resolved once and for all.
Powell's motion to table - with the friendly amendment tacked on by Stowe - was approved unanimously, but somewhere in the room the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down could be heard.
