The Hall County Planning Commission held its final scheduled meeting of 2017 Monday evening in Gainesville, and now county government officials are moving forward to 2018.
Planning Commission Chairman Don Smallwood said the county saw a lot of residential growth during the past calendar year.
"It's been a good year," Smallwood said. "We're seeing a little bit of the development coming back."
He said that residential neighborhoods were the biggest incoming developments. He said that as the growth continues to move into the county, the strategies of some of the developers have changed and smaller homes are now becoming a trend.
"What they're wanting to do is to take the house size down where they had the subdivision already approved," Smallwood said. "And there's not anything wrong with that, you know, it helps get the development going, but we can't take the folks that are there and let them do it on their back."
He also said that an encouraging sign is that some developers are starting projects on sites of previously abandoned subdivision projects.
"I think if the economy keeps getting better, and it seems to be getting better because the attitude of the builders and the attitudes of the folks buying and selling homes and doing stuff is a lot better now...we'll see more folks going back and revisiting these subdivisions," Smallwood said.
He said the county expects the residential growth to continue into 2018, saying that commercial development hasn't been booming at the same rate. He also said that while the South Hall area has seen the largest amount of growth, residential developments are coming in to all parts of the county.
Smallwood spoke after the planning commission's Monday meeting.
