GAINESVILLE – A 79-acre site in southern Hall County that was once home to a herd of alpacas will soon be the site of a single-family development after receiving rezoning approval from the Hall County Commission Tuesday evening.
Dozens of additional chairs had to be brought into the Gainesville Civic Center meeting room to accommodate those in attendance hoping to see the rezoning application denied, but such was not to be the final outcome.
To a chorus of “boos” the final vote tally was three commission members voting to approve the zoning change from Agricultural-Residential-III (A-R-III) and Residential-I (R-1) to Planned Residential Development (PRD), and one commissioner, District Three Commissioner Shelley Echols, voting to deny the application.
District One Commissioner Kathy Cooper recused herself from the final vote as she and her family reside in the immediate vicinity of the hotly-contested rezoning application from Atlas Development.
The rezoning request, submitted in late June, began receiving stiff opposition almost immediately and narrowly made it past its first administrative hurdle with a split 3-2 recommendation for approval from the Hall County Planning Commission October 4th after being tabled on September 20th to allow time for the developer to reconsider some of the variances to PRD standards being requested as a part of the project.
The application as initially filed included a narrative to construct 148-units on the property commonly known as the Mixon Farm, but the final version presented to the Hall County Commission Tuesday evening was scaled down more than 12-percent.
Brian Rochester, representing Atlas Development, told commissioners, “The Mixons have been there a long time and have enjoyed this property, and I think a lot of people have thoroughly enjoyed the property and the alpacas when they were there, but the Mixons are now to a point in life where they’re ready to sell their property and move on.”
Rochester then explained, “I have put on the table an edited site plan. What we’ve done is listen to the neighborhood… you have a PRD ordinance and we were asking for multiple variances from the ordinance, and when we had our neighborhood meeting they asked us to remove all of the variances and live within the PRD ordinance.”
“We are tonight with this revised plan removing all variance requests,” Rochester said. “The new plan will be 130-units, down from the 148.”
Union Church Road resident Julie Horne was one of those who spearheaded the effort to defeat the rezoning application for the property commonly known as the Mixon Farm. So wide spread was the concern voiced by those attending Tuesday’s Special Call Voting Session that the time allotted for those wishing to speak in opposition elapsed before she could share her comments.
She said after the meeting adjourned, “It is disappointing that our commissioners are more concerned with bad growth than abiding by their own future growth plan which calls for moderate density for the surrounding area. This is an excessive density and our elected officials have disappointed thousands of citizens that have petitioned them to deny this PRD.”
“A thousand and twenty four signed the petition,” Horne explained.
The commission’s rezoning approval included seventeen conditions that will govern various unique aspects of the development.
