The Hall County Board of Commissioners formally objected to the City of Flowery Branch’s annexation attempt of roughly 250-acres off of Hog Mountain Road at Thursday night’s meeting.
There are four properties that the city is attempting to annex, all near Flowery Branch High School but just outside of Flowery Branch’s city limits.
The first one is on a roughly 156-acre tract located at 4381 Hog Mountain Road. On April 9 of this year, the county received a notice that Grand Communities, LLC out of Kentucky had petitioned to annex the property into the city for a 412-unit residential subdivision.
The second property is on roughly 50-acres of land at 4560 Hog Mountain Road. The county received a notice on April 29 of this year that Gwinnett County District 1 Commissioner Kirkland Dion Carden and Blue Tier Residential, where he is a partner, petitioned to annex the property for a 278-unit apartment complex with retail space.
The city wants to rezone both from agricultural and residential to mixed-use development.
The third and fourth properties are on roughly 20-acres of land at 4651 and 4665 Hog Mountain Road and the county received an annexation petition notice on April 29 of this year. The petition would be for the development of a 116-unit townhome community by Rochester DCCM, a developer out of Gainesville.
The city wants to rezone from its current agricultural and residential uses to traditional neighborhood development.
According to Hall County attorney William Linkous, III, state law allows the county to object to the annexation petitions to initiate a dispute resolution process that would involve arbiters resolving the dispute.
Georgia’s Department of Community Affairs (DCA) would create an arbitration panel to hear the cases before making a decision. The DCA’s panel can not approve or deny annexation, but can attach conditions onto the properties in question that can remain in force for two years.
Flowery Branch’s City Council has only formally heard the 50-acre property at one of its meetings in January of this year.
