Controversial development on Macon Road set to come before Columbus planning commission

After almost 300 Columbus residents met with developers and city officials in March to successfully delay a proposed Macon Road development, the project will now come before the Planning Advisory Commission on Aug. 21 with a new site plan.

Residents from across seven subdivisions near the site at 5201 Macon Road, petitioned to stop the development because of concerns about traffic and the large number of planned rental units.

Originally, the plan was to build 670 housing units, including an apartment complex, a senior apartment building, town houses, single family homes and a “neighborhood commercial center” on the 115.6 acre development.

Proterra Development, based in metro Atlanta , applied to rezone the area from single-family residential to planned unit development (PUD), which allows for ‘ community-serving commercial development .’

But after the pushback, the rezoning request process was delayed until the Development of Regional Impact (DRI) report concluded, Columbus planning director Will Johnson previously told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Over the past few months, Proterra Development began working on a new site plan they hope would be more compatible with what residents in the area are comfortable with, developer Carlos Arenas told the Ledger-Enquirer.

“We went back to the drafting board and tried to bring every single comment that we collected from our community meeting,” he said. “(We wanted to) make sure we could address everything within the plan that we possibly could.”

Developers reduced the site plan’s density by almost 35%, Arenas said, and most of the housing has been converted into mostly single family homes and townhouses. The senior apartment building and commercial space were completely removed from the plan.

Multi-family units, or the apartment buildings, were kept to the lowest number they could possibly do, he said, with 240 units in 10 buildings.

All of the entrances for these apartments would flow traffic into Macon Road directly, Arenas said.

This new plan has a total of 476 housing units.

During the time spent reevaluating the site, they found flood zones and streams that would have made some of their original future plans impossible, Arenas said, and the site plan ensures preservation of the wetlands and landscape.

“It’s a beautiful site,” he said. “So, we wanted to make sure that we keep that as pristine as we could.”

Residents still have concerns

Arenas appreciated the large turnout at the meeting earlier this year because the developer was able to hear a lot of what the community concerns were all at once.

“Usually, you get this in drops,” he said. “We got this big bucket of requests, which makes our job harder. But in the end, we save a ton of time.”

Karen Gaskins, one of the residents who helped organize the community meeting, met with other community organizers after seeing the new site plan.

Residents feel that although changes were made, they still worry about the increase of traffic into their neighborhoods. There needs to be another traffic study that especially focuses on Sears Road, Gaskins told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Another primary concern is the request for rezoning at all, she said. Since PUD zoning allows for commercial space, residents worry that this type of use could be in play in the future even if it’s not included in the current site plan.

“We are not against building,” Gaskins said. “But we are against PUD (zoning) and we are against changing our zoning.”

But residents are fine with single family homes, she said, and have not raised concerns when new neighborhoods were built in the past.

The Aug. 21 PAC meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. at the Council Chambers in the Citizens Service Center.

Gaskins predicts more than 100 residents from her community are likely to attend this meeting, she said.

Arenas said city officials will feel comfortable approving the new site plan because every opinion given by the community was taken into consideration.

“What they wanted to make sure of was that the quality of living that they’ve experienced there for many years didn’t change,” he said. “So, I feel that with this plan, there is a buffer between every single thing that we’re doing.”