By a 5–4 vote, the Athens-Clarke County Commission on Sept. 12 upheld a decision by the Historic Preservation Commission to approve an addition on a house in the Bloomfield Historic District that will be used as a short-term rental.
The HPC voted in June to approve a request from Atlanta resident Jason Williams, who owns 120 West Cloverhurst Ave., which includes an apartment unit on the bottom level and a $1,000-a-night, three-bedroom Airbnb rental on the top. He proposed to demolish an existing garage, then add a new garage with living space and a deck on the second floor that will connect to the main house with a breezeway.
Atlanta attorney Matthew Totten represented his father, John Totten, who has lived with his spouse next door to the property in question since 2015. Matthew Totten challenged the HPC’s original Certificate of Appropriateness, claiming HPC members didn’t consider the scale of the proposed addition, which he said is too large for an accessory structure in the Bloomfield Historic District.
There are other garages in the immediate area, but none of them has an exterior stairway, Totten said. Moreover, he said that since 120 West Cloverhurst is zoned as single-family residential, with an additional unit above the garage, there will be more than two unrelated people on the property, in violation of county ordinances. Totten said, “the property is currently used as a nonconforming two-unit residential structure,” and the proposed accessory structure would “serve to expand or enlarge the non-conforming use of the property.” He also said the applicant needs a variance from the county Hearings Board for a nonconforming duplex if Williams adds 600 square feet of living space to one of the two residential units on the property.
Residents in the Five Points area have appealed HPC rulings on short-term rental properties on several occasions because such houses are often the source of noise, traffic and other disruptions. In March, a man was killed in a drive-by shooting at a short-term rental house on Northview Drive.
At a called meeting Sept. 19, county commissioners were scheduled to consider an emergency moratorium on new short-term rentals in single-family neighborhoods.
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