National homebuilder D.R. Horton is resurrecting a 20-year-old plan for a massive development off Atlanta Highway, but Athens-Clarke County planners and planning commissioners were critical of the design at a presentation last week.
First approved in 2004 and revised three times but never built, the latest proposal for the Winslow Park project calls for almost 900 housing units—421 single-family homes, 219 townhouses, 238 apartments on 207 acres of woods in Bogart near the Caterpillar plant. Applicant Walton Georgia LLC is seeking to amend the previous plans and asking for several waivers to the local zoning code.
The original version, known as Water’s Edge, was based on Birkdale Village, a New Urban community near Charlotte, NC. But according to county planners, the most recent version has abandoned New Urbanist principles like walkability in favor of a car-centric and isolated design.
“The main issue here, and it’s an issue that’s come up in other projects around town, is we’ve got some design drift here,” long-range planner Stephen Jaques said at a Sept. 5 planning commission meeting. Among others, he cited Oak Grove off Jefferson Road, which was originally supposed to be a village-style New Urban development, but instead the commercial component gradually morphed over the years into a strip mall anchored by Publix.
The new Winslow Park proposal lacks the greenspace, variety of housing styles and commercial space of the original, Jaques said. “You don’t have the opportunity to walk to the store, a coffee shop, that sort of thing,” he said.
W&A Engineering landscape architect Scott Haynes, representing the applicant, noted that Athens has a shortage of housing. “We feel like this project is an opportunity to make a significant impact on that problem,” he said. Future iterations of the plan will address the walkability issue, Haynes added, and he raised the possibility of extending Athens Transit service further down Atlanta Highway.
Some planning commissioners criticized the architecture—D.R. Horton is using stock designs rather than the original’s binding pattern book of unique, vernacular designs—as well as the fact that some of the homes would face inward with their backs to streets and alleys. Others had concerns about access for fire trucks.
“It looks like a place where houses are going to be really, really affordable,” said planning commissioner Sarah Gehring. “It does not look like it’s going to be a luxury development in any kind of way.” On the other hand, “it does not seem like it would be a good place to live… just 200 acres of the same thing,” she said.
The Winslow Park plan was presented for comments only, and the planning commission did not vote on a recommendation.
The planning commission did unanimously approve a proposal for a mixed-use apartment building off Lumpkin Street between the Holiday Inn property and the UGA campus. That project requires a rezoning from government to commercial downtown because it involves a land swap between the university and the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. The current BCM building further south down Lumpkin will become the site of a Terry College of Business expansion. “We view this as a mutually beneficial decision,” said Jeff Warwick, the property owner.
Pending approval from the ACC Commission next month, the new building will be four to five stories tall and include 200–220 one- and two-bedroom apartments, a parking deck and 20,000 square feet of commercial space, part of which would be occupied by the BCM. The development is being designed to appeal to faculty, graduate students and others, not just undergrads, according to Warwick. He described it as “a new community where the BCM, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry, is the anchor and the hub of the community.”
In addition, the planning commission voted to recommend approving a special use permit for 144 apartments totaling 228 bedrooms on nine acres off Lexington Road near the airport, although planning staff wanted to table the request to gather more information. If given final approval, 20% of the units would be rented at below-market rates under ACC’s inclusionary zoning ordinance.
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