Several Athens-Clarke County commissioners took the opportunity of a rezoning request for a North Avenue apartment complex to vent last week about student housing.
The proposal for eight buildings with a total of 88 apartments and 228 bedrooms breezed through the ACC Planning Commission last month, with particular praise for its architecture. But commissioners Tiffany Taylor, Stephanie Johnson and Ovita Thornton raised broader objections to the number of apartment complexes the commission has been approving.
“My question is, exactly how many more apartment complexes like this are we going to approve [until] there is absolutely no place for Athenians to live in?” Taylor said at the Jan. 23 agenda-setting meeting. She questioned county officials on the vacancy rate for recently approved apartments aimed at students. Commissioner Carol Myers had similar questions.
“I don’t see the benefit for residents because… I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be able to afford a lot of these,” Taylor said.
Obtaining accurate occupancy rates is difficult, Planning Director Bruce Lonnee explained, because “a lot of times it’s not in their best interests to provide information to say they’re unoccupied.” Planners are working with the Public Utilities Department to obtain data based on water bills, he said. Economists with the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business recently pegged the local vacancy rate for multifamily housing at just 4% (see p. 6 for more).
Johnson wondered if any children will ever be able to grow up in Athens again. “Commississioner Taylor hit it on the head. You don’t understand unless you grew up here,” Johnson said. “I predict that in 10 years, no one will be able to say ‘I grew up in Athens.’ I see Athens changing.”
Commissioner Melissa Link called the proposal “a really creative approach” to developing a parcel with challenging topography and a power line easement. The land is currently zoned for commercial use. “Effectively, the only thing that could go there by right is a strip mall facing Strickland Avenue with a couple stories of apartments on top,” Link said.
She contended that the development would attract a variety of people, not just college students, and that to the extent students do live there, it will keep them out of single-family neighborhoods.
The 4.5-acre parcel has been a mobile home park for generations, grandfathered into the current zoning code that bars mobile homes in most areas. Over the years, though, the property has transitioned from mobile homes—which are not actually very mobile, and can become difficult or impossible to move as they age—to RVs or trailers. The property owner is working with the handful of remaining residents to relocate them.
Link called for loosening regulations on trailers, manufactured homes and tiny houses—currently banned in Athens—through a special-use permitting process as a way to alleviate a housing shortage that is driving up costs. “It is increasingly a very common and desirable way to live,” she said.
Thornton initially agreed with Link that the owner could sell the property for by-right development that the commission would have no control over. “I think this is an excellent proposal,” she said.
But Thornton then went on to say she agreed with Taylor and Johnson’s objections. “When that land use plan was created 25 years ago, I do believe it was very discriminatory,” Thornton said. “I do believe we were cut out, low income [people], back then. You have zoning laws that are racist.”
With the county currently crafting a new land use plan, “Some folks want to get rid of single [family] dwellings,” Thornton said. “Correct me if I’m lying, but that’s what I was told.”
Lonnee provided additional context at an already scheduled mini-retreat—more like a slightly extended work session—on Jan. 24 at the Bobby Snipes Water Resource Center in Athens. “This is not zoning,” he said of the land use map. Rather, it’s a broad guide for future growth, as opposed to the nitty-gritty of the zoning code.
Addressing some of commissioners’ concerns from the previous night—Thornton and four other commissioners skipped the retreat—Lonnee told them that about 11,000 multifamily units with 22,000 bedrooms had been proposed, permitted or built over the last two years. About 5,000 single-family homes with an estimated 15,000 beds have been proposed, permitted or built. But communities nationwide are still playing catchup from the 2008 housing crash, and not all developments that are proposed or approved actually come to fruition. Rents and home prices for long-term residents also face upward pressure from UGA’s lack of on-campus housing.
At a recent meeting, the committee the mayor and commission appointed to oversee a draft of the map did discuss consolidating single-family and multi-family into one category for the purpose of allowing transitions like quadruplexes around the edges of single-family neighborhoods. “It’s not to take single-family zoning out of the code. Never, ever,” Lonnee said. “What you’re going to see is single-family zoning is going to stay on the map.”
The land use map is based on five principles, Lonnee said in what was essentially a rerun of a work session presentation he gave the commission last year. Those include: redeveloping areas ripe for transformation, such as aging corridors where the infrastructure can handle more growth; minimizing expensive and potentially environmentally hazardous sewer expansion; spreading growth equally in all areas served by sewer; reducing travel distances by putting residents closer to work and shopping; and growing in an environmentally and economically sustainable way.
Making the case for additional density, Lonnee pointed to a study done by Asheville, NC-based consultants Urban3 that calculated what individual properties bring in from tax revenue. Suburban single-family homes and big box developments like Walmart don’t pay their own way. But they’re subsidized by the types of buildings seen in neighborhoods like Normaltown and Five Points that are worth seven or eight figures per acre, up to the nearly 1:40 ratio in downtown, which makes up 0.2% of the land in Athens but generates 8% of the revenue.
“A two-to-three story building on a relatively small piece of land is punching above its weight,” Lonnee said.
Under the current proposal, the committee has recognized that downtown is unique, but Georgia Square Mall would be designated an “urban center” similar to a second downtown. Other major nodes—Normaltown, Five Points, Beechwood, some intersections on the Eastside—would be designated as neighborhood centers. Examples of the type of development allowed there would include the Bottleworks or the Cotton Exchange.
“Just because single-family doesn’t cover expenses doesn’t mean you don’t build it,” Lonnee said. “You have to balance your portfolio.”
Overall, only about 11% of Athens’ land is likely to see its category change, Lonnee said. That includes areas in the rural “green belt,” but only to reflect what development is already on the ground, not to encourage future growth there.
Sometime this spring, a draft map will go out for a fifth round of public comment, then come before the planning commission for a recommendation, then the mayor and commission for approval. In 2026, work will start on ACC’s state-mandated 2028 comprehensive plan, which will be an opportunity for tweaks, Lonnee said. He asked commissioners for help spreading the word and explaining a complex endeavor to their constituents.
“Sometimes people get lost in the sauce,” he said. “This is not the kind of project people are talking about over the fence or in the checkout line at Kroger.”
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