FORSYTH HERALD 2007-04-12

April 17, 2007
Fliers are going out to residents in the Buford Dam Road area as residents continue their fight to stop a mixed-use development planned to replace a north Forsyth golf course.

Wellstone Communities want to build more than 770 residential units will displace the 172 acres of Lanier Golf Club if the development company gets its plan approved.

That's just too much development that will put too many cars on the narrow, two-lane roads in the area, said Jim Quinn, a Fairview Lane resident who is active in Save Lanier Lifestyles, a group of residents trying to stop the development.

"Oh, the roads are going to be a disaster," he said. "Can you imagine what it's going to be like with an additional 2,000 [cars] in the morning and 2,000 at night?"

Residents have few choices on their travel routes in the area. They either use Buford Dam Road, or Buford Highway (Ga. 20) to travel east or west.

"We get a tremendous amount of traffic coming in from Gwinnett County going into Cumming," he said.

Forsyth County Commission Chairman Charlie Laughinghouse said Buford Dam Road already has a poor rating for its traffic load. Adding this type of development could be a problem.

"I think it could create on Buford Dam Road a traffic nightmare," Laughinghouse said.

The county chairman said Wellstone's attorney recently asked to schedule a meeting with him to explain the project. As of last week he had not seen any plans for the site.

Laughinghouse acknowledged the efforts of citizens in the area to publicize their problems with the proposed development. Those Forsyth residents are upset, Laughinghouse said, because of the affect they think it will have on the quality of their life.

The nearby homeowners bought their homes having been told they had golf course views, he said.

The rezoning application by Wellstone Communities is scheduled for public hearing at the Forsyth Planning Commission May 22, with the Board of Commissioners to hear it in June. Lanier Golf Club is expected to close this summer in anticipation of the development.

Club members were told early in 2006 that the golf course and club would be closing, with a general concept of the Wellstone Communities development outlined a few months later. In August 2006 the Forsyth County Planning Department sent the rezoning application to Georgia Mountains Regional Development Center to determine if it was a Development of Regional Interest (DRI). Large projects like this are studied by the RDC to see if its development has the potential to have far-reaching regional effects. The plan is still undergoing review.

While most of the property in the Buford Dam Road area is developed at low density, with a few higher density developments such as a townhouse community immediately west of the course, Wellstone plans for much higher density, about five units per acre.

That upsets homeowners, Quinn said.

"When we found out about this, there was a small group of people that got together and said this just stinks. It doesn't sound right, doesn't fit in the neighborhood," Quinn said.

Another aspect he said doesn't fit the area is the proposal for more than 300 rental units.

"There are virtually no rental units in our sub-area It simply doesn't fit," he said.

What opened the door to this development is that the county's future land use map shows the golf course as an activity center even though the supporting text does not.

Activity centers are intended to have land use similar to a central business district, which they say Buford Dam certainly is not. This discrepancy moved the Save Lanier Lifestyles t to sue the county, a case that is pending.

The golf course property went through the sub-area committee, steering committee and to the board of commissioners as private parkland, Quinn said.

"There was kind of a midnight change to activity center," he said.

Now Save Lanier Lifestyles' members are making a big push to get even more homeowners to oppose the development.

"It's coming down to crunch time. We'll be before the Planning Commission within the next month or so, then before the Board of Commissioners the next month," Quinn said.