Community Corner

Developer Responds on 800 Glenwood Ave. Project

Fuqua Development LLC says it is modifying its plan in response to city's concerns.

GRANT PARK — The Atlanta developer who wants to build a massive retail project on the neighborhood's eastern boundary says he will revise the project to answer concerns raised by city planning officials who rejected his initial application.

"We have modified the Site Plan in an effort to address those areas of the plan which Staff indicated did not meet applicable development requirements," Heather Correa, a principal at Fuqua Development LLC wrote in a Dec. 21 letter to the city's planning department.

As originally planned, the Glenwood Place project at 800 Glenwood Ave. called for a 20-acre, 199,050-square-foot retail development that would include: 

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  • 155,000 square foot major retail tenant
  • 1,021 parking spaces
  • Several restaurants, including a one with a drive-thru
  • A bank

But in a four-page letter dated Nov. 20, Charletta Wilson Jacks, the city's director of planning and community development, wrote the application was rejected because it didn't meet several requirements.

It did not have the required number of parking for its scale and it did not meet  several guidelines as outlined by the BeltLine Overlay District.

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Additionally, Jacks' letter outlined a number of suggestions such as adding traffic sgnals, and adding a bicycle rack, among other things.

While Fuqua Development said it changed its original plan to make it conform to development guidelines governing the site, the company said it would seek two variances.

"We are requesting two minor Administrative Variations, which are made necessary by hardships imposed by existing site conditions," Correa's letter to the city read.

One variance request relates to the Kalb Street extension from the Arts Exchange parking area to Glenwood Avenue and the Master Plan's call for multifamily streetscape typology.

But the company says that is not possible because the "street grid plan contained within the Master Plan is diagrammatic in nature and therefore does not reflect the physical geometry or the relationship between existing right-of-way and private property lines at the location of the proposed northwest connection.

"We have determined that there is insufficient land area available within the Project’s property boundaries to be able to provide the full street typology contemplated in the Master Plan at the northwest corner of the site."

The second variance concerns an east-west extension of Faith Avenue from Chester Avenue to the Kalb Street extension.

"When the Master Plan was developed, the locations of the Kalb and Faith extension were intended to align with large sewer lines. That street placement in turn dictated the block configuration. However, this plan was based upon an assumption of the location of the 50’ Stockade Trunk sewer line that turns out to have been incorrect," the company wrote in its letter.

"Consequently, the street grid plan contained within the Master Plan does not address the detrimental effect of this planned roadway alignment on the resulting developable block size."

The company proposes making the extension south of the area outlined by the Master Plan.

In an e-mail to residents, Ed Gilgor, chairman of Neighborhood Planning Unit-W, wrote the group has 21 days to respond to this new application.

The city then has another nine days to review NPU-W's comments on the application before issuing its own findings.

"NPU-W will be utilizing the same method as before, in which a special committee shall be convened to review the application and make comments to the City," Gilgor wrote. "If anyone has any issues that they would like to for NPU-W to address in its comments, please send them to me at edward.gilgor@gmail.com no later than Jan. 3 at 7 p.m."

SEE ALSO:

  • City Planning Director Finds Problems with Glenwood Place Project
  • Glenwood Place Development: Where it Stands Now
  • Southeast Atlanta Rallies for "Smart" Development
  • Rally Planned to Oppose Glenwood Place Project
  • NPU-W Opposes Glenwood Place Development
  • East Atlanta Resident Starts Online Letter Campaign Against Glenwood Place
  • NPUs Give Their Support in Opposition to Glenwood Place Project
  • Major Retail Planned at Glenwood
  • Online Petition To Stop Glenwood Place Project in Grant Park


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