Ormewood Park Residents Take QuikTrip Campaign To Facebook

They've tried direct appeals to the company. They've looked into hiring an attorney.

They've tried going one-on-one with landowner and they've even identified and suggested alternatives.

Now, the Ormewood Park residents and neighborhood groups that oppose a proposed QuikTrip planned for Moreland and Ormewood avenues, are going to social media to make their case.

The "No QuikTrip Here" Facebook page was created because "we believe that QuikTrip and other corporations should help build our neighborhoods, not break them," its mission statement reads.

QuikTrip Corp. has applied for a building permit with the city to construct a 5,700-square-foot convenience store and gas station at 731 Moreland Ave. between Ormewood and Hall avenues.

A QuikTrip spokesman could not immediately be reached Friday, but the Tulsa, Okla.-based company has said it aims to be a good neighbor wherever it looks to build.

The "No QT Here" page is designed to "build community awareness on a range of issues related to the proposed development," Ron Lall, chairman of SouthStar Community Development Corp., told EastAtlanta.Patch.com in an e-mail late Friday.

"The FB page is one part of the awareness-building effort."

SouthStar, founded in 1998, advocates for several communities along the Moreland Avenue corridor in commercial and residential development.

SouthStar, along with South Atlantans Neighborhood Development group, formed the page, which was created within the last week.

What opponents object to is what they say is QuikTrip's and landowner Gobind L. Madan's circumvention of city planning regulations designed to keep gas stations at least 100 feet away from residential property.

The property is currently home Jiffy Grocery package and convenience store at 731 Moreland and a Liberty Tax Service franchise behind it that fronts Ormewood Avenue.

But west of the site, Ormewood Avenue is a residential street lined with single-family homes.

City planning regulations say if a commercial site is to be used for a filling station, there has to be a 100-foot buffer between it and any adjacent residential property.

Madan, an accountant, assembled several lots on Moreland's west side between Ormewood and Hall avenues over the last 20 years. He then split the assembled parcels in two.

That creates two separate commercial properties: A 1.161-acre tract, where the QuikTrip would be built, and a second, 0.111-acre parcel.

Because the proposed QuikTrip tract abuts the commercial parcel and not the residential properties directly, the 100-foot buffer requirement doesn't apply. The city also doesn't have minimum lot size requirements for commercial properties, raising concerns that this could be replicated all over the city.

"To be clear, this is not an anti-QT campaign," Lall said. "It is about community concerns with using this particularly challenging location for a high traffic use and the impact residential neighborhoods."

Indeed, Ormewood Park residents and homeowners in neighboring East Atlanta, say they're not opposed to QT. But they question the necessity to have it be built there, so close to residential homes, when farther south on Moreland, there are several commercial properties, including some that are vacant, already available.

The Ormewood Park group isn't the first to take a grievance to social media.

Several Atlanta parents formed a Facebook page focused on the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education after board members' squabbling and other issues led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to put the district on nine months probation in January.

If APS does not address the concerns raised by SACS, it could end up losing its accreditation, which spurred the parents' action to form the "Atlanta School Board: Step Up or Step Down" Facebook page.

And a Lake Mary, Fla. woman began chronicling her battle with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks on Twitter after a loan dispute related to a housing construction loan led to a foreclose and a lawsuit.