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Politics & Government

Stakeholders Helping Mold the Future of Crabapple

A group of stakeholders met to learn about Transfer Development Rights and discuss their visions for the area.

A dozen Crabapple residents and businesses are helping to decide where development can happen in the community, and where it shouldn't be allowed.

This work to implement the completed Crabapple Visioning Study created by Lew Oliver's Wholetown Solutions that was presented in May of last year is being done by the Crabapple Stakeholder Committee, formed by the city of Milton.  

The group, which consists of 12 Crabapple residents and business representatives, is to help create a form-based zoning overlay district as well as to help incorporate regulations for transfer of development rights in Crabapple.

Four Milton staffers, two consultants from project partner Tunnell-Sprangler-Walsh & Associates and a planner from the Atlanta Regional Commission are also part of the committee.

The groups second meeting was held on Jan. 19 at Milton City Hall and according to the Milton Community Development Director Kathleen Field, the purpose of the meeting was for the group to learn more about Transfer Development Rights.

Travis Allen, a stakeholder committee member who is also chair of the Historic Preservation Commission, confirms that.

“The gentleman who gave the presentation, Rick Pruetz, has written a book on TDR's and gave a good presentation,” reports Allen.

Allen admits that the subject matter can be difficult to comprehend.

“Several people arrived late or left early so this may have some implications down the road as they may have missed some key parts of the presentation. If others are like me, then they probably find this whole business of TDR's quite confusing so far,” Allen continued.

Information given to the group at last week’s meeting explains Transfer of Development Rights as “intended to reduce or eliminate development potential in places that should be preserved by increasing development potential in places where growth is wanted.”

Most Transfer Development Right programs involve several parts, which were explained as follows,

“The places that a community identifies for preservation through TDR are called sending sites. The owners of sending sites can choose to record a perpetual easement on their land in return for a marketable commodity called transferable development rights (TDRs). Participating landowners are compensated by selling these TDRs to developers in TDR receiving areas, places that are appropriate for growth. Receiving-area zoning allows some development without TDR obligations, but offers additional development potential when developers buy TDRs.”

Kathleen Fields says that in the next meeting committee members will begin looking at plans and “start identifying receiving areas where transfer rights could be.”

When asked whether or not planning was staying true to Lew Oliver’s original proposed vision for Crabapple, Allen says that most in the group seem to like the plan.

“I'm happy to see that all potentially historic buildings are accounted for in the plan and I like the "old-time downtown" or "Mayberry" feel he presented in his illustrations.”

Field says, “The idea is to implement that plan by creating a new zoning overlay that will have a lot of mixed use in it.”

Allen says that while there has not yet been much discussion on implementation everyone seems to share the same goal of making Crabapple a better by reducing and slowing traffic, among other things.

“Several folks, including myself, would like to see something similar to Canton Street in Old Roswell using the potentially historic buildings that we have and a good base of restaurants. We need to make the area more pedestrian friendly,” says Allen.

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“I think we certainly don't want too many chain stores in the area, several suggested they didn't think anyplace with a drive-thru would be a good fit. There may be some ways to include those types of places using form based coding," he said. "I'll use downtown Boston as an example where both a McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts are in a building that has appearances appropriate to the area, and neither has a drive-thru.

The process is expected to be complete in June of this year and Field is confident that the group will meet that deadline. At the end of this process, Milton City Council will vote on adopting the resulting zoning code regulations.

A community zoning information meeting will be held at at 7 p.m. on Feb. 29 and is open to the public.

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