The Alpharetta Methodist Christian Academy is proposing to build a new school on a 22 acre pasture just south of Bethany Bend on Hopewell Road in Milton. This school will be a five-building 63,400 square foot complex according to the application, equivalent in square footage to the current King’s Ridge building at Bethany Bend and Cogburn Road. The Use Permit for the school indicates that there will be up to 325 students, not counting faculty and staff. The main administration building is being modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
I am an immediately adjacent property owner to the property upon which this proposed school will be built. I first learned of the application on January 12th, and by then there had already been a Community Zoning Information Meeting (“CZIM”) and a Design Review Board meeting. The application was on track for a review by the City’s Planning Commission on January 22nd, with a staff recommendation of conditional approval for the Use Permit with denial of four variances made in conjunction with the application.
As I began researching how this could have moved so far along the approval process without me or any of my neighbors knowing about it, I uncovered several flaws in the public participation and notification processes for this application. Letters were sent out from the City’s Community Development office to nearby property owners informing them of a January 22nd Planning Commission meeting to discuss a 47 unit town house development on the east side of Highway 9 off of Bethany Bend, some three and a half miles from where the proposed school will be built. I received this letter in early January, and concluded it was a new year and perhaps a new initiative by the City to inform residents about new development applications. I found out later that many of my neighbors received this same erroneous letter about the proposed town house development. It wasn’t until I called the Community Development office on January 14th that my neighbors and I finally received the correct notice about the school’s application, and that January 22nd Planning Commission meeting was now showing as scheduled for January 29th.
Another serious error was found in the Planning Commission agenda documents on the City’s website, which mentioned that a public notice ad for this application was included in the January 9th edition of the Milton Herald. It was not. I wrote a letter to City Council and staff asking that this application be terminated and the application process be restarted due to these errors. The City’s attorney responded that there was “…full or excessive compliance with all notice requirements…”, and that the public notice ad had been published in the January 16th edition of the Milton Herald. It was not. It was finally published in the January 23rd edition of the Milton Herald, which was the first publication date of the newspaper after my January 18th letter to City Council. So had I not pointed out the errors surrounding the public notice ad and the public notice letter to the City, this application would likely have proceeded through the City’s Planning Commission and on its way to a final vote before City Council without the knowledge of or without any input from any of the immediately adjacent property owners surrounding this proposed school.
I have also learned that none of my nearby neighbors have received any contact from the applicant, Mr. J.T. Adams, about this proposed school. There are a few who have taken the initiative to contact him, but none who have been initially contacted by him that I have found. The Planning Commission agenda documents I mentioned earlier indicate that 44 individuals attended the January 2nd CZIM meeting, seeming to reflect that a good number of concerned residents knew about this meeting and wanted to learn more about the application. However, given that virtually none of the nearby property owners I have contacted even knew about this meeting, one could reasonably conclude that many of those attending this CZIM were associated in some manner with the applicant, either as school staff, faculty or parents of students attending the school, all of whom could have been informed of this meeting outside of the public notification process. Therefore, the Planning Commission Agenda documents give the false impression that there are no public concerns about this proposed development, when in fact there are many.
Aside from the concerns about why there have been so many flaws in the public participation process with this application, there are many other issues that still need to be understood. There are four variances associated with the application that City staff is recommending for denial. These deal with the location of the structures on the site (two variances), encroachment of the septic system into the property’s north end buffer, and location of parking facing Hopewell Road. These variance denial recommendations are being driven in large measure by the Northwest Fulton Overlay, which places certain restrictions on various aspects of development in Milton. Beyond the variance issues, there are issues with the placement of required left and right turn lanes along Hopewell Road. There are issues with how carpool traffic will be managed. There are potential environmental issues, one relating to a stream that diagonally traverses the property and that disappears on the applicant’s site map, and another relating to the impact a septic tank of the size needed for this project might have on nearby Cooper Sandy Lake. There are issues with the small size of the proposed parking lot, which is well below that needed for a building of this proposed size, and of the location of the parking lot on the property. There are issues with how parking will be handled when there are large school-related events, and the impact this might have on subdivisions along Hopewell Road where those attending may try to park. There are issues with outdoor recreational facilities and where they will be situated on the property. There are issues with the adverse impact approval of this application might have on property values of nearby residences and horse farms. There are issues with this proposed school being directly adjacent to a number of existing residences – in comparison, King’s Ridge is essentially surrounded by NorthPark. Also, aside from the private nine-student Chandler Academy school, which is immediately to the south of this proposed school, there is nothing other than residential and equestrian properties for some distance in every direction surrounding the property in question. This school will be far and away the largest non-residential, non-equestrian structure along the entire length of Hopewell Road in Milton, and incompatible with all other surrounding structures. It is simply not within the character of the equestrian and residential nature of the immediate area for which it is being proposed.
But perhaps the biggest concern with this application is apathy — apathy on the part of many of our fellow Milton neighbors. On January 19th, I distributed 400 flyers to neighborhoods along Hopewell Road that will be impacted by this proposed school. I have heard from 50 or so families, all of whom expressed their concerns with a school of this size being allowed to be built in this location. But that leaves 350 who didn’t feel the need to become involved in any manner. Perhaps some didn’t reply to me, but will be at the Planning Commission and City Council meetings to express their concerns. But far too many probably presume that someone else will be fighting the fight and there is no need for their input. And therein lays the biggest concern with this application. The proposal to build this private school amongst our neighborhoods and farms should be a wake-up call to us all that we need to shed our complacency and actively join in the fight to preserve Milton. The decision regarding this particular application could very well establish a precedent that will open the door to more of this type of development within our City, if we allow it. To expect someone else to deal with these types of issues for us is naïve and is eventually going to cost us the tranquility and lack of density that drew us to this area. As Milton residents, we are going to have to actively become engaged in the process of defending our neighborhoods from the seemingly unstoppable encroachment of yet more development, development that we have paid a premium to get away from that is happening in other areas of Atlanta. Milton is “Central Park,” a tranquil island surrounded by the explosive, runaway development of Cherokee, Forsyth, Alpharetta and Roswell. Central Park did not happen by accident.
Neither myself nor anyone I have spoken to or communicated with about this application are opposed to this school. We are opposed to a school of this size in this location. I encourage all of you to attend the February 26th Planning Commission meeting and the March 17th City Council meeting to let our voices be heard in unison that we do not want this type of development in the residential/equestrian core of Milton. The members of our City Council want to hear our passion and resolve about stopping development that threatens our community. Let’s let them hear it loud and clear.
- Greg Jones; Milton
