Peachtree City: Voters say no to growth

By Jill Howard Church

It just may be that Peachtree City’s new mayor-elect, Don Haddix, will be greeted more warmly than Santa Claus this year, given his victory margin and the mandate that seems to come with it. Haddix won handily over Cyndi Plunkett, his rival from the City Council who outspent him six to one.

He will soon preside over a City Council that will have three new members and be expected to fulfill his promise to reverse the previous administration’s collision course with congestion.

Haddix and Plunkett squared off in a stark battle of ideologies of what Peachtree City should look like, physically and figuratively.

Plunkett usually sided with outgoing Mayor Harold Logsdon and former council member Steve Boone on key votes that favored commercial developers and bent regulations to allow new roads, new traffic lights and more and bigger shopping centers in areas already over capacity for both retail and traffic.

Haddix was supported by traditionalists who feel the city has deteriorated from its original low-density village concept and is losing its unique quality of life.

Based on the opinions I’ve seen and heard in print, online and in line at the supermarket, many folks are getting hotter than a golf cart battery going uphill in August.

The most common complaint I hear is that “Peachtree City doesn’t look like Peachtree City anymore,” at least not the town many of us chose to live in precisely because it didn’t resemble Fayetteville or Newnan. Lately it’s been harder to tell.

It defies logic and practicality for the mayor and council to enable construction of new shopping centers when so many of the existing ones are desperate for tenants.

Half of Braelinn Village Shopping Center’s 30 units are empty, and only one store out of eight remains open in the Park Place strip despite its prime location next to The Avenue.

The gaping hole left by the “baby Kroger” in the Peachtree Crossing center is now the focus of a petition drive to urge Fresh Market to move in before a lack of patrons forces the smaller stores to move out.

The new shopping center opposite Home Depot is not even half full, nor are other office and retail units in the center of town.

And yet, another 176,000-square-foot retail and office complex is planned opposite Wilshire Pavilion (which is no longer full either).

The election outcome is also significant because the City Council chooses the members of the Development Authority of Peachtree City, which works to attract and retain local businesses.

The DAPC is already exploring new partnerships and promoting incentives for incoming businesses, but it will require aggressively innovative measures to fill the empty stores.

The economy is of course to blame for some of the vacancy signs on local buildings. But the voters of Peachtree City seem to be saying that the “For Sale” sign needs to be removed from City Hall.

Jill Howard Church, a freelance writer, has lived in Fayette County since 1994.