When Thaea Lloyd moved to Sandy Springs, the Perimeter Mall area still had cows, Ga. 400 didn't exist, and traffic was predictable.

The commute went in two directions —- into downtown Atlanta in the morning, back home at dusk.

Thirty years later, Lloyd still lives in the same comfortable brick home. But the neighborhood has changed.

Perimeter is now job central, drawing more than 130,000 commuters a day. The iconic King and Queen office towers overlook the 1950s-era neighborhood.

And cut-through traffic has become so persistent that Lloyd has to finish her errands and be back in the driveway by 3 p.m. "Now we have a relatively new phenomenon of people going out to lunch," she said. "So there's now a lunch commute, too."

Multiply her frustration by 400 other households, and it becomes clear why the Glenridge-Hammond neighborhood fought so hard this year to block a large office project that would have added several thousand more cars to the roads.

It's an argument that reached government ears. In a rare move, the Sandy Springs City Council last month scuttled a plan to remake the 1960s-era Lakeside office park, on the northwest corner of the Perimeter.

Council members cited, among other things, the volumes of e-mails they received from angry neighbors.

The neighborhoods in Sandy Springs are pushing back, as are many in Atlanta who feel threatened by development.

"It's acute in Sandy Springs," said Councilman Rusty Paul. "The neighborhoods feel like they're under assault. These neighborhoods no longer live in suburban Atlanta. They live in downtown communities. The [Perimeter] area has more high-rise office space than Birmingham, a major city in the South. You've literally got neighborhoods now that are on the front lines of a downtown."

At Lakeside, the project developer, Greenstone Properties, wanted to tear down two of the five existing office buildings, replacing them with a pair of 16-story towers. The plan also included 300 apartments, 50,000 square feet of retail and an eight-story hotel.

With help from financial partner Met Life, the company had purchased the 27-acre site in May 2007 for $62 million, said Greenstone President De Little. Greenstone anticipated traffic would be the challenge and had proposed several road improvements to ease the expected increase of 10,000 cars daily on Glenridge Drive.

The road, its only access point, already has 21,000 cars a day.

The plan won a recommendation from city staff.

Council members, who voted 3-2 to reject the project, weren't swayed. Councilman Tibby DeJulio, who represents part of the Glenridge-Hammond neighborhood, called the proposed increase in traffic "unconscionable."

Reached Wednesday, Little said Greenstone is taking stock of the decision. "We're evaluating our options," he said.

In Sandy Springs, developers whose rezonings are rejected have to wait at least six months before presenting an alternative plan. The city cannot vote on it for another year.

For that reason, DeJulio said, the city tries to work with developers in crafting proposals that will satisfy city and neighborhood concerns.

"The job of the council is to do what's in the best interest of the city," he said. "In this case, it was such an extreme case of so much traffic at one intersection."

Neighbors who fought the project took heart in the council's decision. For months, the Sandy Springs Council of Neighborhoods, a coalition of condo and single-family homeowners, had lobbied council members about the traffic impact.

Doug Falciglia, a 20-year resident of the Glenridge-Hammond neighborhood, said the proposal was just too much for the location. Over the years, he's become frustrated at intrusions into what was once a residential enclave by cut-through traffic and by new housing that often strips the landscape of mature trees and overpowers the original homes.

Falciglia can see the King and Queen buildings at nearby Concourse from his yard. He said neighbors want to retain what they have.

Last year, Lloyd and her husband looked into moving elsewhere in Sandy Springs but eventually decided to stay put, in a home they love.

"I really came to realize, that what we have here is worth fighting for," she said.