Boom goes bust in Atlanta's exurbs

Jefferson — The boom died here.

Fifty miles northeast of Atlanta, the housing-fueled growth that epitomizes the region comes to an abrupt halt in a weed-choked lot just south of Jefferson. It's supposed to be a shopping center.

“Everybody was making a lot of money, and there seemed to be an endless appetite for everything we were doing,” said developer and banker John Buchanan, who has built more than a dozen subdivisions in Jackson County. “But then the recession came along and brought everybody to their knees.”

The downturn all but killed residential development -- the economic lifeblood -- across Atlanta’s northern exurbs, including Barrow, Bartow, Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall and Jackson counties.

These counties notched some of the highest growth rates in the nation as recently as 2008. Acres of farmland, easily accessible via Interstates 75, 85, 575 and 985, were cleared daily for development. Property tax revenue poured into these counties.

The recession, which started 33 months ago, halted Atlanta’s northward surge. Jackson County, for example, tallies 5,857 residential lots with building permits but no buildings. Foreclosures and bankruptcies have mounted. Tax revenue has plummeted.

Counties across the region, in the process of updating long-range development plans, are rethinking their futures. Planners and politicians vow to better balance growth by restricting housing districts, emphasizing industry, better connecting roads and adding green space.

“We used to be referred to everywhere as a bedroom community where people live and sleep but don’t work,” Barrow County Commission Chairman Danny Yearwood said. “But that’s not our future anymore. We have to find some way to lure business here.”

After filling up Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties with homes, stores and traffic, developers turned bulldozers loose farther north on cheaper land. A doubling of population by 2030 was predicted for these northern exurbs.

County officials welcomed developers with new roads, water and sewer lines, and rezoned land.

Bargain-hunting homeowners headed north. Their jobs, though, remained closer to Atlanta. Ninety-minute commutes ensued.

County planners said they were overwhelmed by the volume of rezoning requests.

In 2006, Cherokee County issued 1,884 residential building permits. Through June of this year, the county has approved 35 permits.

More than 38,000 home lots, with curbs and gutters already in place, sit vacant across the six-county swath of exurban Atlanta, according to Metrostudy, a real estate research firm.

Counties such as Cherokee, whose populations zoomed upward of 5 percent a year, grew by only 2 percent last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A doubling of the exurban population by 2030 now seems unlikely, said Eugene James, who heads up Metrostudy’s Atlanta office.

“People used to drive farther out to get to a price they could afford, but now that all prices have been reset downward, people don’t have to drive out that far anymore to find a home they like,” he said. “So you’ll see the counties closest in, near Interstate 285 or closer to the employment centers, with the most growth over the next five years.”

Ga. 124, running east from Braselton, provides a post-recessionary portrait of Jackson County. On one end, a new Publix grocery -- the county’s first -- anchors a shopping center serving nearby subdivisions.

Further east, weedy lots surround the occasional home in the Heritage Point subdivision. “PVC farms,” where only water and sewer pipes sprout from the ground, abound farther along Ga. 124.

“The economy, bank failures, foreclosures -- everything everybody has been experiencing in the Southeast -- hit us harder than most,” said Gina Mitsdarffer, the public development director of Jackson County. “For the sake of our government, we had to shrink the sprawl. The recession has given us a breather to really regroup.”

All counties, by law, must update their long-range plans every decade. Atlanta’s exurban counties vow that they’ve learned the lessons of breakneck growth and that their updated plans will better manage development.

Jackson County’s updated plan for 2030, approved by commissioners Aug. 16, cuts in half the area where future residential developments should go and doubles land set aside for agricultural preservation. New subdivisions must adjoin existing water, sewer and road systems.

Specific districts are set aside for parks and greenways. And Jackson’s planning ordinance has teeth: Developers must get the land-use map amended before they can apply to rezone property dedicated for agricultural preservation.

Barrow, like Forsyth and Jackson counties, is using the recession to diversify its economic base. Yearwood, the County Commission chairman, says the county is investing $10 million to ready “industrial corridors” along Ga. 53, Ga. 211 and Bankhead Highway.

In Cumming, during a recent rezoning hearing, attorney George Butler bellowed: “Residential is dead for the future of Forsyth County. Industrial is the future.”

Butler represents a company keen to turn a residential tract in the county’s north end into an industrial site for a recycling operation.

Cherokee’s updated plan “includes completely rewriting zoning ordinances and development regulations,” said Margaret Stallings, the county’s principal planner.

“We’re trying to figure out how to set up regulations so that areas that developed as suburban look suburban and areas that are rural look rural,” she said.

Cherokee, like other exurban counties, is creating an “opportunity zone” with state tax incentives near Acworth to boost industrial growth. The county also reversed itself 18 months ago and decided to build a two-story terminal at the airport to entice corporate business.

“When the recession turns and you come into metro Atlanta on your corporate jet and see we’ve got an airport, you might decide to relocate your business here,” County Commission Chairman Buzz Ahrens said.

Ahrens, though, says growth could explode again once the economy rebounds, the population booms and developers lure homeowners farther from Atlanta. Most updated county plans aren’t as stringent as Jackson’s. A tax-generating subdivision might again prove hard to turn down.

Besides, property owners don’t cotton to restrictions on how they can use, or sell, their land.

“People up here are not opposed to planning and zoning,” said Mary Helen McGruder, a former Forsyth County planning commissioner. “But they are opposed to it if it’s not done fairly. And it’s not fair to put a moratorium on commercial development.”

Mitsdarffer is cautiously optimistic that property owners, developers and planners can peacefully co-exist in Jackson County.

“Growth will continue to come -- it’s inevitable,” she said. “However, the recession gave us time to regroup and better plan for the future. I think we got it right this time.”

After the boom

Single-family residential building permits issued in unincorporated areas of counties:

2006 2010

Barrow 915 32 (through mid-August)

Bartow 745 56 (through Aug. 26)

Cherokee 1,884 35 (through June)

Forsyth 4,742 630 (through June)

Hall 1,333 115 (through July)