As 1990 came to a close, a group of insistent developers huddled around Gene Hobgood, urging him to approve zoning for a subdivision the size of a small city on the banks of the bucolic Etowah River.
Hobgood was in his last days as Cherokee County’s one-man commission, and the owners of the 1,385-acre tract figured that winning a 1-0 vote would be easier than garnering a 3-2 tally with the incoming commissioners, a group said to be wary of unbridled growth. Cherokee was then in the throes of a headlong building orgy that put it in the top 25 of the nation’s fastest growing counties.
Hobgood’s approval meant that as many as 2,800 homes would be built and 7,000 new residents would call north Cherokee County home.
It was pure Atlanta: audacious (some said outrageous) and, as luck would have it, doomed to languish, un-built, for nearly a quarter century. But not forever.
In recent months, The Etowah River Project, as it is locally known, has lurched back to life like a developmental Lazarus — proof, for anyone who doubts it, that Building Stuff (and on a Grand Scale) is immutably in the region’s DNA, and not even the Bust of Busts can quench that urge over the long haul.
Today, a generation after Hobgood approved the project, Cherokee has 220,000 residents, and the Etowah River Project is back under the mantle of the same Alabama family it started with 23 years ago. In the interim, it has gone through several incarnations and owners, but the family bought back their acreage in 2009 for pennies on the dollar when a national builder walked away from it.
“I was surprised it didn’t take off,” Hobgood, who is now mayor of Canton, recalled recently.
“Maybe it was ahead of its time,” said Commissioner Harry Johnston, who was elected in 2000. “It remains to be seen if it will work out this time.”
Like a song from Vanilla Ice, who was white-hot when this development was approved, the arguments now raging feel like a blast from the past.
“Some people think it’s great, that it will allow further development that was just not possible in the past,” said Johnston. “Others think its just too big. The two sides that have always battled in Cherokee County are battling over this. This is the first big development issue to come up since the collapse.”
Developers’ plans in metro Atlanta have often been grandiose. One estimate in the last decade said the Etowah project would bring in $675 million in construction spending and $6.7 million in taxes. But the metro area is also littered with the hubris of developers — failed subdivisions (a.k.a. “PVC farms”) that molder silently throughout the region.
Patrick Clark, who is heading up the Etowah development, said the uniqueness of the project, with 2.5 miles of river frontage, a 150-acre river walk and a lush, rolling landscape, will make it “a destination project,” one with “enormous potential to stand out in Atlanta.” Importantly, it already has existing zoning.
The plan calls for homes for “active adults,” for pre-seniors and young families with kids wanting space. The project has been tweaked through the years. The 2,800-home version was trimmed to one with 1,800 homes and a golf course. Later, the planned golf course got un-planned. Now Clark wants to (again) “move some of the pieces around.”
The county and Clark are haggling out “the mix” — the number of large “estate homes” vs. the number of more modest dwellings, built on smaller lots, potentially as attached units. Clark wants 700 of the smaller variety; the county wants just 350. The commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the matter at its next meeting, Sept. 3.
Clark said building homes more closely together adds more green space, making for better “environmental stewardship.”
Nonsense, said Linda Flory, a community activist who lives nearby. “These changes mean they are trying to make it cheaper to build,” she said. “The area residents don’t want it. I don’t see how it’s going to sell. People move out here for the land. There’s nothing out here. That’s why people are out here.”
She said people in her own subdivision rallied against erecting streetlights. “We like it dark. We like to see the stars,” Flory said. “We’re not going to make it easy for them to get it built.”
One evening last week at “rush hour,” an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter sat on Creighton Road, the southern border of the planned complex, and counted cars. There were four in 15 minutes.
Billy Ray, a lifelong resident, drove up in his red pickup and stopped by to see Edward Parker, who lives in a clapboard home with a tin roof that his granddad built 100 years ago. The two reminisced on mule farming, dirt roads and finding moonshine stills in the river property that one day may house well-to-do “active adults” in semi-detached luxury townhomes.
“It’s a crying shame they’re going to come in and change the way of life we have,” said Ray.
Parker, a heavy machine operator who spent years digging foundations for homes being built in Forsyth, Fulton and Cherokee counties, nodded in agreement. “It’s pretty property back there,” he said. “Too bad.”
Clark said nothing will happen overnight. Given permitting requirements, building could hardly start before early 2015. If then.
But even if more delays ensue, this is Atlanta. Said Clark: “There will definitely be something there in the next 23 years.”
