Despite Tuesday’s failure of LaVista Hills’ cityhood movement, Avondale Estates will still submit a new annexation plan to the 2016 legislature. The city displayed a revised draft of an annexation map during a special commission work session Wednesday.
The new map is scaled down significantly from the original Avondale submitted last year, a map eventually dying in the senate with all commercial property excised. The new map includes only one major commercial district, the Rio Circle collective north of the city, and a smaller commercial center in the southwest anchored by Sherwin Williams.
It also includes less residential, including the neighborhoods south of Rockbridge Road and including the old Avondale Middle School, the old Avondale High School property and the American Legion property east of the city.
During a special-called meeting commissioners approved contracting with the Carl Vinson Institute for two feasibility studies, one of the old map (sans commercial property) and one of the new draft. The cost is between $9,000 and $13,000. The city wants two studies to prove, Mayor Jonathan Elmore said, that annexation won’t work without more commercial revenue. Currently the city’s commercial tax digest is roughly 10 percent.
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