Only a month into cityhood, Peachtree Corners finds itself pitted in a border fight with neighboring town Berkeley Lake over city limits and tens of thousands of dollars in tax revenue.
Peachtree Corners leaders were angered after Berkeley Lake city council members unanimously approved Thursday the annexations of about 70 properties -- 55 of them commercial -- that would have fallen inside the new municipality's city limits.
Supporters of Peachtree Corners argue that once voters approved incorporation on Nov. 8, any attempted annexation of its properties were "unlawful."
"Our position is that we're already a city," said Mark Middleton, a Peachtree Corners resident and legal adviser for city leaders. "Our boundaries have been set."
Berkeley Lake officials countered that the annexations are legal because Peachtree Corners doesn't officially become a city until it begins operations on July 1.
"The Nov. 8 election simply began the process," Berkeley Lake Mayor Lois Salter said. Peachtree Corners "can not take any action -- as a city -- between Nov. 8 and March 6," when voters there choose six members of the new city council.
Former United Peachtree Corners Civic Association President Mike Mason will serve the city's inaugural four-year term as mayor after no other candidates emerged to challenge him for the seat.
But no matter when it officially becomes a city, Peachtree Corners will loom large in Gwinnett County. Peachtree Corners is poised to become the biggest of the county's 16 municipalities with an estimated 38,000 residents in an area between Norcross and Berkeley Lake.
That area -- and the size of it -- is part of the simmering feud between the municipalities in west Gwinnett.
With Peachtree Corners' boundaries poised to limit their potential growth, Berkeley Lake, Duluth and Norcross have all moved to annex properties over the past few months to expand their borders and add more commercial tax revenue streams.
That's particularly important in Berkeley Lake, one of Gwinnett's smallest cities at little more than one square mile and 2,100 residents.
Berkeley Lake mostly targeted commercial properties between North Berkeley Lake Road and South Old Peachtree Road along Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Buford Highway. Among the properties included in the annexation are several shopping plazas, including one named The Shops at Berkeley Lake, a couple of county parks and a handful of banks.
"It's very significant to us as a very small city," Salter said.
Salter noted that many of the property owners approached the city about annexation and that Peachtree Corners supporters knew for months that Berkeley Lake was looking into properties inside their proposed boundaries.
"We've been very clear with them all the way through," she said. "The idea that this is a surprise attack is truly wrong."
But Peachtree Corners leaders, who forwarded all requests for public comment to Middleton, said they were prepared to take the issue to court.
"It remains to be seen what legal consequences are going to be for Berkeley Lake for what we think they’re doing," Middleton said, "which is breaking the law."
Gwinnett spokesman Joe Sorenson said the county had no position on the dispute and didn't have plans to intercede.
"The county really doesn't have a say in annexation," he said.
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