The right to self-government is a precious principle we celebrate this weekend. Whether our dwelling is urban suburban or rural, the place we call home is enhanced by those willing to craft community soul, then willing to fight to keep it alive.
Such commitment was on display recently in Milton, where resurgent growth brings renewed pressure from developers seeking few remaining large tracts of land around horse pasture and forested hills. The response among activists fearing for the city’s vanishing rural vision has for the first time fragmented.
The latest battle was over a large parcel of over 60 acres on Ebenezer Road where Milton borders Roswell. It’s one of the last large properties of natural woodland left in North Fulton.
Horse farmers, estate owners and conservationists – historically unified since the city’s founding in 2006 – took opposite sides about how to confront the threat. It came down to zoning, and whether allowing a change would work to save Milton’s soul.
Original Milton founders who crafted its equestrian image agreed that agricultural, or AG-1, zoning, which keeps lots at a one-acre minimum, was the best approach to discouraging future density and maintaining open vistas.
Yet some subdivisions still saw builders clear-cut forest to squeeze in homes at the expense of natural beauty. That caused a subset of preservation-minded residents to seek zoning alternatives.
These preservationists believed granting much smaller lots sizes to builders willing to set aside large chunks of land in conservation was the only way to preserve land, even if it may mean homes would be closer together. Others claimed developers would build cookie-cutter homes that would ruin the landscape, and that the land they’d set aside may be unbuildable anyway.
These differing approaches to conservation were challenged by a developer’s recent proposal: to build 48-50 large homes on quarter-acre lots on part of the 64-acres on Ebenezer Road. In exchange for smaller lots, 35 acres would be conserved.
The proposal required a zoning change which set off a firestorm.
People I’ve come to respect over the years picked sides. They wrote logical editorials, stinging blogs and hit hard on social media with pleas to the public to sign petitions and either “Preserve Rural Milton” by supporting the developer, or “Stop Cluster Homes” by standing up against the zoning change.After two six-hour, past-midnight Milton City Council sessions with hundreds in attendance, the proposal was ultimately denied 4-2 by a visibly fatigued city council.
I’m not sure whether this was a victory, because development pressure will continue. Hopefully some will see, however, that its apparent Milton’s soul isn’t just a result of its lovely landscape, but the spirit of the people who live there.
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