A townhouse developer wants property annexed into the city of Atlanta, saying it creates the best option to create affordable units. But DeKalb County is challenging the proposal as an unnecessary land grab that ignores the problems that annexations can create.
It all started when Edward Andrews Homes, also known as EA Homes, drew up plans to raze a church and small apartment building in order to build 89 townhomes south of Kirkwood. DeKalb zoning laws won’t allow more than 47 units on these 3.5 acres located at 2011 and 2015 Memorial Drive Southeast.
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The two properties are in a pocket of unincorporated DeKalb County that is surrounded to the north, east and west by the city of Atlanta. If the lots are annexed into Atlanta, they would create a peninsula-within-a-peninsula surrounded on three sides by unincorporated DeKalb.
That won’t work, DeKalb officials said, and the county commission voted last month to make a formal objection to the annexation.
A letter from County Attorney Viviane Ernstes to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms spelled out their concerns. The increased density from 89 townhouses would put increased demands on the county’s infrastructure, like adding traffic on surrounding roads that would remain in DeKalb County.
The county also said Atlanta would need to iron out an agreement with the county about how other services would be delivered to these townhomes, such as water and sewer hookups and calls for fire rescue.
The DeKalb school system, which sued Atlanta over how it handled the annexation of Emory University, also had not been consulted, Ernstes' letter said.
“In sum, the proposed annexation will pose significantly harmful, direct and material impacts on the area in question by virtue of proposed changes in zoning and land use, proposed increases in density and the resulting infrastructure demands,” she wrote.
With DeKalb making a formal objection, the annexation is currently on hold. Lawyers from the county and the city are currently in negotiations in hopes of ironing out an agreement. If that doesn’t happen, an arbitration hearing will be scheduled.
The owners of the two properties in question, Stanton Grove Missionary Baptist Church and McMurty Bros. LLC, have already signed off on the annexation plan which made it eligible for the Atlanta City Council’s consideration.
Steve Rothman said EA Homes is already in the process of clearing land across the street to build a sister property on the side of Memorial Drive that is already in Atlanta. The city’s zoning laws make it easier to set aside affordable units even as home prices continue to rise within in-town neighborhoods, he said.
“Atlanta’s regulatory scheme makes it easier for EA Homes to finance below-market units,” Rothman said. “For the same-sized site, building and land use intensity, in DeKalb you get less but larger units; in Atlanta you can have more but smaller units.”
The company is now trying to convince DeKalb officials that its plan would serve the surrounding neighborhoods best, even if it means allowing land to be annexed into Atlanta.
“We just hope DeKalb will consider our proposal with an open mind, engage in an evaluation of the goals of the neighborhoods in the area and measure the proposal against their own sense of the public interest,” Rothman said. “At the very least, we hope they will allow us to go through a consensus-building process with the community, the city and the county to see if there is a development proposal that is worthy of their support.”
DeKalb County Commissioner Kathie Gannon, whose district includes the properties in question, faulted EA Homes for filing an annexation application in Atlanta without coming to the county first. She described it as “zoning shopping.”
“It was this idea of just sort of segregating out an island of a weird-shaped property that they never ever came and even asked us about the zoning (or) talked to us about what they wanted to do,” Gannon said. “We have a history of working with developers along that corridor to achieve a vision.”
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