What is going to happen to the 16 acre lot at 4000 Dunwoody Park Drive is unclear. What Dunwoody officials are sure about is what won’t be built there.
“It was supposed to be 280 townhomes,” City Manager Warren Hutmacher said. “We know that won’t be happening, and we’re happy about that.”
Residents such as Bobbi Sedam are happy, too, and hope the land becomes a new city park. She said the land is a smart purchase, like that of Central Park in New York. She said that effort required the city of New York to displace several families, but the city had a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the park.
“If the city doesn’t buy this land now, they won’t likely get another shot at it,” she said of the land in Dunwoody.
In February, the City Council voted unanimously to put the property under contract for $5 million, according to city records. An adjacent 10-acre plot carries a $10 million value, excluding the buildings, for the 2011 tax year, according to county records.
Hutmacher said the city hoped to close the sale earlier this year, but document issues on the property, between the bank and the former owner, Dunwoody Park Development, have slowed the process.
Known to many in and around Dunwoody as the “PVC Farm,” the partially developed property was to complement about 400 apartments that were built on adjacent land a few years ago. Developers clear-cut the land and installed some infrastructure, but the roads and PVC pipes sticking out of the ground are as far as the townhomes got before the project came to a halt.
Bordered by Chamblee Dunwoody and North Shallowford roads, the land is a “unique buy” in the city, said Greg Green, a real estate agent with the Norton Agency.
“It is the biggest area I know of in the city,” he said. “And that kind of land isn’t available in Dunwoody every day.”
Green said the land has likely been on the wish lists of many developers for the past couple of years. He said Wells Fargo foreclosed on the land about two years ago and it has been dormant ever since.
Hutmacher said there is no firm plan for what the city will do with the land. He called it a “defensive purchase” to keep more high-density housing out of Dunwoody.
“It may make good parkland, but it could be good for something else,” he said of the acreage. “We’re not looking to buy land just to buy it, but approximately 90 percent of Dunwoody is developed and we felt like this was a good purchase for the city.”
Hutmacher said the city will look for other opportunities as they arise, but there is no rush to buy additional land. “The purchase,” he said, “has to make sense for the city.”
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