A proposed zoning change to 15 acres just south of county-owned DeKalb-Peachtree Airport has revived tensions with some residents who live in the shadow of the state’s second busiest airport.
The DeKalb County Commission is expected to move quickly in deciding the rezoning issue. By summer, most nearby residents could wind up in a new city of Brookhaven if a vote on that passes, and the airport itself — and the land up for rezoning — could be annexed by Chamblee and come under that city’s zoning control.
“This is, in effect, the last time that residents and the airport will answer to the same government,” Airport Director Mike Van Wie said.
Officials said the county could more easily sell the land — just off Clairmont Road and recently appraised at $3.5 million — if the zoning is changed from residential to allow for light industrial or office use. Proceeds would go toward airport improvement projects such as fixing runways or drainage improvements.
Some residents worry, though, that the zoning change would allow development that strips them of one of the last tree-heavy buffers around runways that handle more than 400 flights daily.
“That land helps protect surrounding neighborhoods from airport noise,” said Larry Foster, a spokesman for the activist group PDK Watch. “Keeping it as a green-space buffer is a compatible airport use. The county does not have to sell.”
County officials argue they are obligated to sell because DeKalb used Federal Aviation Administration money to help pay for the land a decade ago, with the goal of turning what was then homes into “airport compatible” businesses.
Some of the land skirting the 765-acre airfield already has been converted to commercial use. Rows of low-slung commercial buildings and warehouses, for instance, line Chamblee-Tucker Road to the north, where an entire neighborhood once existed.
The Ashford Park Civic Association, the largest neighborhood group near the airport, signed off on county plans to do the same with the land on Clairmont Road.
The civic group could have less influence over airport rezoning issues in the future. The pending cityhood movement for Brookhaven would put all Ashford Park residents into that city, while the airport and the land up for rezoning could become part of Chamblee if residents there approve an extension of the city’s borders in a separate annexation vote. Both of those votes are expected to come later this year.
“Right now, the land is just sitting there, collecting tires, collecting homeless vagrants and all sorts of trash dumping,” Van Wie said. “I would think residents would see this as an opportunity to have that changed into a development they have some input over.”
The county has scheduled a meeting for April 23 to assemble a list of potential businesses and uses that residents approve.
Still, development of the land is considered likely. DeKalb needs the revenue from new projects after its tax base plunged 17 percent in just two years.
That’s also driving a $5.6 million plan to build hangars to house 63 more planes at PDK, a project separate from the zoning change that nonetheless has some residents worried about increases in noise and jet emissions.
Capacity for more planes would generate more lease payments and fuel fees for the airport. DeKalb could get up to $500,000 a year in property taxes on planes in the new hangars, slated to be constructed by year’s end. The county also receives a share of sales taxes on all fuel sales.
“New hangars and new development would potentially generate some taxes that would ultimately reduce the burden on our residents,” County Commissioner Jeff Rader said.
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