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Manor houses OK'd for Canton Street
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The Alpharetta City Council approved 30 townhouses and manor homes on a 4-acre spot Oct. 26, which could get boarded up and abandoned houses along Canton Street removed in the bargain.
Canton Street Commons, as the project is called, is actually a downsizing of the housing density the property already had. It is a sign of the economic times that the lower density proposed by the owner, Peachtree Residential Properties, would sell faster and get the property off the company's books.
The homes fronting Canton Street will be Georgian townhouses that conform to the 2003 Alpharetta Downtown Master Plan, which allows higher density residential development to serve and patronize the downtown
businesses.
Peachtree Properties Representative Alec Rickenbaker said he could not remember ever requesting lower density for a project, but this time he did.
Reducing the number of homes from around 40 to 30 was a matter of market forces. His company has built in Alpharetta before, including Victoria Square. But the market for the traditional townhouse, especially the three-story townhouse, has become one of stairs.
"The sort of homebuyer who is willing to walk up from the garage carrying groceries is one customer. But the person who can come in on the first level, perhaps with the master [bedroom] on the main, is another," he said.
Facing a stiff attached-townhome market, Peachtree Properties wants to alter the product to find a new customer. So it is widening the footprint of the homes and reducing them from three stories to two in the interior of the development.
"We don't want to replicate what is already out there," Rickenbaker said. "We have 194 lots scheduled for townhouses in our company alone. We can't create more demand for that product. So what we want to do is appeal to a different buyer."
Those townhouses with Canton frontage will be the three-story attached variety to maintain cohesion of the Downtown Master Plan.
The one concession needed from council – and granted – was that the city would allow private streets in the interior. They would be built to city specifications, but because the streets needed to be narrower to accommodate the footprint of the project, they could not be handed over to the city.
Council agreed, but it stipulated that the community's covenants should include a fund to set aside money for street repairs as it grows older, since as private streets they would belong to the community and not the city.
Council did agree to lift the condition placed on the project for the community to have inter-parcel access. The idea is to provide connectivity and choices for motorists downtown to ease congestion. Council decided to forgo inter-parcel access partly because they no longer seem to think it is necessary for downtown.
Also, as Councilman D.C. Aikens pointed out, the city should not require the residents of Canton Street Commons to maintain private streets while requiring they be open to the public.
The council also required that the boarded-up homes on the property be removed within one year.
Tags: Alpharetta City Council
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