January 30, 2008
ALPHARETTA -- Council might like what AMLI Residential has done with Milton Park and other apartment complexes inside city limits, but it doesn't want more units upsetting an economic balance its staff helped devise.
City Council voted Jan. 28 to deny an application by AMLI that would have added 322 apartment units in 9 buildings on land bisected by an as-yet unopened stretch of Morris Road that on the north side of Webb Bridge Road. AMLI wanted to amend the Preston Ridge Master Plan to allow the high-density residential use. The company planned to reduce the permitted 873,000 square feet of office use to 322,00 square feet, trading office use for apartment units. Retail use would take up 40,000 square feet of space.
In a unanimous vote, council members denied the request. Councilman David Belle Isle said for council to do something other than follow its comprehensive land use plan it must have a sincere and genuine hardship with the property as it is currently zoned.
"And I just don't see it," he said.
Since denying an application in 2004 for apartments on property across Webb Bridge Road, council requires a larger ratio of single-family, owner-occupied homes , said Community Development Director Diana Wheeler.
AMLI representative Phil Tague said City Council had two questions to consider. First, is it appropriate to have multi-family use on the , and secondly, if it is time to allow any additional multi-family in Alpharetta.
Council decided the answer was no to both questions.
One reason the apartment complexes in Alpharetta are as nice as they are is the fact that they are scarce, Belle Isle said.
Tague said that its Alpharetta apartment residents use their cars less on city streets with an average 3.2-mile commute. But one third of the residents of a 600-unit AMLI apartment complex in Suwanee 15 miles away drive to jobs along Ga. 400 because they can't find suitable places to live here.
"They're taking all those east-west corridors and adding to that congestion. And the reason that they do that is that the jobs are here," he said.
Councilman D.C. Aiken responded it only takes about a 5-mile drive to traverse the city in any direction. Within three to five miles many apartments exist just outside city limits that weren't there in 2004 when he backed the apartments rejected by a majority of council.
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