Village mix adds to Southside’s boom

By KEVIN DUFFY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/29/06

Developer Tom Reese spread the plans out on the dining room table at his south Coweta County home, eager to show a visitor the most ambitious project he’s ever undertaken.

The drawings show dozens of shops along a 40-foot-wide cobblestone walkway. Thousands of homes fronting crisscrossing streets. Big swatches of green space and small pocket parks. Parking hidden in alleyways and behind shops and offices.

Reese said children could walk or ride on trails to a new elementary school, on 25 acres he plans to donate.

“Is it my legacy?” he asked. “I hope it is.”

The 61-year-old founder of Reese Developers wants to build a 1,597-acre community called McIntosh in east Coweta County that would be a major departure for a lightly developed, but fast growing, area of the Southside.

Unlike the typical Coweta subdivision, where each house is on 1.6 acres with a septic tank, McIntosh would be urbanlike: 3,164 homes, 946,050 square feet of retail space, 119,650 square feet of office space and 399 acres of open space.

When finished in 10 to 15 years, McIntosh would have roughly 8,000 residents, making it about one-fifth the size of neighboring Peachtree City.

And like Peachtree City, it would be affluent. Projected home values range from $250,000 for one of the 164 planned lofts in the “town center” to $2 million-plus for an estate home with a view of Lake McIntosh, the future Fayette County reservoir.

Reese is scheduled to present his plans today to the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. Because the project is unusually large, it’s being reviewed by GRTA and the Chattahoochee-Flint Regional Development Center.

Dense, mixed-use proposals are becoming more popular in Coweta and Fayette as developers respond to an influx of people desiring villagelike living.

Just north of Reese’s property, John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods and Levitt and Sons are asking Peachtree City to annex 779 acres in Fayette so they can build nearly 1,300 homes, a neighborhood retail center and a 27,000-square-foot community center.

Levitt’s portion would have 752 homes for people 55 and older. A small part of Reese’s project also targets retiring baby boomers.

In Coweta, Pathway Communities, the longtime Peachtree City developer, wants to build about 1,000 homes and a commercial center in Sharpsburg, west of the McIntosh site.

Reese’s project “is heading in the right direction,” Coweta County Commission Chairman Greg Tarbutton said.

The county is striving to develop a growth plan that offers more choices than the traditional septic tank subdivision, he said.

Coweta’s population, roughly 100,000, is expected to increase 54 percent by 2020, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

“We don’t want to be a bedroom community,” Tarbutton said.

“We’re trying to work very hard with a plan that basically covers all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.”

Reese is seeking approval under Coweta’s new community district ordinance, which applies only to projects of 1,500 acres or more.

The law prescribes minimum percentages for residential, commercial, open space and community uses.

Reese plans to invest $6 million in a sewer system he will donate to the county. In the years to come, that sewer system could be upgraded and expanded to serve the needs of Senoia, Sharpsburg and perhaps other developments.

In Peachtree City, Mayor Harold Logsdon is concerned about what impact Reese’s development will have on traffic and Line Creek, the border of his city and Coweta.

“We wouldn’t annex anything that dense,” Logsdon said.

When he was mayor of Peachtree City, Steve Brown opposed a joint east-west road project with Coweta, arguing it was developer-driven and would provide little traffic relief.

Nevertheless, plans are under way to build that road, called Vernon Hunter Parkway in Coweta. It’s one of the boundaries of Reese’s property.

“The other shoe has landed,” Brown said about the McIntosh project.

“Everybody is saying Brown got it right.”

Reese views his long-range development plan for the big tract as better than a piecemeal approach.

“Whether I do this or not, the people are still going to come,” he said.

“I want this to become a place where people hear about it.”

Atlanta Business Chronicle – July 26, 2006

The 28-county Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) leads the nation in the number of residential building permits issued in the first five months of 2006, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

The growth has been partially fueled by an 11 percent increase in the 10-county metro area, the ARC noted.

The 28-county Atlanta MSA led the nation with 32,737 single- and multi-family building permits issued in the first five months of the year, outpacing metro areas including Houston, New York, Las Vegas and Miami, the ARC said. If the trend continues through the end of 2006, the Atlanta MSA will mark 13 consecutive years of leading the nation in issuing residential building permits.

Among the 10-county Atlanta region, 23,603 residential building permits were issued through May 2006 — an increase of 2,347 permits, or 11 percent, from the same period in 2005. Some 16,735 of the permits were for single-family units and 6,868 for multi-family units.

“The numbers show what metro Atlantans see first-hand every day — the region continues to expand, house by house,” said Bart Lewis, chief of ARC’s Research Division. “The growth in building permits is seen across the region, from Douglas and Fulton to Clayton and Rockdale counties.”

Fulton County leads the 10-county region in the number of residential building permits issued with 8,176 — a 22 percent increase over 2005. Fulton is also the only county that issued more multi-family permits than single-family.

Gwinnett County issued 4,427 permits, followed by DeKalb (2,543), Cobb (2,415) and Cherokee (1,715).

Rockdale County had the biggest percentage increase in 2006 at 48 percent, followed by Douglas (27 percent), Clayton (26 percent) and Fulton (22 percent).

The ARC also reported median sales prices for existing single-family homes and condos in the 28-county Atlanta MSA for the first quarter of 2006 are lower than both the South and the United States. Additionally, existing single-family home and condo prices increased at a lower rate than seen in the South and the nation for the first quarter of the year, when compared to the same period in 2005. But home prices in metro Atlanta, like other regions of the nation, are increasing faster than incomes.

The analysis by the Atlanta Regional Commission was published in the July edition of ARC’s Regional Snapshot, “Atlanta Housing Market: Still Hot, Still Affordable.” The report compares U.S. Census data for the first five months of 2006 with the same period in 2005 across the 10-county region and information from the National Association of Realtors for the 28-county MSA.