At Tuesday’s meeting of the Cobb County Planning Commission, a rezoning request by Kenneth B. Clary for the purpose of developing a property at 4701 Post Oak Tritt Road in East Cobb was held (postponed) until the May Planning Commission meeting.

The property has been in the Clary family’s hands since the 1960s and is just over 13 acres.

The original request was to rezone from R-30 to R-15. As currently zoned 10 units would be allowed on the property. If R-15 were approved the number of units would have doubled to 20.

But Cobb County staff recommended that the property be deleted to R-20, which would increase the allowable density, but not by as much as 20 units.

The applicant was represented by Joel Larkin of Sams, Larkin & Huff.

The East Cobb Civic Association and the adjacent HOAs spoke in opposition to the rezoning. ECCA was represented by Richard Grome.

Speaking for the applicant, Larkin said, “Mr. Clary owns approximately 13.4 acres on the north side of Post Oak Tritt Road. “

“This property has been in his family dating back to the 1960s. It’s zoned R-30. Like all property was in the area at the time he acquired it. Since they took ownership of this property, all of the properties surrounding it have developed, or most of them have.

“So now he’s flanked by our 15 and our 20 subdivisions.

“Like the landowners around him, Mr. Clary has filed an application seeking to rezone the property to allow it to be developed consistent with the manner that properties around him have developed.

“Staff has reviewed that in the normal fashion, the various departments have reviewed and they’ve generated a long list of comments and proposed conditions.

“One of those comments and requests was at the property be deleted to our 20.

“Mr. Clary is agreeable to the staff recommendation and including the suggestion that it’d be deleted to our 20.

“As a part of that condition, staff suggested that the site plan be subject to review by the district commissioner. And that’s very appropriate given the engineering and other issues that are applicable to the property.”

“This application has been pending for a while and a number of issues have been have been under discussion by surrounding property owners and the professionals in the industry.

“One of those is the fact that it backs up to a lake whenever you backup to or share string bank buffer.

“There’s always concerns about impacts that your development might have on other properties on the lake and on the public good.”

Larkin said there had been a suggestion that a cemetery was on the property, but that he and a person who had lived on the property had not found a cemetery.

Richard Grome of the East Cobb Civic Association spoke in opposition to the request.

He outlined a number of concerns, including:

• That it appears no one is living on or maintaining the property
• That the applicant has not stated how historical structures and the Hardman Cemetery, thought to be on the property, would be handled
• That FEMA has designated much of the property as a special flood hazard area, and much of the natural drainage for the property is into the two Clary lakes
• That the density would be too high for the area if the request were granted

Representatives from the Clary Lakes, Horseshoe Noles, and Spring Lakes subdivisions also spoke in opposition to the request.

The opponents said that the applicant had been uncommunicative with them, and that zoning signs on the property had not been updated when new hearing dates had been set.

Planning Commissioner David Anderson, who represents the area where the property is located, said that since there was no updated site plan reflecting the change of the request to R-20 there was not enough information to make a decision during the current meeting, and made a motion to hold the case to next month’s meeting.

The motion passed 3-0 (with Deborah Dance and Fred Beloin absent).

Watch the hearing below: