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Did anyone see what my **** of a mayor is doing?
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| Shakka |
This is just unbelievable. Is this even something she has the authority to do? Way to go Shirley--you may have just sealed your fate at the next election.
Don't be fooled by some of the language in the article. The areas they're talking about are some of the nicest, most desireable places to live in this city. Plus, who is to tell someone what they can and can't do with their own property?!
| quote: | Moratorium on McMansions
Atlanta's mayor halts tide of starter mansions recasting landscape of older intown neighborhoods
By DAVID PENDERED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/20/06
Mayor Shirley Franklin has ordered a temporary halt to the stampede of so-called McMansions altering the face of popular established intown neighborhoods in the city of Atlanta.
With an executive order, Franklin issued a moratorium on the construction of new, massive homes on lots where older, smaller houses once stood. It is the first time a government in metro Atlanta has tried to stop the phenomenon that is changing the residential landscape of urban neighborhoods. Franklin's moratorium halts construction permits for infill housing in five of the hottest real estate markets in the city — north Buckhead, Virginia-Highland, Morningside-Lenox Park, Ansley Park-Sherwood Forest and Lake Claire.
Mikki K. Harris/AJC
'I know people who are upset with bigger homes being built,' says Virginia-Highland resident Andy Walden, walking his dogs.
A smaller house sits in the shadow of its larger neighbor on Brookridge Drive in Virginia-Highland, one of the five neighborhoods under the moratorium halting construction permits for infill housing.
• The Atlanta City Council is to vote Feb. 6 on extending the moratorium for 120 days. Councilwoman Mary Norwood submitted the legislation.
• During the moratorium, the council is to consider Norwood's proposal to restrict the scale of new houses to be built in existing neighborhoods. The goal is to curb the trend of tearing down smaller homes and replacing them with homes so big that they change the character of the neighborhood.
• The proposal provides for neighborhoods to voluntarily come under the restrictions, which cover issues including height and how close a house is to the street, provide for evergreen screening between the new house and its neighbors, and control dramatic changes to the site by bringing in truckloads of dirt.
The ban will last until Feb. 6, when the Atlanta City Council will vote on a proposed 120-day moratorium for the same neighborhoods.
"My phone certainly has blown up today," Chris Burke, a vice president with the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, said Thursday. "People want to know what's going on."
The moratorium will prevent real estate investors from tearing down older homes and building new, big ones while the council considers restricting the scale of houses in Atlanta's neighborhoods. The infill-teardown trend has blazed across Atlanta and close-in suburbs during the "back to the city" craze of the past five years. Established communities changed almost overnight as 1,500-square-foot ranch homes and bungalows built in the 1950s were demolished and replaced with houses 6,000 square feet or larger.
"A lot of people move into Virginia-Highland to live in bungalows," Virginia-Highland resident Andy Walden said. "So I know people who are upset with bigger homes being built."
News stirs up emotions
Emotions ran high in Atlanta on Thursday as news of the moratorium spread through e-mails among neighborhood protection groups and the residential construction industry. Franklin signed her order without fanfare Tuesday and sent it at about 4 p.m. to Councilwoman Mary Norwood, who has dogged the infill issue for three years, despite opposition from developers.
"It's the current homeowners who will lose out," said Natalie Spalding, a real estate agent with Jenny Pruitt & Associates in Buckhead. Spalding specializes in finding houses in desirable neighborhoods that are more valuable for the land they sit on than they are as places to live.
"An outdated ranch might be worth a half-million dollars as a teardown, but not nearly that much as a house," Pruitt said. "People who have held on thinking their house was a great investment may see the value decrease substantially."
Demand up for big homes
Some home buyers, who do not want long commutes from distant suburbs to Atlanta, are demanding larger homes than those typical of older communities. And it's not just the starter mansions, or McMansions, causing a stir. The average house in America doubled over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. census, to more than 2,000 square feet.
From Vinings in Cobb County to the Oak Grove neighborhood in DeKalb County, area residents are alarmed over waking up to the din of bulldozers knocking down a nearby house.
DeKalb came close to adopting a comprehensive regulation last year, but dumped the controversial plan. A version now being considered would let individual neighborhoods vote on their own regulations.
In Cobb County, which made national news over the high price of teardowns, the East Cobb Civic Association has formed an infill development committee. The issue is on the February agenda, said Martha Adams, president of the association.
"For me as a neighbor, I think it would be a critical issue — the scale of the building," Adams said. "We're just beginning to deal with it and discussing an ordinance that would define what's appropriate."
Gwinnett next in line
Some expect the infill wave to hit parts of Gwinnett County in three to five years, said Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement Association and a county planning commisioner.
Several cities in Gwinnett have been pioneers in restoring their downtowns. In Norcross, for instance, Cumming-based Hedgewood Properties Inc. plans this year to build a mix of detached homes, townhouses and condominiums in walking distance from the town center on a site now filled with old metal-clad warehouses, said Pam Sessions, Hedgewood's co-president.
"We were part of a Livable Centers Initiative district [sponsored by the Atlanta Regional Commission], so there was a vision," Sessions said. "It just fit. It worked. And the warehouses weren't something the neighbors were disappointed to see go."
That's a little different from having the house down the street from you torn down and replaced with a huge one, said Cary Aiken, of Atlanta's Morningside area.
"Just outside my back door, between Christmas and New Year's, they tore down a 2,000-square-foot house and will cut down several beautiful trees to build a house that will be 6,000 square feet plus," Aiken said. "I am extremely pleased by the mayor's action."
Realty agent: 'It's time'
Cathy Muzzy, a real estate agent for Harry Norman Realtors in Midtown who resides near Spalding, also thinks Atlanta's moratorium is a good thing. She has watched tree-lined intown Atlanta neighborhoods take on the feel of the suburbs because of the plethora of big, new houses with everything from four-car garages to master bathrooms as big as family rooms in some older homes.
"Oh yeah, we definitely need something, and I say that speaking both personally and professionally," said Muzzy, who has served about 20 years on a neighborhood planning unit in Buckhead. "When I worked on the city's subdivision ordinance revisions in the 1980s, the builders were so strong that we couldn't attach height limits, so people have had their yards cut off from sunlight by the neighboring house. It's time we worked this out."
Muzzy was at a book club meeting Thursday in Peachtree Park near Lenox Square, where the conversation was supposed to be about E.L. Doctorow's new book, "The March: A Novel." But the talk shifted to development among a group that lived through its own teardown experience two years ago. Five of their neighbors agreed to sell their homes to a developer who intends to tear them down and build a cul-de-sac development of 19 houses starting at $1 million.
"But it's not just Buckhead," Muzzy said. "It's true all over the city — Kirkwood, Ormewood Park, Vine City. Everywhere."
Franklin could not be reached for comment. But her order said that residents had asked for help in providing for an orderly redevelopment of their neighborhoods to protect their character. She concluded by linking the moratorium to the city's well-being:
"There is an urgent need, substantially related to the public health, safety and welfare, that an executive order be issued to support an ordinance proposing interim controls ... so the purpose of the interim controls not be circumvented until such time as an appropriate ordinance can be acted on by the City Council."
Norwood has been relentless in pursuing the issue. She organized a task force and drafted a Georgia Tech professor to help figure out a way to quantify "how big is big" when it comes to a new house in an existing neighborhood. Norwood is elected citywide, so she hears from a lot of people.
"The reason I chose to act now is that I met with the Beltline Neighborhood Coalition's historic committee three weeks ago, and we had 40 people who attended, 40 people on a miserable night, and we talked 90 minutes," Norwood said. "They said they've had an amazing number of teardowns and were losing their neighborhoods."
More revisions planned
Norwood filed her legislation in September and refiled it Tuesday, as required after an election year. Neighborhoods would vote to regulate matters such as height, set-back from the street and evergreen screens between the new houses and older neighboring ones. She said it will be refined as it moves through the city's approval process. It goes to neighborhood planning units next month, to the city's Zoning Review Board in late March and then to the full council in April. Norwood said she's open to suggestions.
"I am trying to enact the right legislation so the intent and the results are the very best we can have to preserve our neighborhoods and allow for orderly redevelopment of the city," Norwood said.
Burke, of the home builders' group, thinks the whole issue is nonsense.
"The public has spoken by virtue that there is no ordinance after two and a half years since Mary [Norwood] brought this up," Burke said. "I don't hear anyone screaming about infill. They scream about trash, potholes, tree protection, but not infill, so I can't believe it's that significant a problem."
But Dianne Olansky, who chairs the neighborhood planning unit for Morningside-Lenox Park and Virginia-Highland, disagrees.
"If you live next to one of those, and your daylight kitchen suddenly sees no daylight, it becomes an issue," Olansky said.
Staff writers Paul Donsky, George Chidi and Richard Whitt contributed to this article. |
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| MERiDiAN5i2 |
i dont see any problem with that.
who the fu¢k needs a 6000 sqft home? |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MERiDiAN5i2
i dont see any problem with that.
who the fu¢k needs a 6000 sqft home? |
What the business is it of yours? And how about the ing Brady Bunch for starters. |
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| LazFX |
| You know its Rich people that make this world suck..... all that room?? what the fock??? Oh this is in Atlanta, never mind that town.... |
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| Shakka |
| let me pose it this way. McMansions may be gauche, but do people not have the right to build them? |
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| Sunsnail |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
let me pose it this way. McMansions may be gauche, but do people not have the right to build them? |
I agree, it's none of the mayor's business |
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| Q5echo |
no real historic value to the neighborhood, aside from the national growing bias againsts modern popular architecture? f@#k that bitch!
anyway, gotta go again. nice to see your militant ass again Shakka. keep it rizzle.
latr.
Opus...lick my nuts. |
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| jonSun |
| Theres been alot of this going on here on Chicago's North side. Atlantas mayor is a idiot. Hopefully he gets voted out for this next election. |
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| nrjizer |
Franklin has no right to stop people from doing whatever the they like to their own property.
If anything, this will make the value of the original surrounding houses skyrocket.
Oh, and this is already happening in Gwinnett. For instance, I have several good friends who live in Berkeley Lake. These are huge, amazing houses to begin with, but many of them are being torn down and replaced with ing mansions. It's crazy, but more power to them. |
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| NebulousQ |
My parents' neighbor demolished their own house to build a mini-"McMansion". While this sucks because it will basically mean our house will be in its shadow, I dont think the government should intervene and stop it.
The government should try to keep its nose out of private citizens' business as much as possible. Sadly most people do not share this view. |
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| occrider |
| They have that stupid law in Bethesda too. I guess people are afraid of the grass being greener on the other side and would rather sustain an illusion despite the fact that they're economically hurting themselves. |
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