Leaders of Putnam County’s various departments met April 3 to go over the plans for the Commercial Planned Unit Development, known as Goodwill of Middle Georgia’s Helms Farm campus, with the developers.
Putnam County’s Technical Review Committee included department heads of the fire department, planning and development, code enforcement, environmental, engineering, public works, and others, including the county attorney and representatives of Georgia Power and Tri-County EMC electric companies.
Each member was supplied with printed or digital versions of the drawings of the planned campus to review and discuss with the property owner’s agent, Rick McAllister, and a representative of Southeastern Real Estate Group, as well as Goodwill.
“We spent a good bit of time going through the ins and outs of the development code and requirements of CPUD in the last meeting, and I’ll be glad to rehash any of that,” McAllister said as he began the discussion. “But I’d like to really start off with what we’ve changed on the plan at this point. And I’d like to remind everybody this is pretty much for the site plan, sticking to the site plan and how the plan has changed and evolved.”
McAllister reminded them that CPUD allows commercial and residential zones to exist on the same site, “but you must have 25% commercial land use and 25% residential land use. You can have more of the one or the other, but that’s primarily the amount.”
McAllister said changes since their last meeting included the name of one road was changed from Crossroads to Persimmon Street; and, at the request of county administration and Fire Chief Thomas McClain, what was formerly a 15-foot building setback was changed to a 20-foot building setback.
Other changes, made at the request of prior meetings, included increasing the footage of frontage and the footage of setbacks on single lots on detached family dwellings, and adding setbacks to multifamily dwellings. He also noted that the size of the water main currently met the minimum requirement, but “could get larger once we have our fire flow test done.”
A question was brought up asking whether or not the roads and parking lots would be county-maintained, including maintaining the shoulders of the roads, the bracing underneath, the striping, the parking spaces, etc. Public Works Director Anthony Frazier emphasized that his crew and budget were both small, and handling a lot of miles of roads.
“At the end of the day, the decision to accept portions of a road system is not the responsibility or authority of the public works department or anyone specifically sitting at this table, but ultimately the decision of the board of commissioners,” he noted.
McClain questioned the entrance roads to the development, noting the specific measurements of the angled parking along the roadway. He said his own personal truck is larger than the parking spaces’ length, and thus would stick out into the roadway, which would make the entryway impassable for emergency vehicles.
“If there were an event going on there that people were trying to get away from, while we were trying to get to, I think that could become congested and prevent our access,” he said.
McAllister asked McClain some more questions and then said, “We can look at that and see if we can accommodate that or possibly even flip it to parallel parking.”
Other concerns and questions included parking in the streets, driveways, garages, sprinklers on the mansion flats, and more discussion on the size of the water main and the connections into it.