Two contested short-term rental (STR) permits in the R-1R zone on Lake Oconee and rezoning requests for two sizeable developments around Harmony Crossing dominated the mid-month meeting of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners last week.
In the end, all four were unanimously approved by the three-member quorum who were present. The District 3 seat is temporarily vacant, and Commission Chairman Bill Sharp was out of town.
The decision with perhaps the broadest impact came with the commercial rezoning of 15.3 acres one-quarter mile north of Harmony Crossing alongside Greensboro Highway. The rezoning gives the go-ahead for a grocery store and some smaller commercial operations while waiting for some kind of settlement for the ownership and/ or use of the privately owned Mahaffey Drive.
The 15.3-acre site was, and probably still is, part of a much larger plan for commercial development of several other tracts between Lakeview Drive and Old Phoenix Road. Jerry Shaifer is the part-owner or agent for all these tracts, which was being called “Town Center.”
The problem with this larger plan came with Mahaffey Drive, which would have to be used or crossed several times. The road is owned by each of the owners of 144 condominiums at the end of the road. Both parties have publicly stated they are close to a settlement.
The second rezoning was much less complicated. The commissioners approved RM-3 rezoning for a narrow, linear tract at 842 Harmony Road. The proposed use is for 43 single-family residences on 20.85 acres, with 10 acres set aside as open space. The owner is Harmony 40 LLC.
Meanwhile, the connecting issue in the two STR disputes rested on whether previously issued permits for non-conforming uses in the R-1R zones could be “grandfathered” in the new STR ordinance, which specifically prohibits STRs in R-1R zones.
According to later comments by Commissioner Jeff Wooten, the choice for the commissioners was whether to go through several expensive court challenges or to grandfather four to six already functioning STRs.
“Six months from now it will be settled,” County Attorney Adam Nelson said in a later interview.
Once that issue was decided, Dominic Cellitti, a resident of Washington State and the owner of a house on East Riverbend Drive, quickly gained approval for an STR permit.
However, a second STR permit appeal was complicated by some she-said, she-said – or perhaps more accurately, she-didn’t-say, she-didn’t-say – over-permitting procedures.
When the Harmony Bay Drive property was purchased in 2021, co-owner Kerri Grant of Marietta said (through her attorney) that she paid the $28 STR permit application fee and had paid taxes on the property’s rentals the past two years but knew nothing about her initial application not being received by County Clerk Lynn Butterworth.
Her attorney said the Grant’s Pier 6 LLC had grossed $160,000 in rentals over the past two years. In the end, the STR permit was unanimously approved.