By John Fredericks / Staff

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

For the first time in recent memory, Roswell Mayor Jere Wood and Councilman Kent Igleheart are on the same page – while no one else is.

Both are up for re-election in November.

Wood used a rare veto last week in jettisoning a rezoning provision that council passed on May 11 that was designed to accommodate 31 town-homes on the corner of Hardscrabble Road and Ga. Highway 92.

The rezoning application, put forth by Coro Development, LLC, was approved by a 5-1 vote, with Igleheart as the lone dissenter. The land is currently zoned for single-family residences.

The Roswell Planning Commission had previously recommended against approval.

It was only Wood’s second veto in 12 years.

ONE PIECE OF A PUZZLE

The town-homes were just one piece of a rezoning puzzle affecting 20.5 acres adjacent to the Brookfield subdivision. Coro’s proposed application requested to rezone 6.8 of those acres -at the corner of Ga. Hwy 92 and Hardscrabble Road- to allow multifamily housing. Coro also sought permission to build a mixed-use development that includes an assisted living facility.

“My concerns were the density of the town-homes, the fact that the overall project is not really ‘mixed-use’- which seemed to be one of their main selling points for why this should be granted, rather just separate uses that happen to sit next to each other. Primarily, this could easily set a precedent for increased densities and town-homes in the properties adjacent to this one and continuing down Hardscrabble Road,” Igleheart explained.

Only three Brookfield representatives showed up on the night of the original vote, and they voiced concerns that the new development – if approved - might change the look and feel of Hardscrabble Road’s residential appearance.

On Monday, after Wood’s veto, over 100 opponents of the application turned out to urge council to reverse their position and sustain Wood’s veto.  Council then granted the developer a deferral until Monday, June 29. Coro executives, feeling the heat of an election year, said they needed more time to work out a compromise with the Brookfield community activists, who took up Igleheart’s position and raised objections that the approval could set the stage to turn Hardscrabble Road into a high density magnet.

WOOD VS. HENRY - GET USED TO IT

Wood’s veto can be over-ridden by a simple 4-2 council majority vote. In the event of a 3-3 tie, Wood would cast the deciding vote - presumably “No”.

Councilwoman Lori Henry, a mayoral candidate in November, voted for the application and summarily blasted her likely opponent, Wood. “If anyone wants to talk about Roswell being anti-development and anti-business this action makes Jere Wood the poster child,” Henry said. “How would you like to spend months of your time and thousands of your dollars to work through a viable application process, win approval by a near council majority and then get the rug pulled out from under you by the mayor, who whips the adjacent community into a frenzy after the fact,” Henry asked?

Henry called the development, “a nice project for our city.”

Igleheart said he hoped for a compromise. “The only consolation is that I do believe Coro is one of the better developers out there and they will ultimately deliver a high quality project. Hopefully, they will do what they can to accommodate further requests to mitigate the impacts of this project - other than not doing it [at all], of course.”