Expansion of a nonprofit organization and neighborhood projects are among projects that will be discussed by the Forsyth County Planning Commission at its meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 26.
Before Tuesday’s regular meeting the projects were discussed by commission members at a work session on Tuesday, Oct. 19. No action was taken on any of the items during the work session.
Planning meetings are held at the Forsyth County Administration Building at 110 E. Main Street.
Here’s a look at what is proposed for each project:
Plans for neighborhood on Kelly Mill
What’s the plan: Kelly Mill Consultants Corporation has requested to rezone 61 acres on Kelly Mill Road from agricultural (A1) and single-family residential restricted district (R2R) to single-family residential district (Res-3) for 87 residential lots with a density of about 1.4 units per acre.
Where: 2089, 2049, 2050 and 2106 Kelly Mill Road.
Board comments: The proposed land for the neighborhood has been the center of some controversy in recent months tied to a proposed Hindu temple at the site.
Issues seemed to have cooled at a public participation meeting in December where developers brought up plans for the neighborhood, which neighbors preferred to the plan for a 34,890-square-foot temple with an ancillary structure of 2,025 square feet and a 15,000-square-foot priests’ residence.
At Tuesday’s meeting, District 3 planning member Jessica Thorsen said while both applications are active, developers are focused on the neighborhood project rather than the temple.
“Those are both active. They have not filed for consideration on the conditional use permit, which is a place of worship for a temple,” she said. “They have gone ahead and filed … what’s before us. It’s an application to do all Res-3, which was, my understanding more palatable for the area, for the neighbors.”
At the September meeting, developers said the temple project would not move ahead if the neighborhood was approved.
Meals by Grace Expansion
What’s the plan: Applicant Fill Ministries Inc. has requested a conditional-use permit to build a place of worship (a 5,407-square-foot chapel) with ancillary uses to include a fellowship/meeting hall, pavilion/bathrooms, shed, office, minister’s residence, and food pantry in buildings totaling an additional 29,991 square feet with 104 parking spaces on three acres zoned agricultural district (A1).
Where: 6405 Bennett Road.
Board comments: The project would be an expansion for Meals by Grace, a local non-profit focused on food insecurity in the area.
District 4 planning member Nedal Shawkat praised the group’s mission but had concerns the expansions would mean delivery, warehousing, processing and distribution of foods not grown on the premises on land that is not appropriate for that use.
Shawkat said a previous application for the property had been submitted but not approved and the current proposal was similar
“It’s a good mission, it’s an asset to the community, the designs are beautiful, they did a great job in putting together a plan, and this would be a welcome addition to the county in a different location, but as designed where it is, it doesn’t fit,” he said. “Scaling it down may make it more acceptable, but still with its core purpose being to produce, package, distribute food is really stepping away from the surrounding uses.”
Shawkat said one concern from neighbors was increased traffic from volunteers on a sharp curve on Bennett Road.
New neighborhood in north Forsyth
What’s the plan: Taylor Morrison of Georgia, LLC has applied to rezone about 79 acres on Burruss Road from agricultural district (A1) to single-family residential district (Res-2) conservation subdivision for 93 residential lots with a density of about 1.2 units per acre.
Where: 4850 Burruss Road.
Board comments: A previous meetings, planning members have been critical of a proposal that would bring 93 homes to a conservation subdivision, saying the plan did not match the intent of recently adopted rules for conservation subdivisions.
One issue, in particular, was that instead of larger areas of otherwise buildable open space, the proposal featured smaller “fingers” of open space between homes.
Shawkat continued to be critical of the project at Tuesday’s meeting.
“This is our first application under the new chapter 19 rewrite, where a lot of our worst fears that we tried to engineer around are realized,” he said, “such as taking the requirement that you have open space minimum width 25 feet and no less than five contiguous acres, and instead of creating nice, big chunks of open space, it was just put into 25-foot-wide strips that were put behind the lot and the buffer.”
