The Henry County Board of Commissioners considered two rezoning requests at its January 21 regular meeting but ultimately took action on only one of them.
The board approved a request for rezoning from RA (residential-agricultural) to R-1 (single-family residential) for 30 acres on the south side of Hampton-Locust Grove Road and west of Brindley Way. The applicant has proposed 24 lots on the site, which is in line with the one-acre minimum lot size for the zoning as well as the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) designation of low-density residential. The land has frontage of Luella Road but the only access for the development would be from Hampton-Locust Grove Road.
The Zoning Advisory Board recommended approval in November with eight conditions, and staff added some recommended conditions pertaining to stormwater management. Those were all included, as well as an additional condition regarding a shrubbery buffer around a detention pond, in the motion to approve, which passed 5-0 (Vivian Thomas was absent from the meeting).
Another site nearby, on the north side of Hampton-Locust Grove Road and to the north of Brindley Way, was the subject of a separate request for rezoning from RA to R-3 as well as change in the FLUM designation from commercial to low-density residential. This is a 41-acre piece of property just west of the Hwy. 155 intersection and south of a distribution center, in an area where several zoning districts come together, according to county staff.
The ZAB recommended approval of the FLUM amendment in November, and chief planner Stacey Jordan-Rudeseal said that staff saw no compelling reason to keep the commercial designation on the map when some of the property around the intersection had not yet even been developed. The applicant presented the project to the board and there was no comment from the audience for or against it.
When no commissioners had any questions, board chair June Wood called for a motion. There was none, so the item died.
As for the subsequent rezoning request, Wood asked county attorney Patrick Jaugstetter whether to proceed. “You have an application before you,” he said. “You should consider it and vote it up or down.”
The rezoning would allow for a 60-lot subdivision, but the applicant’s representative asked that the request be tabled in light of the non-action on the FLUM amendment so all parties involved could see what to do next. Since it was requested by the applicant, there was no need for a board vote to table the item.
