Dunwoody Crown Towers agrees
to ‘voluntary impact fee’ of $760,000 for DHA support Posted by Dyana Bagby on May 1, 2016.
The Dunwoody Homeowners Associated
voted Sunday, May 1, to support the Crown Towers development and developers’
request that the residential units be 50 percent rental and 50 percent owner
occupied at the start of construction and then converted to 75 percent owner occupied
over five years.
As part of a negotiation for the
DHA’s support, the developers have agreed to a “voluntary impact fee” of
$760,000 to the city to use toward a park in the Perimeter.
The project and money for the city
is not a sure thing, though, and must go through city council first. The
Dunwoody City Council will consider on second and final reading the proposed
mixed-use development, including two high-rises with 380 residential units, at
the former Gold Kist site at 244 Perimeter Center Parkway at its May 9 meeting.
City staff and the Planning Commission have recommended the residential units
be 75 percent owner occupied and rental units be 25 percent.
The DHA voted last month to support
the proposed Crown Towers mixed-use development only if developers promised 75
percent of residential units are owner occupied and 25 percent are rental
units. But in the ensuing weeks, DHA President Robert Wittenstein said he
negotiated with the developers to agree to a “voluntary impact fee” of $2,000
per residential unit for a total of $760,000. Last week, the developers had
agreed to just $1,000 per unit, or $380,000.
“I think this is a good deal for the
city,” Wittenstein said of the proposed development. “Five years [to convert to
75 percent owner occupied] in the life of a city is a blink of an eye.”
The idea of the Westside Connector
also came up at Sunday’s DHA meeting. The Westside Connector was conceptualized
in the 2011 Perimeter Community Improvement Districts’ 10-year plan, but the
idea it could become a reality didn’t begin until last year when the owners of
Crown Holdings, who own the Gold Kist property, offered the city 2 acres for
right-of-way.
The Westside Connector, estimated at
$20 million, is a planned road coming off I-285, going under Ashford-Dunwoody
Road and connecting with Perimeter Center Parkway. The road is part of a
network of connectors planned for the area as new high*rise developments are
being built.
Charlie Brown with Crown Holdings
Development, the company working to redevelop the property, said last night the
Westside Connector “is the elephant in the room” when it comes to the proposed
Crown Towers development.
The donation of the 2 acres is
dependent on the city approving rezoning of the Gold Kist property for the
mixed-use development, Brown explained.
And while the $760,000 “voluntary
impact fee” is ideally for a park, Brown said he and the developers would not
“stand in the way of the people” — such as the city and PCID — if the money
were to instead be used toward a study for the Westside Connector or possibly
other traffic improvements.
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