Shameful Act by Post Road Committee
How would you feel if you lived in a subdivision close to Castleberry / Majors Roads and a few people from neighborhoods 4 - 5 miles away quietly reviewed and “approved” a developer’s massive commercial project next to your subdivision? Not so good?? - - - - but it happened!!!!
An amazing & shameful act about Venable Hall (VH) just revealed.
Members of ForsythCRG.org who were also supporters of the predecessor organization Keep Castleberry Residential will be interested in a recent document by a Mr. Jim Compton of a small Jim Harrell supporter group, Post Road Committee for Proper Growth which supported the Venable Hall rezoning. An excerpt from the Compton email:
“The Post Road Committee met with the developers of Venable Hall several times and were effective in reducing the density of the residential section.”
Our notes below show how they actually increased the overall intensity of VH by 33%.
The Post Road Committee was not vocal during the Venable Hall rezoning , but now states they met several times with the developer and with incredible arrogance state they knew what was best for homeowners who live adjacent / close to the Venable Hall tract.
The sudden appearance of this group who live 4 - 5 miles (and Compton even more) from the 175 acre tract, maybe explains why Jim Harrell claimed he had support for Venable Hall. This “end run” around the 1,200 adjacent residents in opposition and the move to this small distant group for their support by the developer was unethical and wrong.
Regards Venable Hall, the Post Road Committee and Mr Harrell chose to:
- Ignore the 1,200 homeowners who actually live close to the tract and asked him to deny VH (some, several times).
- Ignore the intense commercial size of VH - - -
- 1,100,000 sq ft of commercial (2X size of Avenue Forsyth & 6X Vickery) with 6 story buildings & about 70% of the residential units of Polo Fields.
- The Post Road group (like Mr Harrell) do not understand that VH is 3X as intense as a Vickery - - we calculated 12,000 cars per day with an acreage prorated Vickery model for the 175 acre tract. VH will produce at least 32,000 cars per day - - likely 36,000 per day.
- Ignore the 99% violation of the Land Use Plan - - less the 1% commercial actually recommended by the Land Use Plan, and so confirmed by homeowner oriented Commissioners Boff & Laughinghouse at the September 2009 hearing.
On August 10 vote for Todd Levent.
He will listen to homeowners.
He believes in openness and integrity, not secrecy and deceit.
Additional Notes from ForsythCRG.org re Post Road email
- Changes from these private meetings:
- Commercial/Office increased from 585,000 sq ft to 1,100,000 sq ft ,
- residential decreased to 770 units, about 25% - - but that is still 70% the number of residential units in Polo Fields, and,
- cars per day (aka intensity) increased by 30%.
- Also ignored by Compton is that KeepCastleberryResidential.org twice asked the developer & Harrell to model a development after Vickery with 10% more residential/commercial than Vickery to account for the 10% larger VH tract. In the first meeting with ~ 30 homeowners from 6 immediately adjacent subdivisions, the developer & Harrell rejected this compromise.
- Let us know if you want the full 2 page email by Compton.
One final thought - - - What if the District Commissioner either knew, accepted, or even facilitated this process?
We do not know Harrell’s role in this event, if any, but the voters need to ask him.
Todd Levent would never allow such a
deceitful and arrogant process to occur!