Land Use Committee Says 'No' To QT Appeal

Controversial development projects usually have a stop-go, stop-go, Waltz-like quality to them as both sides try to find a solution acceptable to each party.

But the proposed project in Ormewood Park that would bring a filling station and convenience store to the intersection of Moreland and Ormewood avenues has been more like stop-stop lately.

On Tuesday, the land use committee that makes recommendations regarding projects in several southeast Atlanta neighborhoods, voted to oppose the Ormewood Park landowner's appeal of an earlier city ruling that blocks the project.

The no vote by the land use and zoning committee of Neighborhood Planning Unit-W, which represents East Atlanta Village and Ormewood Park, among other neighborhoods, wasn't unexpected. The QuikTrip project had been controversial since its inception.

It heated up when Gobind L. Madan, who assembled several lots on Moreland's west side between Ormewood Avenue and Hall Street over two decades, obtained city approval to the assembled parcels into two commercial properties.

That paved the way for QuikTrip Corp. to come to 731 Moreland.

But in May, Charletta Wilson Jacks, director of the city's planning office, wrote the decision to split the commercial lot regarding street frontages and reversed the earlier replatting approval.

Madan, an accountant who operates the Liberty Tax Service business on the property, appealed her decision. In his response, he wrote that his company, Sinha Enterprises and  QuikTrip had spent considerable money. time and effort on the project and should not be penalized, when the city initially approved the replat.

"Both Sinha Enterprises and QuikTrip Corporation have spent considerable time, energy and finances based on the process required by the City of Atlanta in gaining the approval of the the re-plat and based on that approval," he wrote in his appeals letter. "It is our position that the plat was not approved in error and that this process required by the Department of Planning and Community Development were followed and that the re-plat of this property should stand as it was originally approved."

What's more, Madan wrote the replatted lots meet the street frontage requirements on one side of the property and that the city code does not say those requirements are needed on all sides of the property.

But land use committee member Edward Gilgor, who chairs NPU-W and is an attorney, said that's nonsensical.

"There's no validity to that argument whatsoever," Gilgor said, during committee members' discussion of the appeal.

"The fact that you, the city, made a mistake, doesn't bind the public," he said, citing an earlier Georgia Supreme Court ruling in a similar case.

The committee's "no" vote recommendation now goes the full voting membership of NPU-W.

NPU-W also will await input from the South Atlantans For Neighborhood Development, the neighborhood group that includes the Ormewood Park, Woodland Hills and Benteen Park neighborhoods, among others. NPU-W also will await a vote from the East Atlanta Community Association.

SAND, which opposes the project and says there are more suitable locations farther south on Moreland, is scheduled to meet July 14, where it could take up discussion of the appeal.

EACA, which opposes it, too, also will have to take up the matter of Madan's appeal.

The two associations' vote will be considered by the full voting membership of NPU-W, Gilgor explained.

Madan who has the right to make his case to the NPU as well as the various neighborhood associations, has not done so.

The city's Zoning Review Board, which will take NPU-W's final recommendation under advisement, itself is expected to review the matter Sept. 1.