City Council to Consider New Townhome Development on Church Road

The Smyrna City Council will vote on Monday evening on a rezoning request for a 13 acre parcel of land on Church Road which could become a new townhome development.

According to documents filed with the city, Venture Homes is asking the city to rezone 619 Church Road from R-15 and RTD to RTD-Conditional to accommodate the construction of seven new townhome buildings.

Four of the buildings will contain eight units, two buildings will house six units each, and the final building will contain five townhomes. The density called for by the developers is 3.71 units per acre.

Venture Homes currently plans to build two different styles of townhome on the property; the unit facing Church Road would be a three-story, rear entry structure, while the remaining six buildings inside the complex would be two stories tall and be entered from the front.

The buildings will occupy 4.49 acres of the property; the remainder of the land is in a floodplain and cannot be built on. Venture homes has asked the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) for a revision of their floodplain map for the area, as the developers have found an error with the government maps.

City staff recommend that the city council approve the rezoning, but have stipulated several conditions. Some of the conditions include provisions for underground utilities, installing a deceleration lane at the entrance of the new development, and the commission of an archaeological study of the site to determine whether or not any Civil War artifacts are buried there.

The Smyrna City Council will meet to discuss this and other issues at 7:30 p.m. at Smyrna City Hall. The meeting will be broadcast live on Charter Cable channel 19. If you are unable to attend the meeting in person or view it on television, Smyrna-Vinings Patch will provide a link to an online stream of the proceedings as they happen.