Woodstock Denies Appeal To Install Billboard Near Outlet Mall

The Woodstock City Council on Monday unanimously voted to reject an appeal to install a billboard near the Outlet Shoppes at Atlanta.

The council approved the order denying Tinsley/Postiglione’s request after returning from executive session.

Council member Warren Johnson was not present and Mayor Donnie Henriques recused himself from presiding over the agenda item, as Northside Hospital-Cherokee — his employer — had considered buying billboard space for advertising, according to the applicant’s statements made at the March 9 meeting.

Tinsley/Postiglione appealed to the council following city staff’s denial of its request construct a billboard on 3.49 acres on Woodstock Parkway south of Ridgewalk Parkway.

City staff denied the application due to the city’s land development ordinance that prohibits billboards within 500 feet of properties either zoned or designated for single-family residential use.

According to the city, the proposed location is located 426 from the Deer Run subdivision. It’s also zoned light industrial within the city’s Technology Park Overlay, which would allow for the development of single-family and other forms of residential use on the property.

Adam Webb, attorney for the applicant, argued the city’s ordinance should limit the 500-foot rule to properties on the same side of the highway, referencing Interstate 575 serving as a barrier between the proposed location and the Deer Run subdivision.

The city wrote in its order issued Monday evening that the ordinance is designed to place billboards more than 500 feet away from homes for “aesthetic reasons and to preserve property values for residential uses.” Woodstock also said that its ordinance does not specify that “distances across interstates are somehow exempt from the distance requirements.”

“When the city adopted its sign ordinance, mayor and council went to great lengths to study the impact of signs, including billboards, on surrounding properties and determined that billboards in particular have a negative impact on surrounding residential properties, including any properties where residential uses are allowed,” the order reads. “It was with this in mind that the mayor and council adopted the sign ordinance prohibiting billboards within 500 feet of properties where residential uses are permitted.”

The same company in 2013 originally submitted a request to install the billboard on the same parcel. City staff denied the request, and the company appealed the decision. However, Tinsley/Postiglione eventually withdrew its appeal of city staff’s decision.

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