About Buckhead reporter. (Sandy Springs, GA) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 2, 2020)
BH 20 | Community 4 Facebook.com/TheReporterNewspapers ■ twitter.com/Reporter_News Annie Boland, north Georgia buyer agent c. 404.449.1179 | o. 404.874.0300 annieboland@atlantafinehomes.com atlantafinehomes.com | sothebysrealty.com Blue Ridge, Georgia IMAGINE THE ESCAPE ... RIVER LIFE, LAKE LIFE, MOUNTAIN LIFE NEW CONSTRUCTION COMING SOON CUSTOM MOUNTAIN VIEW LODGE | offered for $1,200,000 CUSTOM LAKE VIEW CABIN I offered for $750,000 RESALE CABIN CHARMING CREEKFRONT CABIN I offered for $349,000 Annie Boland has been selling properties in the area for 16 years and is now a full-time Blue Ridge resident. Whether you are looking for a cozy little cabin, a mountaintop lodge or a turn-key investment property, North Georgia has something to offer for everyone. Let Annie put her knowledge of the area to work for you! Annie Boland, Your North Georgia Connection. Atlanta Fine I Sotheby's Homes INTERNATIONAL REALTY Atlanta Fine Homes, LLC fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Each franchise is independently owned and operated. Not all photos above are from the actual listing; some are conceptual. Call for short-term rental ban sparks talk of other rules Continued from page 1 about a solution short of a blanket ban. Shook’s taste for diplomacy ran short in August when he became one of the un happy neighbors of Buclchead’s latest noto rious party mansion at 3511 Roxboro Road. Events there this year have resulted in doz ens of police calls and operated under such promotions as “the biggest topless pool par ty ever.” Neighbors say the events have in the past two years since the mansion was vacated by former owner and star musi cian Young Thug. “Ironically, the best, quietest neigh bor we had was a rapper. That was Young Thug,” said Shook. “And God, if I had known he was gonna be the best owner we ever had, I’d have taken him a Bundt cake.” Shook noted a long-stalled city propos al to register and license short-term rent als, which was put on hold to allow home- owners to make money from tourists when Atlanta hosted the 2019 Super Bowl. “I’m on Year Three of waiting for the planning department short-term rental legislation, and I’m done,” Shook said. In early September, he filed the legislation seeking to ban short-term rentals. J.P. Matzigkeit, Shook’s fellow City Council representative in Buclchead, signed onto the proposal. Last year, Matzig keit was working with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ administration on other legisla tion to tighten restrictions on “party hous es” in the zoning code to make it easier to declare them illegal commercial uses. That legislation is also stalled in Neighborhood Planning Unit review. “Frankly, it will be better legislation when combined with short-term rental leg islation,” said Matzigkeit. “That will give it much more meat and teeth and substance.” Matzigkeit is an old hand at dealing with party mansions. Last year, he coor dinated city and APD efforts that end ed years of events at a notorious Garmon Road mansion, which involved jailing the operator and shutting off the water for un paid bills. Matzigkeit said he supports Shook’s nuclear-option call for a short-term rental ban. But, he said, he “absolutely” supports the creation of a registration and licens ing system that would ensure operators are known to city officials and pay lodging taxes. “It’s a business. People are operating this as a business and we need to treat it as such,” he said. The neighboring city of Sandy Springs has such a registration system and earli er this year said it had more than 50 reg istered. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to questions about Shook's proposal and the other pending legislation efforts. Airbnb is not a fan of Shook’s legisla tion. In a written statement, the short-term rental company said, “The vast majority of Atlanta hosts are sharing their homes re sponsibly and a blanket ban would hurt thousands of local families who depend on the income they earn hosting to help pay the bills. We are committed to working with the city of Atlanta to reasonably ad dress quality of life issues, while preserv ing property rights for residents.” The Roxboro Road mansion was rent ed out via Airbnb, according to the Atlanta Police Department. Airbnb said that it has since removed that property from its list ings, and has made other policy changes related to party uses. “Last year, we introduced a ban on ‘par ty houses’ - meaning, listings which cause repeated neighborhood nuisance” and cre ated a “neighborhood support line” for un happy neighbors to call, said the Airbnb statement. And on Aug. 20, Airbnb banned parties and events altogether. O’Dell said her short-term rental asso ciation draws a distinction between rent als that are for lodging and those that are venues for parties. She indicated her group might be open to a registration system and suggested as one reform that the law re quires short-term rentals to be a minimum two-night stay to ensure the use is lodging- oriented. O’Dell would not say how many mem bers her group has, but claimed that, with out a staff, it can organize peer groups of short-term operators to deal with neigh bors’ complaints. “We can do a lot more than a local government to stop any dis ruption at a short-term rental,” she said, adding that does not include party hours, which the group “can’t do anything about.” Most important, she said, is that short term rental operators be involved in dis cussions about legislation, because oth erwise, the result will be “misguided and ineffective.” Meanwhile, Matzigkeit is dealing with yet another party house. The mansion at 3234 Andrews Court had 45 police calls for service between June 20 and Sept. 18, ac cording to APD records, including Aug. 15 reports of gunshots. Among the incidents was an Aug. 23 birthday party with over 100 guests, shuttle service, a $40 “gift” to enter and “at least six female strippers,” ac cording to an APD report. Flourish Home Investors LLC of Decatur, the owner listed in Fulton County property records, did not respond to a comment request and is un der notice of being dissolved by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office for failure to reg ister, according to state records.
