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What Can We Do About Infill Development?
Should We Do Anything?
By Rebecca McCarthy news@flagpole.com
Y ou hardly notice it, the house
you’ve passed hundreds of times,
until one day it’s gone. Soon
bulldozers plow up everything
and backhoes dig a hole that could house a
community fallout shelter. Framers finish
one story, then two. The roof goes up. Sod
and boxwoods the size of bunnies complete
a lovely new house.
The tear-down-build-up trend in Athens’
intown neighborhoods has been going on
here and there for at least a decade—long
time Five Points residents remember the
Callaway “Villas at Five Points” project at
Lumpkin Street and Carlton Terrace—but
the trend has intensified in the past two
years. To some, it indicates how desirable
Athens is and that people with means want
to enjoy the amenities of living close to
town. To others, it demonstrates a disre
gard for longtime residents, whose property
assessments rise regularly, and exacerbates
the problem of a lack of affordable housing
in town.
Some questions being debated on list-
servs and in neighborhood groups are:
Should people be able to build the houses
they want in a neighborhood, even if the
new houses are bigger than surrounding
homes? Do longtime residents get to have
a say in how their streets look? Isn’t it bet
ter to replace an eyesore with something
attractive? To have houses that are owner-
occupied rather than rental? Shouldn’t new
housing reflect the way families live now,
with multiple bathrooms and individual
bedrooms?
“I think it’s a good problem to have and
a sign that our town is vibrant,” says archi
tect Katrina Evans of E+E Architecture,
whose clients have included Five & Ten and
Creature Comforts. “There are instances
where the scale and the setback are disap
pointing because you want to keep the same
rhythm of the street. I think there are ways
to achieve a sensitivity to new construction
while respecting the adjacent properties.”
Infill development was supposed to
place residents close to services and busi
nesses while reducing sprawl and protecting
the Green Belt (undeveloped areas on the
outskirts of town), Athens-Clarke County
senior planner Bruce Lonnee acknowledges.
It wasn’t supposed to be a green light to
demolish houses in established neighbor
hoods and replace them with ones that fill
their small lots the way 400-pound men
fill Speedos. But all too often, that’s what’s
happening. You can see these large new
homes throughout older areas.
“It seems local officials are bending over
backwards to help new builders rather than
be concerned with homeowner opinions
and how this new construction affects them
and their property values,” says UGA pro
fessor Gary Grossman, who’s lived in Five
Points for more than 25 years. “Builders can
still make plenty of money building ‘con
forming’ houses, and if someone wants a
crazy house, they can buy some acreage out
of town and build it there.”
The infill housing issue has been dis
cussed recently at several public meetings,
including one the Athens Clarke Heritage
Foundation sponsored in February and
another hosted by the ACC planning
department a few weeks later.
“I think people should be able to build
whatever as long as they are respecting the
guidelines for setbacks, roof heights and
the percentage of the lot covered,” says
Hank Joiner, a former ACC planning com
missioner who has a 25-year-old business
managing rental property in Clarke and
Oconee counties. Micromanaging design
isn’t possible, he adds.
At the first meeting, Lonnee defined
infill housing and outlined the steps the
local government is taking to address the
issue. The second meeting featured a panel
of three local builders—Tom Ellis, Michael
Songster and Jared York—and an architect,
Lori Bork Newcomer, who all specialize
in infill housing. They proposed that infill
development is more a problem of percep
tion than an actual problem and decried the
idea of imposing design standards. Every
time you limit scale, said Songster, you lose
the benefit of flexibility. Newcomer said
that those houses worth protecting would
be protected because of their intrinsic
value, though she didn’t define “intrinsic
value.” The point of the meeting, Lonnee
said, was “to try to do things better, not
to get upset about a particular address or
project.”
According to records compiled by the
ACC Planning Department, from 2010-
2015, there were 152 properties with some
infill development. Drive on MLK and Ruth
Street to see some of these projects. About
30 of these infill development projects
involved a demolition. In the Five Points
neighborhood, a house was demolished
recently on Highland Avenue—and a large
home built on the lot—and another house
on Highland is slated for demolition. Two
houses on Milledge Terrace and two more
8 FLAGP0LE.C0M • MARCH 30, 2016
JOSHUA L. JONES