The City of Madison’s efforts to rewrite its industrial zoning ordinances regarding conditional use thresholds, dimensional requirements, utilities, employee caps, and buffers received a mixed response during a July 22 called meeting.
After nearly two hours of detailed discussion, council members decided to delay a decision until the Aug. 12 regular council meeting, which is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.
“The impetus for this effort in the first place was really to find a path to manage the attraction of economic development for Madison, but in a way that minimizes the negative impacts on our city,” District 2 Councilman Eric Joyce explained. “We have a plan here that makes sense to me.”
According to a memorandum written by Molly Bogle, Madison’s assistant director of planning, “a four-month moratorium was enacted Jan. 8 on zoning actions for properties within the Light Industrial/Limited Commercial District (I-1) and Light Industrial/ Manufacturing District (I-2) zoning districts.”
The moratorium was extended twice.
“This moratorium was enacted, in part, due to increased interest in annexation into the city by property owners south of I-20, coupled with an ordinance, or portions thereof (e.g., dimensional requirements), that have remained unchanged for almost two decades,” the memorandum reads.
Joyce said the new language in the ordinance addressed the issue of traffic in downtown Madison in general and truck traffic in particular.
“Any permitted use that will generate 750 or more annual average daily traffic or 175 or more annual average daily truck traffic would require a conditional use permit.”
City engineer Aaron Wadley said industrial development projections and the nature of traffic in Madison make it difficult to cap traffic or employee numbers.
Wadley said a business located close to I-20 that sends out trucks onto the interstate would have little impact on Madison traffic. Still, if those trucks are going to Monroe or Winder, they will head directly through downtown Madison.
“If a west bypass was in place, we’d have a much higher bar for truck traffic,” Wadley said. “But we don’t know what’s coming until somebody wants to develop. This [ordinance] just gives you the opportunity to engage them when they do.”
Councilor Carrie Peters-Reid said she wanted to see job prospects in Madison improve.
“We have so many people who don’t have jobs who can’t even afford a home in our city,” Peters-Reid said. “They can’t travel outside of the city because they can’t afford a car.”
Councilman Ed Latham said truck traffic in Madison would be a problem regardless of the city's development because truck drivers would try to avoid the Atlanta area.
“The only way we’re going to solve truck traffic is if the city and the county can get together and do a truck bypass around the city,” Latham said. “If we don’t get industrial development here to help us with the tax digest, we’re just going to have to raise the taxes on the residents.”
Madison resident Annie Hunt Burriss, whose background is in economic development and its impact on utilities and traffic, said Madison needs to develop an economic development plan to take advantage of its strategic location in what she believes is Georgia’s version of North Carolina’s research triangle comprised of Atlanta, Athens, and Augusta with I-20 connecting all of it.
Citizens who spoke in favor of the zoning changes expressed some ambivalence about the impacts the amendments might have.
Jim Halloran borrowed a quote attributed to Yogi Berra to express his misgivings: “No one goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
The quote conveys the idea that too much development might be counterproductive to Madison’s charm.
“We’re here because Madison is wonderful and special, and we want to keep that,” resident Rick Crown said.
Crown recalled a development conflict he experienced when he was a member of the Madison Greenspace Commission, which “had the brazen temerity to ask that developers plant trees in the parking lots of the grocery store they were building.”
Developers first refused but later returned to acquiesce to the commission’s request.
Attorney Wilson Dubose said client John Rooker and Associates had owned a 170-acre property across the Public Safety Center on Monticello Road since 2004 and were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to develop it as the city had promised they could when it purchased.
“If the proposed [text amendments] pass in its current form, that will be a betrayal of what was originally believed to be the case by Rooker in 2004,” Dubose said.
Josh Harrison of Patillo Industrial Real Estate said the amendments would make it difficult for developers to invest in speculative buildings, as conditional use approval would loom over projects.
Gene Baldwin, who has lived in Madison for more than 60 years, said the changes would prevent needed development.
“Once prospects and site selectors learn of these tight conditional use triggers, inquiries into Madison will come to a halt,” Baldwin said. “Here’s a fact, no new industry has come to Madison and built new facilities in the last 20 years. Throwing up these unreasonable barriers to entry will without a doubt cut industrial prospect traffic.”