Opposition To High-End Stone Mountain Hotel
May 8th, 2008 | By Editor | Category: All Posts, Community, Zoning/SUPBy MICHAEL PEARSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/01/08
Residents of Gwinnett County’s Park Place community in Stone Mountain aren’t interested in seeing a developer put a high-end hotel on vacant land near aging subdivisions.
About 50 people packed a small hotel meeting room Wednesday night to to oppose a plan to build a three-story Ramada brand hotel and a retail center topped by condos at Rockbridge Road and West Park Place Boulevard.
Resident Will Weston said one of the chief complaints is traffic. The area is often clogged with mile-long backups at rush hour as it is, he said.
“People just don’t want it,” he said.
Other complaints include ruined sight lines, decreased property values, adding more vacant commercial space to the area and the threat of sending an area already teetering on the edge of decline into a full death spiral.
Residents worry that adding more commercial space in the neighborhood could worsen conditions at existing shopping centers that already have vacancies, or make it difficult for the new project to succeed.
The 57,000-square-foot project is scheduled to go before the Planning Commission on May 13.
