Monroe County Commissioners approved by a 4-0 vote on Tuesday, Jan. 5 to allow a developer to put 12 tiny homes for rent on a 10.59-acre tract at 2467 Smith Road.
The applicant and property owner, George Emami of The Brokery, LLC, requested a variance in agricultural zoning to place 12 tiny homes on the property. Emami also requested to create a 60-foot driveway to access the homes on the tract, which is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Smith and Johnstonville roads.
The Monroe County Planning & Zoning Board took no action on Emami’s request at a Dec. 28, 2020 hearing after a motion to deny failed to garner enough votes. Commissioners then had the final say on Tuesday. Emami, the District 4 Commissioner, recused himself from voting on or participating in Board discussion on his own request.
After about a dozen neighbors expressed concern about Emami’s proposed project at the P&Z meeting, Emami returned on Tuesday with numerous concessions to placate his neighbors.
Chief among those were Emami’s intention to limit the number of tiny houses on the tract to 12, down 40 percent from the 20 he initially proposed to the P&Z Board.
Other concessions Emami agreed to included:
– Homes built or located to the site for finishing shall be in excess of 250 square feet heated or cooled.
– All homes will be legally affixed to a permanent foundation.
– All homes must be built to stick-built, new construction standards in Monroe County, which currently subscribes to International Building Code (IBC) or International Residential Code (IRC) guidelines.
– All homes must provide full electrical, mechanical and plumbing services to the home. (Absolutely no window hung air conditioning units allowed).
– All homes must have a minimum quality/grade of exterior siding of hardiplank siding or masonry-based siding and either a 30-year architectural shingle or metal roofing.
– The distance between houses shall be 45 feet.
– The property owner (The Brokery) shall be responsible for all grounds maintenance and shall keep an annual service contract with a grounds maintenance company for trimming of lawns, bushes, trees, etc.
– Driveways shall be provided to the rear of each home and a parking pad sufficient for two cars shall be constructed for each premises.
– An additional guest parking area shall be constructed to provide overflow parking.
– Nothing but chairs, swings, plants or small tables shall be permitted on porches.
– There will be no car awnings allowed.
– Each dwelling shall have a landscaping budget and must have a minimum of one pine straw bed, which has no less than three 3-gallon shrubs plus one 4-5-foot tree installed.
– The Brokery will require in its leases that no belongings will be allowed to be stored on the visible part of the premises.
– The Brokery will construct a small storage shed for each resident behind each dwelling unit. The storage sheds shall match the color and feel of each of the residential dwellings. All excess belongings of residents must be stored in these units.
– In an effort to both make the neighborhood more sightly and to make it easier to collect garbage, the property owner shall be responsible for setting up a small waste station adequate for disposal of garbage. The station will be fenced.
– No individual trash bins will be allowed.
– The location of the homes has been moved 50 feet further north than previously presented to allow for additional buffer from the nearest neighbor. The Brokery will not cut present vegetative growth along Johnstonville Road, the rear of the property or between the property and its nearest neighbor.
– There will be additional vegetation, which is meant to provide some buffer or more of a vegetative front for the development.
– Included on the new site plan, based on the reduced density, are several acres of buffer for the homes.
– Each dwelling will have no more than two full-time occupants.
Emami said Tuesday to his previous detractors: “I just want to stress that I have not taken your positions lightly. I have not taken my fiduciary responsibility to this county lightly. And most importantly, to those constituents that reside within my district, which this property does, I feel that have taken extreme measures to make this project something that was a little more palatable for a very few people who expressed concerns about it.”
Emami said he needed a variance to undertake the project because Monroe County does not presently have a clause in its zoning ordinance that deals directly with tiny homes. However, under the county’s current ordinance, Emami could have erected at least nine homes on the 10.59-acre tract without getting a variance simply by subdividing it into three separate lots that each contained a pair of homes and a guest house. Emami said having slightly larger density with 12 homes makes the project a bit more advantageous from a cost standpoint.
Constitution Drive resident Wes Cone spoke in support of Emami’s project, saying there’s a tremendous need for affordable housing in Monroe County. Cone said he has several rental properties in Monroe County with prices similar to what Emami plans to charge and said 232 applicants sought to fill a recent vacancy at one of his properties.
Nevertheless, three persons spoke Tuesday in opposition to Emami’s proposal.
Smith Road resident Lee Dearing said she fears the tiny homes will bring additional traffic to Smith Road and said the Atlanta market is a better fit for Emami’s project than in Monroe County.
Tye Hanna of H&H Timberlands, LLC, a Peachtree Corners resident who owns more than 1,000 acres on Smith Road, said Emami’s project could set a bad precedent for Monroe County.
“I trust that George is going to build a quality project,” Hanna said. “I don’t trust other people are going to build a quality project.”
Monroe County Commissioners and City of Forsyth leaders have been at odds since Dec. 7 when Forsyth Council approved to annex much of Hanna’s Smith Road property into the city with plans for future industrial development at the site. With Hanna’s property annexed into the city, Hanna’s neighbors, most of whom live outside the city limits, won’t have a direct say in future plans for the tract. Emami and District 2 Commissioner John Ambrose each publicly opposed Hanna’s annexation effort to no avail.
As a result, Ambrose fired back directly at Hanna on Tuesday in response to the developer’s opposition to Emami’s project.
“You just annexed in a bunch of land into the city,” Ambrose said to Hanna. “You don’t live in the county.”
When Hanna replied that he has property outside the Forsyth city limits across the street from Emami’s proposed site, Ambrose shot back: “How about the people who live across the street from your (city) property?”
Former District 1 Commissioner Larry Evans, who supported Hanna’s annexation effort, was next in line to oppose the proposed tiny homes. Evans said Emami’s project is a “mini subdivision” and said the District 4 Commissioner should have instead requested a re-zoning to multi-family residential.
“If this in fact is passed, you can throw out the subdivision ordinance and the planning and zoning,” Evans said. “Anybody’s that got some property in agricultural, they can come up here and put in a mini subdivision, and it could be disastrous.”
Chairman Greg Tapley then allowed Emami to respond to the objections raised on Tuesday, and Emami angrily took aim at Hanna’s complaint.
Emami said sharply: “I’m just gonna say what some of us are thinking here and that’s the fact that these gentlemen (Hanna and H&H Timberlands, LLC co-owner Kenneth Hurt) are coming from Marietta, Ga. to come in here and oppose my project. They don’t live here. They have nothing to do with Monroe County. They came in here and forced their will on the citizens of Monroe County to annex 1,000 acres into the city. Why? Why? I’m gonna tell you right now why. So they didn’t have to do this. So they didn’t have to do 35, 40 freaking phone calls from other people who live in the county to defend their product. They get to go to the city and get passed whatever the hell they want to get passed now. Congratulations! But you’re gonna come here and talk about my project and give me hell!”
Emami told Commissioners that the concessions he’d made have appeased almost all of the neighbors who objected to his project at the P&Z meeting. He even read a text message from one of them, Smith Road resident David Ogle, who said he wasn’t going to be attending Tuesday’s meeting because Emami had quelled nearly all of his neighbors’ concerns.
Emami then inferred that the complaints made by Evans, who served alongside him on the Board of Commissioners for more than two years, were more personal than project-related.
“To have a past commissioner come who has passed so many things that would conflict with the things that he had to say, to me is despicable,” Emami said. “It’s despicable, and it’s ridiculous. That is totally in line, in my opinion, with why you no longer sit in that (commission) chair.”
Emami said Evans’ complaint that his development is a subdivision is not at all accurate. He said he won’t be subdividing the property at all, noting that the homes are not individual lots. However, Emami said if the project is successful, he and his father-in-law, John Barry Cox, have considered manufacturing tiny homes. He said it’s possible in the future that a renter wishing to buy could purchase the title to the tiny home structure itself, but not the lot it sits on.
Ambrose, who said he supports Emami’s project, said he’s not concerned that Emami’s tiny homes will ever become rundown because Emami runs credit checks on all applicants wishing to rent from him.
“He (Emami) runs them (rental properties) kind of like a bank or insurance company,” Ambrose said. “if you don’t have a good credit rating, you’re not going to get a place from him.”
New District 1 Commissioner Lamarcus Davis said affordable housing is in heavy demand in Monroe County, so he too was in favor of allowing the variance.
District 2 Commissioner Eddie Rowland said he had outlined 12 questions that he would have had for Emami if he lived near the proposed development. He said Emami had answered all of them sufficiently enough for him to be on board with Emami’s request as well.
Tapley, who said he was impressed with the thoroughness of Emami’s plan, said he thought 20 tiny homes on the 10.59-acre lot would have been too many. However, he noted that 12 homes were not many more than Emami would be allowed to put on the agricultural-zoned lot without even getting a variance at all.
After about 45 minutes of discussion, Ambrose motioned to approve Emami’s variance request with all of the conditions previously cited by Emami included, which was seconded by Rowland. Commissioners then approved the measure 4-0.
