Planning Commission: Toll plans to drain a lake for Brookecrest, and a preschool gets a yes

The Planning Commission met for more than four hours Wednesday night on the three plans in our Oct. 25 preview. On all of them its vote is a recommendation, not the final word. Here is what it said, from the city’s video; the city hadn’t posted minutes as of Friday.

Brookecrest, 5 to 1. Toll Brothers’ Toll Southeast wants to divide 53.31 acres off King and Cox roads, near the Roswell line, into 42 lots of at least an acre. Nineteen more lots of at least three acres, to the north, go through a quicker staff review. The site wraps around a lake whose dam the state’s Safe Dams program has found unsafe, city staff said. Toll’s attorney, Ethan Underwood, said the larger lake “cannot be saved.” Its dam will be breached, meaning opened so the water runs out, and the lake drained, he said. The stream beneath it would be restored, as Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division and the city require. Toll’s engineer told the commission that repairing the old earthen dam wasn’t practical, and that when the work is done there will be no lake left, just a concrete wall to control floods and the stream flowing through it. He put the work at six months to a year. A smaller pond off Silver Fox Court stays; Toll has agreed to repair its dam, Underwood said, and the new homeowners association will maintain it.

Several residents who spoke asked the commission to put off a decision. Instead it voted to ask the community development director, who approves these plans herself, for three things. She would weigh the dam work’s effects on neighbors and the new lots. She would require studies of how water will flow (hydrology reports). And she would consider the conditions Toll offered. No public vote follows; the director decides.

Harmony at Highway 9, 4 to 0, one abstaining. Ten homes on 3.79 acres at 265 Five Acre Road, in Deerfield. Staff said the plan meets the code if the director grants a waiver from a rule that no more than one in five lots may face a small park instead of a street. The commission asked her to make sure the code is met and to look favorably on that waiver.

A preschool in Crabapple, unanimous. The Wilds Early Learning Academy would care for up to 20 children per half-day session in a 750-square-foot suite at 12457 Broadwell Road. The commission recommended approval with staff’s conditions. Council decides; the staff report points to its Dec. 7 meeting.