The land housing Hidden Hills Farm and Saddle Club, location of Southern Adventist University’s horsemanship class, could be developed into a subdivision with more than 500 single-family homes by EAH Acquisitions, LLC, an Atlanta affiliate of Empire Communities.
Numerous Collegedale residents oppose the plan, including some Southern employees. However, the Collegedale Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Monday to approve on first reading two requests associated with the plans. The commissioners voted 5-0 in favor of rezoning parts of Edgmon Road from Agricultural (AG) to Low Density Single-Family (R-1-L) and allowing the application of a Planned Unit Development overlay, subject to conditions.
They are scheduled to make the final decision Oct. 17 during a second reading of the ordinances, which will include time for public comment.
“As part of the agenda, we will have a public hearing where individuals will have an opportunity to speak either for or against and ask questions regarding it,” said Mayor Katie Lamb in an interview with the Accent. “After the presentation and public hearing, we will go back into our commission, and the commissioners will discuss it and have a final vote on it.”
Hidden Hills is a family-run farmstead located at 5900 Edgmon Road, about three miles from Southern’s campus. Tara Hills, an adjunct professor who teaches Southern’s horsemanship class, wrote in an email to the Accent that she and her husband started Hidden Hills in 2004 on a farm owned by her extended family, a place that has been her home since 1988.
“I’ve experienced all the emotional gamut associated with a major loss. It’s been an emotional roller coaster ride,” Hills wrote, expressing her reaction to Empire’s proposal. “I think it’s a shame to doom another piece of land to housing. But it’s not mine to make decisions about, and I can hardly blame any landowners, let alone my family, for making choices that best benefit them.”
If Empire’s current proposal is approved, Hidden Hills and the farmland on Edgmon Road will go away, according to Hills. At this time, however, she and her husband plan to relocate and continue running their business. She does not intend to stop Southern’s horsemanship class.
“I love teaching horsemanship for SAU, which I’ve been doing since 2005. It’s one of the classes that sets SAU apart, and I appreciate that the administration has allowed the class to continue,” she wrote. “ … We’ll see what the future holds. In the end, [my husband] and I are just trying to follow the path God is leading us down.”
As explained in detail in a previous Accent article, Collegedale’s planning commission met on Sept.12 to discuss Empire’s rezoning and planned unit development (PUD) requests with the developer’s representative, MAP Engineers owner Mike Price, and community members. Video footage of the meeting shows Price explaining development changes, including the elimination of townhomes and the reduction of houses from 591 to 512, made in response to community concerns. He also discussed results of a traffic study conducted by Kimberley-Horn and Associates, Inc. and how developers incorporated those results into their updated plans.
Multiple Collegedale residents voiced their concerns at the meeting, and not one spoke in support of the PUD. Complaints covered multiple issues, from traffic congestion to the potential destruction of the city’s “country” feel. Hills included this concern in her email as well, stating that the “country” feel is what has attracted people to Collegedale for a long time. One resident expressed concern about the local teacher shortage and how additional families could potentially overwhelm schools.
However, the planning commission members unanimously voted, minus one abstention by Chairwoman Ruthie Gray, to recommend approval for the rezoning and adjusted PUD requests to the Collegedale Board of Commissioners.
One resident who questioned members of the planning commission at the Sept. 12 meeting was Eve Knight, administrative assistant for Academic Administration at Southern. Knight has a horse at Hidden Hills and knows the families that live there. In an email to the Accent, she explained why she opposes the rezoning proposal.
“Approving the zoning change means the PUD will automatically be approved, and the beautiful land we see there now will be devastated by a crowded development,” she wrote.
Knight referenced the developer’s revised plan to only construct 1.26 housing units per acre, which is a number, she said, calculated using the property’s total acreage of 408.
“What they are really doing is building on roughly 200 of those acres, so when you do the math, that becomes 2.5 houses squeezed in per acre,” Knight wrote. “I’ve heard the representative say, ‘People don’t want yards,’ and other such statements, when we all know it’s the developers who love squeezing houses in like that as it maximizes their profits. I feel like it’s important to speak the truth about what’s happening.”
Attempts by the Accent to reach Price for comment were unsuccessful. However, during the Sept. 12 meeting, he said Empire intends to create an “upper-scale community” that will still maintain the character of the land.
“People no longer want five acres or an acre. They want someone else to mow the grass, or they want it done quickly so they can spend their weekend doing other things,” he said. “It’s just simply a matter of we are no longer our parents’ generation, if you will, in many ways. It’s different. And so, what we are looking at is conserving majority portions of this property, setting it aside. And then, again, putting on smaller lots — absolutely. But, again, that’s the development pattern that we see. This is what people want.”
Knight also has concerns about the timing of Empire’s proposal. Roughly ten years ago, the land was a part of Hamilton County, and when the landowners attempted to rezone their property, Hamilton’s board denied the change, according to Knight.
“This year, very quietly in June, the owners requested that the land be annexed to Collegedale,” she said. “Immediately after that, in July, they requested the zoning change and the PUD approval. So, to me, it seems a little odd. How did the owners know that Collegedale government would look favorably on the zoning change and development?”
In response to this statement, Hills confirmed that the farm was recently annexed to Collegedale, a decision made by her family members with majority rule.
“The rest of the family didn’t get a vote since it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway,” Hills wrote. “Family politics is complicated.”
Knight emailed about 210 Southern employees she believed to be Collegedale residents asking them to send emails to the city commissioners saying that they, as Collegedale voters, oppose the zoning change. About 10 of those employees told her they emailed the commissioners, she wrote in an email to the Accent, but others may have done so without informing her. She hopes the commissioners will listen to the community and at least add conditions to the proposed development to further decrease the number of homes, but she is not optimistic.
Another individual who spoke at the meeting is Austin Miller, a Cleveland resident who started a petition in opposition to the development titled “Stop the Rezoning & Destruction of 600 Acres of Agricultural Woodland.” As of Oct. 4, the petition had 3,302 signatures, but, as the planning commission members brought up in the meeting, not all these signatures are from Collegedale residents. Miller, however, doesn’t think that fact makes much of a difference.
“I will admit I was a bit flustered with the council’s response to people outside the community signing the petition,” Miller wrote via text to the Accent. “I don’t think it makes a difference where you are from because these people have acknowledged what a special place Hidden Hills is.”
After sharing the petition, many people responded and wrote that they had ties to Collegedale, according to Miller. Some are former Southern and/or Hidden Hills students, and others have family in the area.
Through email correspondence with the Accent, Vice Mayor Tim Johnon, who sits on the planning commission, said he voted to recommend approval because Empire is the company “best fit” to develop the property. He said the company has earned multiple awards, including 14 Green Builder of the Year awards, and has a good reputation in other cities where it has developed. Johnson wrote that the PUD will include more than 85 acres of open space for community use.
“Empire is focused on greenspace for the communities they build in,” he stated. “This is not like many developments where the developer just clear cuts everything, and you just see dirt. Most of building will be in the open areas. Of course, there will be some elimination of trees.”
Empire plans to invest approximately $1.7 million to improve Collegedale’s infrastructure in correspondence with this project, according to Johnson. It will purchase a new sewer pump station, construct a roundabout in the center of the PUD, expand the bridge on Edgmon Road over Wolftever Creek to three lanes and include sidewalks to their project.
Johnson made multiple statements in regard to traffic concerns. First, he said traffic caused by the railroad and individuals being redirected to Lee Highway when a crash occurs on the interstate are factors that have been and will continue to be out of the city’s control. Second, he added multiple “things to think about,” such as the large number of remote workers who don’t commute, schools’ differing starting times and the new Apison Pike scheduled for completion in 2024 before the new homes are expected to be completed. He also wrote that Hamilton County is the only body that can address the teacher shortage issue.
Finally, Johnson expressed a need for additional housing in Collegedale.
“Growth is here and facing every community, not just Collegedale,” he wrote. “There is a need for homes in our community. Employers are adding jobs, such as VW & McKee, and good paying positions. People are wanting to live close to their employer.”
Collegedale Editor Elsie Pak contributed to this story.
