My Letter to the Johns Creek City Council on the Bell Road Rezoning Case for High Density Apartments

Council Members:
I am asking you to vote against the rezoning of the properties located at Bell Road and 141, which is on tonight’s agenda.
This location has become another Ground Zero for gridlock in Johns Creek.  We now have four traffic lights over .7 miles, from Skyway Drive north to Johns Creek Parkway.  During morning and evening rush hours, I have used Google maps to track the commute times through this area and the average time to travel this very short distance averages 8-9 minutes, and I have seen it as high as 11 minutes to get through the four lights.  That is less than 10 miles per hour through this area.  Normal travel should be three minutes, according to Google.  As the City also uses Waze(a Google product), I hope that you accept that data as accurate.
The much higher density that the rezoning will allow will only make this issue worse.  Anecdotal suggestions that this development will not make things worse are not fact based.  We do not know exactly what or how the tenants that choose to live there will act on a day to day basis.  We can only make assumptions.
The only way that this property can be built to this density is with your approval, and ignoring the comprehensive land use plan.
Isn’t it time we put the current residents of Johns Creek ahead of those residents who may not even live here in Johns Creek and might become tenants of this development?
I’ll be frank.  Living in the Medlock Bridge neighborhood, I will not even consider traveling north on 141 between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., unless I am headed to City Hall. It’s not worth the hassle.
Please make the right choice and reject this high density rezoning case.
I also encourage you to ask just how many additional units are permitted by giving the zoning variances versus what the property currently allows.  The height variance, for instance, allows for how many more units? What is the difference to what our zoning would allow as it stands today, and what they are seeking?
Does this equal 10, 20, or even 50% more units?
If the CLUP needs to be changed, then we as a community should change it first.  We should not continue to “variance” ourselves to an ever higher density in Johns Creek on a case by case basis.
Respectfully,
Ernest Moosa
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About EJ Moosa

EJ Moosa believes that a smaller government is a more efficient government. He believes that better analysis leads to better solutions. A graduate of Georgia State University In Business Administration, EJ grew up in Cobb County graduating from Osborne High School and worked at several Atlanta companies including First Atlanta, IBM, and Six Flags over Georgia.

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