City Pushes More Dense Housing in "Downtown"
With a Concerted Effort to Sneak 180 Townhouses and Zero Lot-Line Houses Near the Whitehead Road Roundabout Past the Public.
On Monday, October 14, City Council will hear the case of RZ 24-004, a requested rezoning of two parcels totaling 4.61 acres at 1036 and 1040 Whitehead Road FROM RS-150 (Low-Density Single-Family Residential with a minimum lot size of fifteen thousand (15,000) square feet), RS-100 (Medium-Density Single-Family Residential with a minimum lot size of ten thousand (10,000) square feet) and AF (Agricultural-Forest) TO RS-100 CBD (Central Business District).
So far, applicant John Mansour ( the property is owned by "Whitehead Road Investments LLC, care of real estate law firm Ayoub, Mansour, & Bryant) has not appeared in any of the hearings regarding the project, instead choosing to be represented by realtor and former City of Sugar Hill Council Member Nick Thompson (who appeared at the recent millage rate hearings praising the City Council extensively without mentioning his pending rezoning case to the audience).
The two parcels that are specifically mentioned in RZ 24-004 (outlined in red in the image above) are actually part of a larger plan cooked up by the City, the applicant, and his realtor to create a 15-acre, 180-unit housing development consisting of townhomes and zero-lot-line homes priced between $400k and $800k around a small park focused on the City’s “Champion Tree.”
The project also includes 2,700 square feet of commercial space off of West Broad, 27 on-street parking spaces on Whitehead Road, and an extension of Bailey Avenue to connect Whitehead Road and Highway 20.
And that “Amenity” shown in the site plan? That’s a stormwater retention pond.
The City of Sugar Hill currently owns some of the parcels required for the whole project, and has the City Attorney working on a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) to transfer some of its property in the area to its Downtown Development Authority so it can be sold for this project. (Correction 1/11/2025: To date, the City has not shared this MOU with the public, so the exact nature of the agreement remains unknown.)
This project is just one of the dense housing projects planned for this immediate area.
Just north of the RZ 24-004 parcels is a 10.5-acre area (site of the recently demolished Bailey Cabinet Shop) that was approved for 126 four-story, for-lease townhomes in September 2021. That development will have two driveways, both on Bailey Avenue.
It’s also worth noting that for a couple of years (2019-2021), the City’s Downtown Development Authority had been discussing “Gateway West,” an active adult residential project at the corner of Highway 20 and West Broad that would have consisted of 150 age-restricted housing units.
They stopped talking about the project at public meetings in the middle of 2021. It’s unclear if the project went away, or simply went underground. The conversation could very well have continued in the lengthy Executive Sessions routinely held by the City Council and Downtown Development Authority. Either way, the fact that the City discussed this project for so long indicates that they have a serious interest in using those parcels for additional dense housing at some point.
Shady Beginnings
RZ 24-004 has been inappropriately mysterious since the public notice signs were first placed at the site in August.
Originally, RZ-24-004 appeared to the public at the same time as case RZ 24-003, which requested rezoning to RS-100 CBD for two nearby parcels closer to the roundabout. Due to their proximity, similar timing, and identical rezoning, it seemed likely at the time that the two cases were related.
When Real Deal Sugar Hill submitted a series of Open Records Requests asking for the applications, site plans, renderings, and letters of intent for the cases, the City simply responded with a couple of bare-bones applications for each case.
The applications were not accompanied by letters of intent, site plans, or any renderings of the structures which are required by the City of Sugar Hill Planning Department according to their application packet.
City Manager Paul Radford applied for RZ 24-003 himself, using what appears to be his personal contact information since the City redacted it. The case subsequently disappeared, and the public notice sign was pulled up.
Turns out, he didn’t have the authority to pursue rezoning himself, as it is not explicitly given to him by the City of Sugar Hill Charter or the City Council. We now know for a fact that the RZ 24-003 parcels are also supposed to be part of the same project as the parcels for RZ 24-004. Apparently, Radford was so eager to get this project going he had trouble following the law.
Undeterred by their failure on RZ 24-003, the City of Sugar Hill and its Planning Department scheduled RZ 24-004 to be heard by the Sugar Hill Planning Commission (SHPC) at its next meeting.
August 19 - First Public Hearing by the SHPC
When the case first came before the SHPC at the August meeting, the applicant had submitted nothing other than an application with the blocks describing the project left entirely blank. The only indication of what the applicant intended to do with the property was on the sign placed at the site, which said "future single-family development."
At the hearing, Thompson would not indicate what the applicant was planning, saying only that they would reveal their plans to the Mayor and Council "later in the year." The timing of their intended reveal was interesting given that the City Council was scheduled to hear and vote on the mystery case in just three weeks from that date, on September 9.
Real Deal Sugar Hill asked a City Council Member about the case multiple times, and was only told that no information could be provided because it was something from Executive Session. That means that the City knew about the plans and was involved in them and chose not to reveal this information to the public.
It's unclear how many, if any, of the Planning Commission knew more about the project. However, it was very interesting that no one seemed surprised to see the case in the agenda packet with no details, and no one immediately asked the Planning Department the obvious question: how do you have a planning and zoning hearing when there is not a plan?
I spoke at the public hearing and was the first person to mention that. Three other residents then asked the same thing. Would anyone have brought it up if we hadn't?
Planning Commission Member Mark Daniels made a motion to table the case until they got a site plan, seconded simultaneously by Members Brian Shebs and Rosemary Walsh. All members present (Phil Olsen, Jason Jones, Rosemary Walsh, Mark Daniels, and Brian Shebs) voted in favor of the motion to table.
Typically, the Planning Department uses a Public Hearing Checklist form to ensure that applicants have submitted all of the required paperwork prior to initiating the public hearing process. On August 26 - well after this hearing - Real Deal requested a copy of a completed form for RZ 24-004. The response? There was not one.
September 9 - City Council
Even though the SHPC voted to table the case, that doesn’t prevent it from being heard by the City Council.
A Planning Department staff report dated September 6 still failed to show a letter of intent, site plan, or renderings and disclosed no information about the project or exactly why the applicant was requesting the rezoning. Given what we now know about the project and the City’s involvement, it’s clear that at least the City Manager knew about the project and the purpose of this rezoning at this time. More than likely, at least some of the elected officials actually knew.
They just didn’t want the public to know.
The applicant requested that the case be tabled and the City honored that request. City Council unanimously voted to table the case and public hearing to the October 14 City Council meeting and remand the application back to SHPC for their September 16 meeting.
September 16 - Second Hearing by the SHPC
When the case came back before the SHPC at their September meeting, the applicant was still missing quite a bit of the required documentation, most notably the Letter of Intent with its required information and renderings showing how the housing units will look.
They did include a site plan which looks like the one at the top of this article. Instead of the renderings, they just chose to share pictures of other buildings they had built, with no confirmation that the buildings for this project would look the same. The Interim Planning Director shared those as part of her presentation for the case.
The Planning Department recommended approval of the rezoning despite the still incomplete application. Interestingly, one of their “conditions” allowed the Planning Department to authorize changes to the site plan without the approval of City Council.
When Chair Phil Olsen asked the Interim Planning Director about the MOU between the City of Sugar Hill and its Downtown Development Authority (DDA), she avoided the questions, and it still wasn't clear whether the City would be buying or selling land for the project.
Realtor and DDA Member Josh Mendoza spoke in favor of the case, as did his father, J. Gregory Mendoza. While both are residents of Whitehead Road, neither mentioned the younger Mendoza’s role with the City. Realtor and DDA Chair Jack Wolfe also spoke in favor of the case without mentioning his role with the City.
Other supporters were local realtor Clifton Prewitt, Ifeanyi Imachukwu, and Faye Sisson. An email in support of the project from local realtor Lori Coppedge, who did not speak at the meeting, was added to the record.
According to the City’s summary of this meeting, the supportive comments were that the “project provides balance and growth with additional housing stock in the downtown, this is a great project with a different feel and vibe with proper mix, ties in with the Comp Plan and greenway with texture, fabric color and paint themes.” Since the renderings were not provided to the public, their praise for the “feel and vibe” and “color and paint themes” indicated that they may actually have had inside knowledge of the project that was being withheld from the general public.
Residents Tom Lobonc, Rick January, Andrew Schultz, Paul Grimes, and I spoke out against the project, citing concerns about the acceptance of incomplete applications against the City’s own rules, the housing density in Sugar Hill (especially “Downtown”), and the traffic caused by that density. I also pointed out that there’s no guarantee this won't end up being a rental community, and that there are no City policies in place to prevent that should the developer decide to go in that direction after getting approval for this rezoning case.
When Thompson gave his rebuttal, he actually said, “I apologize for my application being deficient last time. It’s not deficient any longer.” That was a lie.
You can see him tell that lie in the video below at the 43:49 mark.
After the public hearing was closed, Planning Commission Members asked questions of David Smith from Hedgewood Homes, the development manager for the project.
Chairman Phil Olsen asked him about the price of the units. Smith responded that they would probably be between $400,000 and $800,000, depending on the degree of customization.
Member Jason Jones then offered some unique commentary on the case, citing his background as an architect. He said that if he had ever proposed a project with so little information anywhere else, the case would have never gotten as far as it did in the City of Sugar Hill. He also stated that building so many homes in the area with a value of $800,000 would “drastically increase the taxation on everybody else’s house.”
SHPC voted 3-0-2 to recommend denial of the request, with Commission Members Daniels, Shebs, and Walsh voting in favor of recommending denial. Olsen and Jones abstained from the vote but did not indicate the reason for their abstention.
October 7 - City Council Discussion
City Council discussed the case at their Work Session a week before this case will be heard again on October 14. The only people allowed to speak at Council Work Sessions are the Mayor, City Council, and City staff, so there were no comments from the applicant or members of the community.
City Manager Paul Radford and Interim Planning Director Rebecca Keefer were working hard to sell the project to the Council. Radford was particularly excited that the applicant would be building the Bailey Avenue extension and the park, although both would later be added to the City’s infrastructure inventory for perpetual maintenance.
Keefer presented the case for the Sugar Hill Planning Department, unveiling documents that were not shown at the SHPC hearing on September 16.
The applicant finally produced a Letter of Intent on September 30, after two SHPC hearings and one potential City Council hearing that ended up getting tabled. The City supposedly requires the document before an applicant can be heard by our government at all. The document is not on a letterhead, does not contain a closing with a signature, and recycles much of the content from the Planning Department staff reports, giving the distinct impression that the City may have written the letter itself. The Letter of Intent never indicates if the units are to be owner-occupied or leased, or a proposed price range for their sale or lease.
The applicant also finally supplied very simple renderings of their proposed structures.
These documents had not been seen by the public before. Real Deal Sugar Hill files ORRs to obtain these kinds of documents from the City, but the Planning Department consistently chooses to respond at the very end of the three-day window that State Law allows for the government response to an ORR.
It’s not uncommon for applicants who aren’t easily sailing through the rezoning process to tell the government that if they don’t get approved, they’re going to build something else. They’ll then describe something likely to be very objectionable to the public. It’s a bit of a threat to force the City Council’s hand.
In this case, City Council Member Taylor Anderson made sure to question Keefer about an adjacent parcel also owned by the applicant, which is already in the Central Business District (CBD). In their awkward and long-winded question-and-answer session, they indicated that the parcel was already entitled to build an 800,000-square-foot multi-family building - similar in size to The Local Apartments across from City Hall - that could contain as many as 500 units. He followed up by saying how much he liked the site plan for RZ 24-004. There seemed to be a bit of an implication from Council Member Anderson that refusal to approve RZ 24-004 might result in the construction of yet another apartment complex in “Downtown.” It seemed like a threat to coerce his fellow Council Members to vote for the project on Monday, October 14.
To date, neither the applicant nor his realtor/former Council Member representative have publicly stated any desire to build an apartment complex on the site for any reason. If they ever decide to, perhaps they’ll give Anderson credit for the idea.
October 14 - City Council Hearing and Vote
The current plan is for the Mayor and Council to have a public hearing for case RZ 24-004 at the City Council meeting on Monday, October 14, at 7:30 PM.