First Rezoning Case of 2025
Rezoning for 73 Three-Story Townhouses within Town Center Overlay District
On Monday, February 17, the City of Sugar Hill Planning Commission is scheduled to hear the first rezoning case of the new year, RZ 25-001, a request to rezone approximately 15 acres just within the north-central part of the City’s Town Center Overlay District (TCO) to R36 TCO for “Single-Family Attached” dwellings, or as straightforward people outside the government would call them, townhouses.
Public hearing signs were loosely placed at the site of the request on December 20, but subsequently, and predictably, fell over. As of January 16, they were still lying on the ground and were only righted again after this author posted the following pictures of the downed signs on social media with a pointed joke. State law requires that these signs be “placed in a conspicuous site on the property,” but does not specifically say they must remain conspicuous.
Developer Zak Kittle of Kittle Homes (who also developed the Skyview on Broad townhouses next door to the Solis apartment building in “Downtown”) wants to build another townhouse complex on seven parcels totaling about 15 acres at the corner of Sycamore and Appling Roads. This is just behind the parcels for the 35,000-square-foot Northside Hospital Medical Office at the corner of Highway 20 and Sycamore, which was approved in 2021 but has not yet begun construction.
Five of the seven parcels are privately owned by individuals. The two remaining parcels are owned by Victoria Capital Investments and Whitehead Road Investments of 675 Seminole Avenue NE, Suite 301, Atlanta, GA, which is also the address of the real estate law firm Ayoub, Mansour & Bryant, LLC. Attorney John Mansour of that firm filled out part of the application paperwork. Mansour was the applicant for the recently denied case RZ 24-004, the 157-unit housing development proposed on Whitehead Road near the roundabout.
This project would consist of 73 three-story townhouses on 15 acres. Kittle and the Planning Department have calculated the density of the project at 4.89 units per acre and are actively representing that density to the community. The City of Sugar Hill Zoning Ordinance allows a density of 8 units per acre for R36 zoning.
However, some of the acreage is not developable due to a stream on the eastern side of the property, and two required stormwater facilities on the site. One of the parcels is triangular, and the developer has not tried to develop it (most likely because it isn’t feasible to do so.). When you subtract that acreage, which Real Deal Sugar Hill estimated at approximately 5 acres using the Gwinnett GIS tools, the calculated density is at about 8 units per acre, the maximum allowed according to the Zoning Ordinance.
No specific resident amenities are shown on the site plan.
All of the townhouses will have two-car garages. The townhouses on the interior streets will have garages in front, facing the street. The townhouses facing Sycamore Road and Appling Road will have the front facades facing towards the roads with garages in the back.
Kittle Homes has requested several variances to the City of Sugar Hill Zoning Ordinance for this rezoning.
Reduce the required 30-foot project setback along Appling Road to 10 feet.
Two parcels along Sycamore Road that currently have single-family houses on them are not included in the project. The developer is asking to reduce the 50-foot undisturbed buffer that would normally be required next to those parcels to a 25-foot undisturbed buffer and a 25-foot graded and replanted buffer next to the development.
Reduce the 30-foot front setbacks for the individual lots to 15 feet for the front-garage units and to 0 feet for the rear-garage units.
Reduce the rear setback for the individual lots from 15 feet to 5 feet for the rear-garage townhouses.
The developer also requested a stream buffer variance to connect to the sewer system in the Hillcrest Glenn subdivision, although the City of Sugar Hill does not require a stream buffer variance for utility connections alone.
According to the applicant’s Letter of Intent, the townhouses will be “affordable,” although the developer declines the City’s clear request to specify a price.
Skyview on Broad is still under construction. Out of the twenty-five lots, six have been sold, with all of the sold units going in the mid to high $800k range.
Planning Department Analysis
The applicant for this case provided extremely simple (and barely legible) answers to all of the questions regarding the rezoning. Kittle states that the development will “serve as a transitional zoning between BG and MH adjacent and neighboring uses.” (BG is general business and MH is mobile home.)
He also says it won’t burden nearby transportation, utilities, and schools because it is “only adding 73 new homes.” He responded that the property had no economic use as currently zoned because “it is zoned Heavy Industry.”
The City of Sugar Hill Planning Department put more time and thought into their responses. For the most part, their responses echo the applicant's answers, although they seemed to be working much harder to sell this project than he was.
A key difference is that the Planning Department answered “Yes", that the property does have a reasonable economic use as currently zoned. The Planning Department also disagreed slightly with the applicant regarding the impact to schools, indicating that they foresee a “minimal impact on schools.”
Conditions
The City of Sugar Hill Planning Department recommended ten conditions for the project.
The first four are standard for almost every rezoning case in Sugar Hill. The notable difference is that condition one used to just require that the developer “substantially conform to the site plan submitted.” Last August (with the now infamous ChurchPubEventCenter case), the Planning Department started adding a statement saying that certain alterations were permitted without additional Mayor and Council approval if those changes “align with the spirit and context of the approval” at the discretion of the Planning Department.
The second condition, regarding the ownership of the streets and common areas, is standard. The developer can later ask the City to take over the streets and rights of way, and it is not uncommon for that to happen.
Conditions 5 and 6 are just reiterations of explicit requirements that are already specified in the City of Sugar Hill Zoning Ordinance for all townhouses. Those requirements have been a part of the Zoning Ordinance since 2020. As such, they would have applied to this development anyway even without the condition, just as they would have applied to Kittle Homes’ Skyview on Broad complex that was approved in 2021.
The Staff Report did not indicate why they chose to mention existing regulations as conditions. However, the developer deviated from those regulations on the Skyview on Broad complex without discussing them at that development’s Design Review hearing. Perhaps this is the Planning Department’s way of hammering home the importance of the regulation, although it’s unclear how they plan to enforce the condition if they failed to enforce the regulation.
Condition 6, the “Unique Character” condition, is subjective and leaves plenty of room for interpretation. However, the Skyview on Broad units display fewer differences from unit to unit than the pictures shown in Appendix C of the Zoning Ordinance, which a reasonable person could construe as examples of the “unique character” the City requires. The drawings of the townhomes proposed for case RZ 25-001 are at least equally as homogenous as Skyview on Broad.
Conditions 7 through 10 are approvals of the variances requested by the developer.
Planning Department Recommendation
The City Planning Department recommends in its staff report that the Planning Commission recommend approval to the City Council of the case and all of the requested variances through its vote on Monday, February 17. The City Council will hear the case on Monday, March 10.
