CAAT Holdings LLC has dismissed its suit against the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, dropping its assertion that the commissioners abused their power and acted arbitrarily when they denied a request for a change in the minimum size of dwellings in Pebble Creek subdivision south of Watkinsville.
County Attorney Daniel Haygood announced the resolution of the suit against the county at the end of the BOC meeting on Oct. 29.
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners approved a series of modifications to the county’s Unified Development Code last night, but it decided the existing code language that excludes chickens and other fowl from all but agricultural acreage should remain in place.
B.R. White, director of the county’s Planning Department, told the Board that the possibility of changing the code to allow “poultry and other domesticated fowl” into subdivisions has been “very controversial.”
The Oconee County Board of Commissioners tomorrow night will hold public hearings on three zoning issues that, if approved, will allow Barton and Melanie Cartey to continue to operate their wedding reception business at 2531 Snows Mill Road in the western part of the county.
The Carteys already have built two reception halls, one resembling an old general store and the other resembling a barn, though county records do not show building permits having been issued for the two structures.
The clothing and accessories retailer Old Navy is occupying only three-quarters of the space at its new store in Oconee County’s Epps Bridge Centre as was the case in its now-closed store in Athens Promenade shopping center on Atlanta Highway.
And Children's Place will occupy a store at Epps Bridge Centre that is less than half the size of its current store in Georgia Square Mall.
Athens student housing is spilling over into Oconee County with the construction of the high-density Athens Ridge residential complex just inside the county line on old Macon Highway at White Oak Road.
Zoned for multi-family residential development, Athens Ridge is labeled a townhome and residential condominium development on county site development plans. Those plans show 190 dwelling units on just more than 35 acres of land on McNutt Creek just before it reaches the Middle Oconee River.
The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia recorded deed documents in the Superior Court of Oconee County late last month officially transferring 1,055 acres that had been part of the J. Phil Campbell Sr. Natural Resource Conservation Center from the United States Department of Agriculture to the University of Georgia.
As a condition of acceptance, the state agreed to “use the property for agricultural and natural resources research for a minimum of 25 years,” guaranteeing that the acreage will not be developed before 2038.
Developers are preparing two sites roughly a mile apart on the Oconee Connector near its intersection with SR 316.
The Oconee County Planning Department has issued a grading permit and approved the preliminary site plan for Georgia Skin Cancer and Aesthetic Dermatology at the corner of the Oconee Connector and Virgil Langford Road north of SR 316.
