Residents along Mars Hill Road–fresh from a four-hour session on future land use along the roadway–will have another opportunity to express their views on future development in their neighborhoods on Monday night.
The Oconee County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing that night on a proposal by one of the land owners to move forward with a rezone of property even before the county takes action on an overlay district it is considering for the corridor.
Oconee County Strategic and Long-Range Planning Director Wayne Provost told Oconee County commissioners back in January that they could get an idea of what Mars Hill Road could look like in the future by looking at Epps Bridge Parkway today.
Provost said that the county promoted development along Epps Bridge Parkway between SR Loop10 and the county line at McNutt Creek by its investment in water, sewer and transportation infrastructure.
Oconee County is reporting yet another sewage spill–this one inside the city limits of Watkinsville and into a tributary of Calls Creek.
The sewage spill is the second reported by the county in three weeks and sixth since the first of the year.
Consultant Bill Ross is expected on Thursday to unveil details for implementation of an overlay district for Mars Hill Road when he meets from 3 to 7 p.m. with Oconee County citizens at the Community Center in Veterans Park.
The overlay district proposes land use that is at odds in significant ways with the county’s future development map, approved by the county in February of 2008 under Ross’ guidance.
A North Carolina real estate development company that specializes in medical office projects is putting together plans for what it is calling a health park on 14 acres at the corner of Jennings Mill Road and Virgil Langford Road.
Athens Regional Health System, parent company of Athens Regional Medical Center, will be the tenant in the first building in the proposed seven-building complex, according to architectural plans submitted to the Oconee County Planning Department.
Oconee County Code Enforcement once again has taken down signs owned by Boswell Properties that violated the county sign ordinance and were in the intersection of SR 316 and the Oconee Connector.
It also took down signs owned by the county’s Industrial Development Authority that also were in the state right of way and violated the county’s sign ordinance.
Volunteers with the Upper Oconee Watershed Network have found excessively high levels of E. coli bacteria in a water sample drawn late last week from the unnamed tributary to Barber Creek that received raw sewage from a spill on Aug. 21.
The volunteers also reported excessively high and roughly equal levels of the bacteria in Barber Creek itself below the inflow from the tributary and upstream from the inflow from the tributary, suggesting that the spill has not had lasting negative impact on Barber Creek.
