Rezoning

Ray and Kevin both have pretty good rundowns on the Council's rezoning of the "Fairfield" project off of Hillandale Road and I-85 last night. I'm not convinced that an apartment complex like this one will necessarily "destroy" the neighborhood. As i've written before, the apartment complexes off of Constitution Drive in the American Village neighborhood seem to co-exist pretty well with their single family home-owning neighbors.

Here's the real problem, though:

Opponents filed a formal protest petition against the project, under a state law that forces applicants of a contested rezoning to muster six votes for passage. Signatures on such a petition have to come from the owners of adjoining properties.

But city officials late last week ruled the petition invalid because some of the adjoining owners who'd put their names on it changed their minds.

Project opponent Laura Suski said one of Fairfield's lawyers, Craigie Sanders, visited petition signatories recently to lobby them to take back their signatures.

That does not bode well for Craigie Sanders' current tenure on the board of the Inter-Neighborhood Council. We'll see how that gets addressed at the next INC meeting.