City OKs downsized Riverside plan
Nearly 8 acres across from Ridge Ferry Park will be developed, with 72 acres reserved for public trails.
In front of a packed room of 60 to 70 opponents, the Rome City Commission approved on Monday plans by Ledbetter Properties for 80 acres on Riverside Parkway around Burwell Creek.
Wright Ledbetter said the company — Riverside Parkway Partners LLC — would close on the $600,000 purchase from the city by the end of the year.
Plans call for nearly 72 acres to be put into a perpetual conservation easement and about 8 acres dedicated to development. Ledbetter said they’re considering offices, although the market is slow. Shops and restaurants are more likely options.
“Rome is under-retailed,” Ledbetter said following the vote. “The fact that Sears and Kmart closed had more to do with Sears and Kmart than Rome.”
He estimates a total investment of at least $10 million and, if the company’s Riverwalk development across the street is an indication, as many as 500 jobs.
The 5 to 3 vote by the commission to accept the revised agreement ends a process that started in April 2007. Since then, Ledbetter said his company has spent more than $1.35 million on plans and environmental investigations.
The final plan — actually suggested by Coosa River Basin Initiative — is significantly smaller than an early proposal to develop about 50 acres. Also, the company obtained a permit to impact up to 4 acres of wetlands and this will affect less than 0.2 acres.
Still, the crowd of CRBI and Save Our Central Park members, called for the board to reject any development on the property.
“Once you sell it, you can’t get it back,” said Jeremy Smith, adding that “We need more parks, not more parking lots.”
Mayor Jamie Doss took public comments before the board voted, with most of the speakers touting the natural landscape and the duck pond — “a symbol of the city,” Stacy Cates said.
Others contended the downsized project no longer serves the city’s original purposes of seeking even low-end jobs along with someone to cap the old municipal landfill on the site. Any leakage of the landfill, which is in the conservation easement, will remain the city’s responsibility.
“The outlook in 2007 was different than it is now … What retailer is going to come there that won’t come somewhere else (in the city),” said Commissioner Wendy Davis, one of the three who voted against the plan.
Commissioners Sue Lee and Sundai Stevenson also were opposed.
In favor were Commissioners Milton Slack, Bill Collins, Craig McDaniel and Evie McNiece. Commissioner Bill Irmscher was out of town and Doss made up the fifth vote needed to carry the motion.
“I don’t know that I would spend $1 million, then give up all that acreage for greenspace,” Collins said about the Ledbetters. “Their hearts are right here in this community and they have showed that.”
Under the revised agreement, the city retains final say over the site plan.
There also will be a pedestrian trail through the site connecting Ridge Ferry Park and Jackson Hill.
Ledbetter said plans for a system of public trails on the conservation property also would be developed within a year, with input from the city and local stakeholder groups.