Venue, mini-mart up for votes
♦ Floyd County commissioners will hold public hearings on a lengthy list of proposed landuse changes.
Dozens of residents are expected to show up Tuesday for public hearings on proposed land-use projects that have divided their neighborhoods.
The Floyd County Commission has scheduled the most controversial ones first: A request for a special-use permit to open a wedding venue on Reynolds Bend Road and one for commercial zoning to allow a new convenience store next to the Silver Creek Mini Market.
Hearings on eight other applications also are on the agenda for the meeting that starts at 6 p.m. in the County Administration Building, 12 E. Fourth Ave.
Floyd County commissioners also are slated to get the results of the county’s 2017 audit during their 4 p.m. caucus. Outside audit firm Mauldin & Jenkins is expected to make a presentation.
The Rome-Floyd County Planning Commission is sending no recommendation on the proposed wedding venue. The citizen panel ended its hearing earlier this month with a 3 to 3 tie vote.
William and Lacey Reins of Cumming want to buy the historic 1800s hall on eight acres at 248 Reynolds Bend Road and rent it out for receptions and other events. William Reins said the property would be screened and fenced and all events would be indoors.
A contingent of neighbors are vocally opposed, contending the activity would bring noise and traffic problems to their rural area.
The planning commission recommended approval, 5 to 1, of Nilesh Patel’s plans to demolish an existing building and put a convenience store with gas pumps on his property at 5701 Rockmart Highway. He’ll need community commercial zoning of the agriculture residential tract to proceed.
Although Gates played base ball for seven years, he enjoys his role as arbiter and has declined requests to take the field himself as a ballist. He is also confident of the association’s future.
“We have actually been steadily growing ever since our inception. We started with just a couple of teams north of here, so we’ve seen enormous growth, we’ve seen attendance growing almost game by game, and that’s very encouraging.”
Long before the Rome Braves brought minor league baseball to town, locals played for semi-professional teams in local textile leagues.
Industry leaders and textile mills such as Goodyear, Anchor Duck, Lindale, Brighton and Tubize sponsored teams in Floyd County, providing parks for their employees to play through the 1950s.
But by that time the rules had already undergone changes, making base ball seem more like the baseball we know today.
Base ball is the same sport with some slightly different English to it — but it’s still recognizably akin to baseball. It’s also a much faster-paced game than the modern version. A vintage rules contest will usually go through a full game in just two hours.
The Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball, a 12-team circuit, is the closest such league active anywhere near the Northwest Georgia region, and teams from that circuit play some of their season matches at the 6th Cavalry Museum in Ft. Oglethorpe, an hour’s drive north of Rome up U.S. 27.
The most recent event at that venue pitted two Chattanooga-area clubs, the Litefoot BBC and the Mountain City BBC, for the annual 6th Cavalry Cup on June 16.
The Litefoots jumped out to an early 6-3 lead, but the Mountain City boys managed to score three “aces” late to tie and force the game to a 10th inning, finally winning the day by the score of 8-7.
There are around six match dates in the Tennessee Association’s season that are played at the 6th Cavalry Museum. Two remaining contests in Fort Oglethorpe on the schedule are coming up July 14 and Aug. 25, both of them double-headers.