The firm is proud of its work for the City of Douglasville as the Georgia Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling that would have allowed a rock crusher facility to be built adjacent to a residential neighborhood in the City. In City of Douglasville v. Bart Boyd, the City argued that the use of property owned by Mr. Boyd was not allowed as the application violated City zoning laws. The Council voted to deny the application and the owner appealed to the Superior Court. After a ½ day of argument, the Court ruled in favor of the developer and would have allowed the construction and development of a rock crusher with large rocks being trucked in from nearby quarries and excavations to be made into smaller rocks and gravel at the site. The City sought review in the Court of Appeals.
Now the Court of Appeals has reversed. Applying well-settled law to the facts of the case the Court concluded that the plan to build a road across adjacent property, that was zoned differently than the parcel where the rock crusher was to go, in order to access the rock crusher violated Georgia law. In general, you cannot use property zoned for one use to support operations on property for which other uses are permitted. That is what the developer tried to do here and their plan was rejected by the Court of Appeals.
The developer has 10 days to decide whether to seek further review in the Georgia Supreme Court. We are hopeful that this episode of the ongoing saga with this property will be resolved by this opinion.
