Zoning Board OKs rezone for quarry

The Oglethorpe County Zoning Board unanimously approved the rezoning of land along Lexington-Carlton Road to reopen a quarry to mine dimension stone and granite at Monday’s meeting. 

The board approved the zoning change from general agriculture to heavy industrial for the 70.93-acre plot.

The property is owned by Loretta Brooks and holds a dimension stone quarry that has not been in use for approximately 10 years. The family is working with Jason McCannon and Gray Wolf Quarries to use it for mining.

The board analyzed a map of the surrounding area and brought attention to several quarries near the lot. 

“This is already in a granite area filled with dimension stone,” board member Jimmy Shealy said. “That has been part of the county for a long time. You can’t just find dimension stone anywhere.” 

County planner McKenzie Spooner said there are only a few houses around the property and the surrounding homeowners haven’t publicly commented on or expressed concern with the development or rezoning.

Zoning board member Janet Hill said there were comments made on Facebook regarding the new development, but in order for the county to recognize those comments, they must be submitted publicly or to the board. 

McCannon manages mining and development projects and is working with Gray Wolf Quarries, a company based out of Texas that has a manufacturing facility in Elberton. 

“There’s been a lot of change in the industry,” McCannon said. “A lot of companies and corporations have come in and bought these. The whole dynamic has changed in the quarry industry, but this will be a private individual.”

McCannon said the only cause for concern for this development would be increased traffic. 

“It’s going to increase truck traffic, but there’s already truck traffic, and those roads need to be wider anyway,” McCannon said. 

The Board of Commissioners will make a final decision or defer a decision at its meeting on May 6.

“It will be for the benefit of Oglethorpe County by getting stone and processing it here. That’s a good thing, keeping it local,” board member Robert Drew said.

Moratorium on minor subdivisions

The board stated there will be a 90-day moratorium on minor subdivisions until June 30.

Spooner said the board will work on an ordinance over the next month to make amendments to the Unified Development Code concerning two-lot splits. 

In the current code, the parent parcel has to be 10 acres, but attached parcels just have to meet the minimum 1.5-acre requirement. The board wants to eliminate the parent parcel rule to minimize the amount of subdivided land. 

A minor subdivision includes a two-lot split and is defined in section 1002 of the code as “The division of land into two lots, tracts or parcels with each resultant lot, tract or parcel: Containing at least 1.5 acres, or more as may be required by this Development Code; where the remaining parent parcel contains at least the minimum acreage required by its zoning designation.” 

This amendment will apply to all zoning and will require any non-conforming lot to be approved. 

“With a parent parcel, you can have a 15-acre A2 lot, and as long as one of them stays 10 acres, you can have another one as small as five,” Spooner said. “We don’t want to do that anymore because we’ll have 100 acres over the course of eight years become a bunch of 5-acre lots. If you have 20 acres and you want to split it into two 10-acre lots, you’re good.”

In other business, the zoning board:

• Unanimously approved Rebekkah Byrd’s request to rezone 55 Stevens Grove Church Road from general agriculture to single family residential in order to subdivide. Byrd put in the application before the moratorium went into effect and the board approved the rezone with a condition that the property cannot be further subdivided.