East Ellijay has put a 180-day moratorium on plats for new subdivisions as the city’s zoning ordinance is reviewed and possibly updated.
East Ellijay City Councilmembers approved a resolution instating the moratorium when meeting last week.
“We’re not accepting subdivision plats or applications to rezone to residential until we get the zoning ordinance (reviewed),” said Mayor Don Callihan.
“It’s not going to apply to any of the property that’s already zoned residential.”
The city doesn’t have a lot of acreage on which subdivisions could be built, but it has seen increased interest from developers wanting to build subdivisions or apartment complexes over the last few years, Callihan noted. That would often mean rezoning commercial properties to residential.
“Most of (our residential properties) are single family homeowners. We have had a lot of people come in and want to rezone commercial property to build (residential), and we’ve had some folks come in with plats that, for different reasons, wouldn’t work,” Callihan said.
“The biggest part was the really small lot sizes. We’re looking at our lot sizes for subdivisions to see what we can do to correct that.”
The current minimum lot size is “right around half an acre” if the property has water and sewer and three-fourths of an acre without sewer, Callihan noted.
“There are some other things we’re also going to look at and see if they need to be changed, and what needs to be done to make sure where something’s going it fits and doesn’t do any damage or hardships to the other properties around it,” he added.
“We’re not positive how much we’re going to change. We just want to have time to look at it.”
Callihan said subdivision plats can be submitted again after the moratorium has been lifted.