A four-month ban on construction permits left Kim Battle’s subdivision plans mired in mud.
It has pushed the builder’s bulldozers into unproductive winter months, cut the number of houses he’ll have available for the crucial spring home-buying season and, ultimately, he said, cost him tens of thousands of dollars.
Battle is no fan of how DeKalb County handled the moratorium while it devised protections for ancient Native American sites in the Soapstone Ridge area. The county’s handling of the moratorium, Battle said, resulted in “a lot of unnecessary cost and expense.”
Yet, Battle said, in principle, he doesn’t oppose the use of temporary bans on development so that government leaders can get a grip on growth. His position is shared by other local developers.
When Fulton County recently planned to enact a moratorium on rezonings, developers pushed to limit the ban period, which commissioners eventually pegged at three months. Other than that, developers barely groused about how the delay might damage their industry.
And they don’t seem greatly alarmed that local politicians are relying on moratoriums more than ever before. Metro Atlanta governments had at least 38 development moratoriums in place in the last year–temporarily banning everything from apartment rezonings to new cell-phone towers and sexually oriented bookstores. Five years ago, there were just seven such bans.
County and city officials say they need the breathers to write new zoning ordinances or study growth when development gets out of hand.
While many developers question the effectiveness of the restrictions, they begrudgingly accept them and rarely file legal challenges. Many even say they can understand the need.
“It’s bothersome,” says developer Jim Cowart. “My industry is not all that happy about it, but it is our responsibility to live with it.”
Moratoriums are OK, he said, if they are aimed at better managing growth, rather than just halting it or avoiding controversial projects.
“What’s good for the community is good for me, and any developer who says differently is foolish,” Cowart said.
Attorney Kathy Zickert is a veteran of rezoning wars, in which she often represents developers.
But she has trouble recalling the particulars of Fulton’s various moratoriums on new apartments. There was the one that banned rezonings from office to apartment classifications. Then there’s a new one aimed at all apartment rezonings.
“There are so many of these . . . things, frankly, I can’t keep track of them,” Zickert says.
Why so many? “It’s a combination of an increasing awareness of environmental issues which must be addressed and an upcoming election year,” says Zickert. “These (moratoriums) are popular issues.”
Fulton Chairman Mitch Skandalakis, who is running for lieutenant governor, led the push for the county’s new rezoning ban but insisted his actions were unrelated to the coming election.
While moratoriums often delight homeowners groups, some critics complain that politicians enact the bans too late to stop controversial projects.
Often the restrictions don’t halt all construction. Officials frequently allow projects that already have zoning approval or building permits to proceed. Sometimes, developers have enough advance warning through news reports or discussions with officials to get that permission. As chances for a sewer moratorium in the city of Atlanta grew, developers rushed to gobble up approvals for sewer hookups. In Clayton County, commissioners put a red light on apartment rezonings, but that didn’t affect 1,000 acres already zoned for more units.
Such flexibility is one reason why many developers seem to be taking the numerous moratoriums in stride. That, and they often can wait out the delays, particularly if they are only a few months.
Apartment developers typically apply for rezonings a year or more before they want to begin construction, said Dale Henson, a development and market consultant in the industry.
“I don’t know of a single apartment developer who has lost a loan because of the delay or had plans jarred significantly,” Henson said. “In an up market like this . . . there are so many other opportunities to ply your trade.”
But developer anxiety increases exponentially if there is uncertainty about how long the restrictions will last. Dealing with moratoriums can be challenging.
Cowart said moratoriums on sewer hookups in north Fulton and Gwinnett in the late 1980s slowed his projects and forced him to ration the number of subdivision lots he sold to builders.
Battle, the builder caught up in south DeKalb’s Soapstone Ridge moratorium last year, has his own complaints.
The ban hit at the worst possible time for people in the construction industry: spring and a portion of summer. Battle said the delay pushed his grading into uncooperative winter weather. His street building has been stymied by mud. Now, instead of having 60 houses in place for spring home buyers, he expects to have a third as many.
“I don’t have a problem with moratoriums,” Battle said. “I have a problem with how they are handled.”
He contends that once the moratorium was imposed, DeKalb officials didn’t work quickly enough to get archaeological protections in place. Frustrated with the continuing restrictions, he hired an archaeologist to certify that no archaeologically important sites existed on his land. The county, he said, still refused to give him an early out.
To withstand legal challenge, moratoriums have to be created for a defined time to pursue a defined purpose, attorneys for developers say. Even when the moratoriums are enacted correctly, some in the real estate industry question whether the moratoriums are a smart or effective way to get control of growth.
