Developer proposing 300 apartments, 28 townhomes on former Harry's Farmers Market site

Mar. 24—A developer hopes to build more than 300 apartments and townhomes where Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta once operated, but Mayor Steve "Thunder" Tumlin is wary of another proposal for high-density housing in the Gem City.

"Like anything else, it has a lot of merits, but I think, from (my) campaign promise on, I just don't think the high density in that area is what we're looking for," Tumlin told the MDJ Friday.

Atlanta-based Westplan Investors is requesting approval from the city for 28 townhomes and 300 apartments on just over 19 acres where Powers Ferry and Roswell roads meet.

The apartment complex would also include a pool, clubhouse, fitness facilities, gazebos and picnic spaces.

Though the developer is not requesting rezoning for the property, as it is already zoned for a mixed-use development, the city requires applicants to gain approval of site plans for mixed-use proposals.

The Studio Movie Grill and 14,389-square-foot retail building located on the property will remain, the application from Westplan states, though the building that formerly housed Harry's is set to be razed, along with some small houses on Wylie Drive.

It is not clear how much the apartments or townhomes would sell for, and Westplan did not answer the MDJ's request for comment by press time.

Whole Foods Market acquired Harry's in 2011. Four years later, Whole Foods announced it would relocate the Marietta grocer to Kennesaw and drop the Harry's name. The Whole Foods in Kennesaw opened on Harry's last day in October 2017.

Westplan's proposal, which is for 17 housing units per acre, is similar to a recent proposal for a 322-unit apartment complex just up the road from the Harry's site.

This month, the Marietta City Council tabled a proposal by Atlanta-based developer William Casaday, under the company WC Acquisitions, to replace the Kroger at Powers Ferry and Delk roads with an apartment building.

Tumlin opposes that proposal, calling the plan to replace the Kroger "with a densely populated rental ... painfully ironic."

The irony Tumlin referenced was in regards to Marietta's efforts to revitalize the Franklin Gateway area. In 2013, the city began using its voter-approved $68 million redevelopment bond to purchase and then demolish aging apartment complexes and blighted retail space in the Franklin Gateway corridor to encourage new investment in the area.

"With several of the properties still in process of their ultimate and productive positive use from this multiple million taxpayer investment, it is not ripe to repeat the over and disproportion building mistake of apartment density in this area and the urban living challenges thereto," Tumlin wrote in an email to the MDJ.

Marietta's stance in favor of single-family homes over high-density housing is nothing new, according to Tumlin.

"It's just a choice that the city has exercised for a long time," he said. "No fancy words, no criticism, just, almost everything we deal with deals with how you weigh density into safety, into the school system, into cut-through traffic."

Tumlin said he can only speak for himself when saying he's committed to lower density, but that sounded a similar note to what two council members said about their opposition to the Casaday proposal a few weeks back.

Councilman Grif Chalfant called it "a hard sell," mentioning the council's longtime reluctance to build new apartments in the city.

"We've done one apartment complex in the 17 years I've been" on the council, Chalfant said.

Councilman Andy Morris echoed Chalfant's resistance to that proposal, saying he was concerned crime would come to plague the complex in the next couple of decades.

They pointed to the former apartments along the Franklin Gateway as a prime example of well-intentioned affordable housing becoming a problem for the city.

Garvis Sams, the attorney who represents Casaday and Westplan separately, said during a Marietta Planning Commission hearing that the apartments put forward by Casaday would be "luxury, amenitized, class A" units with rents ranging from $1,800 to $2,800 per month.

"They're not Truist Battery rents of $4,000, but this is a high-end product," Sams said at the time.

Westplan has also characterized their proposed units as "Class A luxury apartments."

Yet Chalfant said, "When those apartments went in on Franklin Road, those were fine apartments, that was somewhere where everybody wanted to go. And then, in a few years, it was deteriorating and I'm not saying this would, but we've just been avoiding that."

Westplan's proposal is scheduled for hearings before the Marietta Planning Commission on Tuesday, April 4 at 6:30 p.m., and the City Council on Wednesday, April 12 at 7 p.m., both at Marietta City Hall.