Douglass High School project tabled to allow further input

Payton Fletcher, Thomasville Times-Enterprise, Ga.
·3 min read

Mar. 8—Last Monday, the Planning and Zoning Commission held their regular meeting in regard to the rezoning of the Douglass High School property from R-1 CU to C-IA with conditions.

As the meeting began, City Planner Kenny Thompson said that the applicant on the agenda, the Douglass High School Alumni Association, Inc. and Douglas School Senior, LP, made a request for rezoning to be withdrawn to allow for further communication with concerned community members of Dewey City.

As the commission began hearing input from the citizens in attendance at the meeting, Chairperson Sam Fink clarified the nature of questions that they would be appropriate to ask the board.

"All citizens, this is a rezoning board, this is a rezoning hearing, and those will be the only type of questions that will be asked and answered," Fink said. "If you have questions about the developer or Douglass High School Alumni, that will be answered by those two organizations at later meetings."

Opening the meeting up to community input, Tyrone White, the current operations manager and treasurer for the alumni association, spoke about the lack of impact the rezoning would have on the surrounding community.

"I am here to represent Douglass Alumni, in reference to the rezoning," White said. "What I want to make clear about the rezoning is that it only affects the Douglass campus, it does not affect the community in the rezoning part."

He continued on to say that the high school campus has been grandfathered in for many years and that this would simply update their status and take them out of that grandfathered status.

"The rezoning needs C1-A," he said. "That will bring it into compliance with what we do with our rentals, the space that we rent out. So, we would petition to rezone the campus part to C1-A. That would be the only part that we need done for the Douglass campus to be rezoned, so we would be in compliance and not out of compliance and come out of the grandfather status."

After White, Shan Daniels, Vice Chair of the Thomasville Community Development Corporation, said that the rezoning the alumni association is requesting would allow them to consolidate and update their space and accommodate their day-to-day activities.

"The C1-A is just for him to be in compliance with what they do day-to-day today," he said. "They have tenants who they rent the facility to and C1-A is limited liability, this is not a commercial rezoning, this just allows the alumni to co-exist in a residential neighborhood and do what they do today. That's all it's about."

Representatives of the Dewey City community spoke up in opposition of the rezoning and redevelopment of the campus area, concerned about how far along the process is.

"I stand on behalf of the community of Dewey City," Tony Bowdry, a resident of Dewey City, said. "We the members of the Dewey City community stand in solidarity in strong opposition of the rezoning and the redevelopment of the Douglass School Project."

He further spoke in opposition of the rezoning due to lack of communication between the rezoning board and the community.

"The reasons for the opposition is lack of communication between the rezoning board to include the Dewey City community. That was the discussion of this proposal and what is the rush to push this project through," he said. "Who is the main decision maker of this proposal? And how's it going to benefit the community of Dewey City?"

With the rezoning for the campus property taken off the agenda for consideration to allow for further communication with the Dewey City community, the Planning and Zoning Commission adjourned the meeting and scheduled the next meeting for April 3 in the Council Chambers of the Municipal Building.