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Cashiers crossroads developer offers last-minute plan reduction Hearing to continue Feb. 22 BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER fter nearly eight hours of discussion and testimony on Monday, Jan. 25, the first day of the quasi-judicial hearing that will determine the fate of a massive development proposed for Cashiers ended with developer Stephen Macauley asking the Cashiers Area Community Planning Council to make its decision based on an entirely different plan than the one he submitted last fall. “We did what we thought was best, and I directed my team at every stage to follow that philosophical principle and to adhere to the (Cashiers) small area plan at every step. They did that,” he said. “However, over these last two, two-and-a-half months I’ve met with a lot of people who really had concerns about the density of the project and its impact that it would have. And I listened. We all listened.”
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A NEW PLAN As a result, said Macauley, he was willing to reduce a 45-unit condo development in the southeast corner of the 55.5-acre property down to 15 units and to reduce the housing
The new version of the development plan would decrease the number of residences from 726 to 581. Donated graphic density in the Hilltop Plaza area in the middle of the property by 40 percent. In total, the proposal would reduce the number of housing units from 726 to 581, of which 123 would be workforce housing. “I hope that is accepted and shows that we’ve tried to be a good neighbor,” said Macauley. However, the proposal — which was
announced verbally and not in writing — prompted vigorous objection from John Noor, the attorney representing several nearby property owners who oppose the project. “My clients, as you might have imagined, have spent tremendous resources to review the plan as submitted, thousands and thousands of dollars in experts to do that, and now — not the day before, not a week before
— during the hearing the plan has changed,” he said. “I’m all for negotiation, but this is an undue prejudice to my clients. I won’t reflect on why it’s being done, but it obviously has substantial economic impacts on my clients’ ability to participate in this process.” “I’m just a little shocked by the level of objection to an offer to reduce density when we have another meeting a month from now when his (Noor’s) witnesses might not even be reached at that meeting,” replied Craig Justus, the attorney representing Macauley Investments. “You can imagine the millions of dollars that have been spent on our side.” However, Noor said, the project’s impact won’t necessarily go down in proportion with the reduction in density. Changing the way the project is arranged will mean changing the way landslide risk, stormwater impacts and other factors are calculated — it would “rewrite” every expert opinion given so far. Noor also criticized Macauley’s decision to sit on the revised plans until the end of a long and grueling day of testimony. Gerald Green, the former planning director for Jackson County who was instrumental in authoring the Cashiers Small Area Plan, had just finished giving nearly two hours of testimony as a witness for the developer, which Noor said would have to be repeated in light of the new plan. However, Justus replied, Green had — unbeknownst to anyone besides the developer — been giving his testimony based on the revised plans, which he’d received the night before. In a follow-up interview, Noor criticized the “sheer unfairness of
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February 3-9, 2021
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