Zoning protections and architectural standards keep Piedmont beautiful for its residents and safe for our community. The proposed changes in Piedmont's new Housing Element would rezone our already busy town center to allow for hundreds of units of multi-story high density housing. To facilitate this change, the city’s consultants are recommending that City Hall, Veterans' War Memorial Building, and Piedmont Center for the Arts (801 Magnolia) be rezoned so they can be sold and redeveloped. These changes would make it less safe for our children to commute to school, add congestion to our town center, and damage the character of our town.

While we support the need for additional housing in Piedmont, we believe there is a better way to accomplish it without opening the door to overdevelopment. We want to be smart on housing, and alternative locations for the required rezoning exist. We urge the city to further evaluate rezoning of Reservoir No. 2 in upper Piedmont and more aggressive use of ADUs as part of the city’s Housing Element. Additionally, the commercial areas along Grand Ave. and Park Ave. are better equipped to handle additional high density housing because their location provides easy ingress and egress for commuters, substantial access to multiple forms of public transit, and proximity to large grocery stores. 

The current plan to rezone our town center does not have any of the above benefits, but instead creates a number of infrastructure issues resulting from the  addition of so many new residents in a single town block. The new housing plan does not include adequate additional parking, drop off locations, or safety features for nearby Havens Elementary School, Piedmont Middle School, or Piedmont High School. It does not account for the environmental impact the new buildings would have on our community. The Planning Commission has not completed the required environmental impact assessments for these changes, and likely won't by the time their plan is submitted to the state for approval.

To be clear, we are not against additional housing in our community or the need for low income housing. We just want to ensure that we consider all the options before making such a drastic change we'll have to live with as a community going forward.  

With the future of our community at stake, we strongly urge the Piedmont City Council and Planning Commission to reconsider the rezoning of the heart of our small town. We further urge them to do the hard work of finding better alternatives that work for all of Piedmont.