CHC News
February 2010
Conservancy Elects Four New Board Members
February 2010
Conservancy Assumes Responsibility for Master Plan for Greenway Trails.
February 2010
The Conservancy Sponsored the Arbor Day.
Development Rights Program
The Development Right (DR) program will establish a non-profit Development Rights bank that will engage in transactions to protect priority greenspace parcels identified by the community. These greenspace priorities represent the values of farmland protection, watershed protection and cultural, historic and scenic vista protection expressed by the community.
Through the use of both the transfer and purchase of development rights, large areas of greenspace can be conserved at a fraction of the cost normally required for traditional fee-simple purchase with stewardship expenses.
The initial research has indicated that the use of TDRs has great potential to achieve remarkable benefits in terms of restricting urban sprawl while accommodating economic and population growth, thus providing multiple environmental benefits.
But the initiation of a DR program requires careful planning based on in-depth research. The structure of the necessary non-profit Development Rights bank must be designed to function efficiently and effectively to benefit all the stakeholders involved, from individual small landowners wishing to sell their DRs for income to large development corporations seeking to purchase DRs.
For a TDR tool to be used effectively in Georgia, a working mechanism between the TDR legislation and the closing transactions must be developed and implemented so that all parties are satisfied. The Georgia TDR law offers a tool that will assist with greenspace protection while offering the additional benefit of protecting private property rights, as the purchase and holding of DRs by conservation entities can be used as a preservation tool. Purchase/Transfer of Development Rights as a tool ties conservation to sustainable development and involves the community at large in the process of molding their future.
The Chattahoochee Hill Country has brought the community, county government, and developers to the table so that development benefits the entire community and the environment, not just a few large landholders.
By implementing this first model in a large area pressured by Atlanta’s urban sprawl, we will have an opportunity to exert positive impact on the regional land resources and provide a real model for the viability of developments rights plan, while combining several innovative growth management approaches. This will provide Georgia communities with a tested alternative to traditional development and greenspace programs and will provide Georgia landowners with options to receive economic benefits for greenspace preservation.
By completing Development Rights transactions, we will identify and address complex issues in the transfer of Development Rights process for landowners, developers and the State in order to make TDRs a tool of choice for Georgia. If these issues are proactively addressed in a model project, the landowners throughout the State of Georgia will benefit.
We plan use the Purchase/Transfer of Development Rights as an innovative tool in the joint sustainable development/conservation mission of the Chattahoochee Hill Country. Among our planned DR projects is creation of a continuous regional greenway within a 4-county area (S. Fulton, Douglas, Coweta and Carroll counties) that will become the skeletal framework for a network of walkable, high-density mixed-use sustainable villages.
Through the innovative use of conservation tools (including conservation easements, scenic buffers, transfer of development rights, development regulations, fee-simple acquisition and farmland protection) the village/greenway project will accommodate future projected population expansion while preserving 80% of the natural environment. This proposal is focused on implementing the TDR program, as we consider the TDR Program our most important tool to accomplish multiple goals.