Sept. 3 public hearing on KM Homes zoning changes, 5 p.m.

Ball Ground will hold a public hearing on Thursday, September 3, on a request to add four homes to a subdivision the city approved two years ago on Cartersville Street.

The hearing begins at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 215 Valley Street, an hour before the City Council's 6 p.m. work session that evening. It is the only scheduled chance to comment before the council takes the item up.

The city's notice is brief. It identifies the request as Case 2026-V-01 and says the applicant wants to modify conditions attached to a 2024 rezoning, "including, but not limited to, the increase of the maximum permitted units from 38 to 42."

It does not name the applicant. It does not give the address. It does not say which of the other conditions are in play.

County records fill in what the notice leaves out. The property is 1065 Cartersville Street, 9.12 acres beside Interstate 575. An earlier city notice, carrying the same case number, identifies the applicant as KM Homes, LLC.

When the city approved that rezoning, it attached 19 conditions. Three of them restrict renting. One caps the site at 38 homes "for sale." One states the development "may not be 'build-to-rent.'" One requires that no more than ten percent of the homes be leased at any one time.

Nothing in the public record indicates those three conditions are part of the request. Nothing rules them out. The notice's wording leaves the question open, and September 3 is when it can be asked.

The original case, 2024-R-03, was brought by Lee Lusk with LGL Investments, LLC, for the Estate of Wanda Anderson. It asked to rezone the parcel — tax map 03N01, parcel 086 — from R-80, Estate Residential, in the county to RZL, Residential Zero Lot Line, in the city. A companion case handled annexation from Cherokee County into Ball Ground. Both went to a first reading at the city's work session in February 2025.

The Cherokee County Planning Commission staff report lists the 19 conditions the city attached. Beyond the three governing rentals, they require a 10-foot undisturbed buffer between the rear lots and the Interstate 575 right-of-way with a six-foot opaque fence, privacy fencing behind the homes nearest existing houses, sidewalks on both sides of the internal road and along Cartersville Street, a mandatory homeowners association, guest parking, and improvements to Cartersville Street itself.

Condition 1 binds the developer to a specific drawing: the site plan prepared by Civilogistix and dated October 25, 2024. That plan numbers the lots 1 through 38.

County staff laid the case out both ways. Noting that the proposed 5,600-square-foot lots may not fit the area's Neighborhood Living character designation, the report says on one page that there "may be grounds to recommend denial of the request." On the next it observes that the character area supports 3 to 8 units per acre, that the proposal's 4.27 falls within that range, and that the lots are larger than those nearby — concluding there "may be grounds to recommend approval."

The report reaches no recommendation. Under the process it describes, the county planning commission holds the hearing and the Ball Ground council makes the final decision.

One discrepancy sits in the file. The staff report and the rezoning petition, signed in August 2024, both describe a 39-lot subdivision. The site plan the city tied the approval to, dated that October, numbers 38. The plan appears to have been revised down by one before approval.

The 2026 request comes from KM Homes — a different company from the LGL Investments that brought the case in 2024. The records reviewed for this article do not explain how the project changed hands.

The August notice also shows the case was scheduled for a hearing that month and then pulled, stating that Case 2026-V-01 "has been removed from the public hearing schedule." Neither notice says why it was withdrawn, or why it returns now.

City Hall can be reached at 770-735-2123.