The Roswell Development Authority has accepted a letter of intent from a prospective buyer for the city-owned parcel at Georgia 92 and Bowen Road, but officials said the city is still in early negotiations and will keep roughly 2.5 acres of the site for a future fire station.

City economic development and parks officials briefed residents at the Sept. 29 mayor-and-council open forum after multiple neighbors asked why the city appears to be selling property that residents had previously understood would become parkland. "We are so early in the process," Jeff Leatherman, senior vice president and deputy city administrator, said. "We have not finalized any of the site plan work . . . that we would look at to understand the transportation-related impacts associated with this project." He added the city has reserved 2.5 acres for a fire station.

The city purchased the parcel several years ago to expand parkland; staff said additional property acquisitions elsewhere — including Crabapple Middle School and 25 acres adjoining the Spruill property — changed how the city is evaluating park needs and prompted renewed consideration of redevelopment opportunities. Leatherman said the RDA accepted the letter of intent and that the next step is an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the RDA to formalize negotiations, which staff expects in October.

City Chief Financial Officer Bill Gottschall said the transaction would return cash to the city’s general fund. “We acquired this property through general fund cash,” he said, and if the sale closes the city would receive about $5.0 million in cash while retaining the 2.5 acres for the fire station. Gottschall also said the city’s accounting will allocate a portion of the original acquisition cost to the acreage retained for the station.

Residents pressed staff about traffic, access and zoning. Several speakers who live near Bowen and Ga. 92 said they remain concerned about short road segments, left-turn limitations on 92 and how additional turning movements could be managed. Staff said site-engineering and traffic analysis will be part of the normal development review process and that the developer would be required to submit trip-generation studies and an ingress/egress plan for staff review; any changes that require rezoning or other approvals would come back to the public through the standard public hearing process. "At this point, it's too early to tell exactly where ingress and egress would happen," Leatherman said.

Leatherman and Gottschall both cautioned that negotiations may not result in a finalized sale; previous negotiations for this parcel reached an approval stage but the developer later withdrew. "Sometimes we find the right matrix in the commercial corridors and sometimes we don't, and we have to go back to the drawing board," Leatherman said. Residents asked for more public meetings and for staff and the RDA to meet with neighborhood groups as the process advances.

What happens next: staff said the RDA’s acceptance of the LOI is not the same as a closed sale; the city expects to negotiate and draft an intergovernmental agreement with the RDA in October and will bring substantive materials — site plans, traffic studies and any zoning changes — back to the public when those documents exist.

Because the project remains in early negotiation, city officials said some material details are not yet available, including final purchase price, exact ingress/egress locations, and the buyer's site plan. Those items will be disclosed as they are submitted in the formal review process.

Residents who asked about the transaction were told the city will follow the same design-review steps applied to other private developments, and that any requests requiring public hearings would be handled in the regular planning-and-zoning process.