Roswell officials restart planning for 400-acre Old Municipal Airport site, schedule public charrette in May

City planning staff and councilors discussed next steps for the Old Municipal Airport (OMA) site, a roughly 400-acre swath of city-owned land, and said the city will hold a five-day public design workshop in May to guide rezoning and future development.

Staff member (Planning) Meredith presented existing zoning and plan materials and told councilors the area currently contains a mix of residential-very-low (RBL), residential-low (RL) and an MXP mixed-use plaza district; she said some zoning provisions — including a requirement that ground floors be commercial with residential above across the MXP area — are out of step with market and community needs. Meredith said the city’s 2025 comprehensive master-plan process will include a charrette in May and that the final plan will likely take about a year to complete.

Why it matters: the OMA land borders Cielo Grande regional open space and, if rezoned and re-planned, could become a source of new housing, commercial space and recreational connections. Councilors repeatedly raised concerns that current zoning yields too-low residential density for land adjacent to regional parkland and that piecemeal sales before a new master plan would forfeit an opportunity to coordinate utilities, parks and school capacity.

Key details: planning staff said the OMA area totals approximately 400 acres and that a previous comprehensive-plan designation (2016) envisioned a master-planned mixed-use development. Staff identified strategy items from the adopted 2016 Comprehensive Master Plan—amendments to zoning for mixed use, identifying excess city property for affordable housing, and corridor studies to improve neighborhood transitions—and recommended revisiting those policies as part of the 2025 process. Meredith told councilors the consultant team will be on site for outreach; staff named May 12–16, 2025 as the anticipated charrette week and estimated about a year to produce the final plan.

Council discussion touched on design choices and trade-offs. Several councilors and staff debated alleys versus curbside collection, parking counts, and neighborhood open space standards; one councilor raised concerns that very-high-density layouts with no private yards could push play and social activity into streets. Staff said alley design, utility placement and maintenance costs are legitimate tradeoffs that the master-plan process should study.

Staff and council members also discussed the National Guard and Youth Challenge leases at the airport: legal staff and others said the Youth Challenge facility has been proposed to continue at a $1-per-year lease in exchange for in‑kind services (cleanup and airport support), while other National Guard facilities on airport property would be charged FAA-competitive rents. No final lease vote was taken during the committee meeting.

Next steps: staff said the consultant will visit in April for initial meetings and will hold public workshops in May. Planning staff recommended the council wait for the 2025 master-plan products before authorizing major land sales or lease changes for the OMA parcels.