HPC Hearing Adjourned Due to Lack of Quorum

DAHLONEGA, Ga. – A standing-room-only crowd gathered at Dahlonega’s City Hall Monday for a public hearing hosted by the town’s Historic Preservation Commission. The issue: Roberta Green-Garrett’s two-year battle to replace two historic buildings on Main Street with a four-story, 70-room hotel.

Green-Garrett was hoping to receive a Certificate of Approval (COA) in order to move forward with her plans. The majority of the people who elbowed their way into the meeting room hoped to prevent that. Both sides left dissatisfied as the meeting had to be adjourned 10 minutes after it started.

One member of the seven-member committee had resigned earlier in the year and two others were absent. With only four members in attendance, the HPC barely had a quorum. But shortly after the chairman gaveled the meeting to order, Mary Owens announced that she was recusing herself because her husband, a real estate agent, had a business relationship with Garrett-Green.

Her recusal left the HPC short of a quorum and the meeting had to be adjourned with no announcement of when the next meeting would be scheduled.

Townspeople strongly opposed the hotel almost from the beginning. The Parks Building Green-Garrett would have demolished is an antebellum-era structure built in 1855 that once housed the Confederate Army and later was home to two owners of the Dahlonega gold mine. The Butler Building next door is also historically significant and Green-Garrett’s plans call for it to be replaced also.

The original design in 2015 called for a 30-room hotel to replace the Parks Building. But the concept Green-Garrett would like approved now calls for 70-plus rooms with two stories of rooms over two stories of parking, which would exceed the district’s height limit.