Understanding the TDK Extension

The TDK Extension proposed bridging Peachtree City over Line Creek to Coweta County. The Fayette County Chamber of Commerce initially recommended it during the last years of the Bob Lenox administration. At that time, the Chamber of Commerce was dominated by people connected to real estate development.

My administration was open to the possibility of the TDK Extension (also referred to as the “Coweta-Fayette Connector”). However, I thought the process was being rushed as we were still working with GDOT on a timetable to widen State Route 74 South.

Reliever of traffic congestion?

State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh (a Coweta County resident), Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, real estate developer and Chairman of the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce Jim Pace, and the Peachtree City Development Authority (later disbanded for corrupt/illegal activity) were major advocates of the TDK Extension.

Seabaugh spent a great deal of time soliciting support for the project and secured support from the city governments through the Association of Fayette County Governments and the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.

The parties mentioned above always marketed the TDK Extension as a “reliever of traffic congestion” from the State Routes 74-54 intersection and State Route 54-West.

My council had received assurances from Seabaugh that the Coweta County government planned to leave the eastern portion of the county very rural and maintain the large farm and pasture lots.

We hired consultant Ed Ellis from the engineering firm Dames and Moore to formulate a possible design for the extension and bridge project, setting aside $200,000.

Major red flags, truth surfaces

A major red flag went up when I was contacted by an investment banker who was solicited to finance the newly proposed real estate development on the Coweta County side of the road extension. He told me that he had seen the preliminary plans and described the multifaceted development as “massive” and required around “$1 billion” to build.

The investment banker described the plan as containing more new retail shopping square footage than the entire Fayette Pavilion shopping complex. There was also a large amount of high-end office space and thousands of homes, apartments, and townhouses.

Obviously, this was not what the representatives from Coweta had told us. There appeared to be an intentional effort to mislead us and steal much of our retail business and sales taxes (keep in mind that Peachtree City is the sales tax cash cow for all of Fayette County).

The shortest route to jobs in Atlanta and elsewhere for those new Coweta residents would be the extension road immediately to State Route 74 North or Crosstown Road toward Fayetteville. The number of vehicles produced in the tens of thousands (10,000 vehicles was the low-side estimate by the end of year two on a 15-year buildout), plus the traffic back-and-forth to the new retail complex in Coweta could easily double the traffic congestion burden at the State Route 74-54 intersection.

Verification necessary

I set up a meeting in Newnan with Coweta County Commissioner Vernon “Mutt” Hunter, who was responsible for the district in question. The Coweta County Administrator and Planning Director were also present. I brought City Manager Jim Basinger, Planning Director Jim Williams, Planner David Rast, and Engineer Troy Besseche to the meeting.

In that Newnan meeting, I asked Mutt Hunter directly what exactly was land-planned on the Coweta County side of the extension project. Hunter replied, “That’s none of your damn business.” At that moment, the Peachtree City contingent knew that the report of an enormous development just across the border was accurate. We all got up and left the meeting. The support for the TDK Extension died at that point from my council.

I exposed the scam in a March 2004 letter to the editor, stating that Coweta and the developers aimed to deceive us into an infrastructure project intended to undermine the city in multiple ways.

All the claims about the extension relieving traffic congestion were later found to be fraudulent, and once the truth became clear, the support for the project fell completely apart.

Jim Pace began running interference, as did a political action committee created by Pace and the Chamber of Commerce called Direct PAC. The corrupt Peachtree City Development Authority was also countering my claims. Even the Newnan Times-Herald began lambasting me, saying that I was thwarting progress and was unwilling to relieve the traffic congestion.

Harold Logsdon decided to run for mayor, riding the public relations bump against me, and became the pro-TDK Extension candidate with significant contributions from the developers on the Coweta side. Logsdon won the election, and the real estate developers for the massive Coweta planned development across the border thought it safe to reveal their true intentions since their candidate won, unveiling in the plans 2006 they had formerly kept secret.

The truth revealed

The first enormous phase called for one million square feet of retail shopping, 120,000 square feet of office space, and nearly 4,000 residential units. When asked, Ed Ellis from the engineering firm Dames and Moore replied that the traffic congestion from the Coweta side of the road extension would snarl Peachtree City traffic even more, offering no traffic relief by the second year of the planned development’s construction.

Knowing they had been lied to, a very angry Peachtree City citizenry went berserk, starting numerous protests and creating an association of subdivisions to produce an organized city-wide campaign utilizing television news broadcasts and newspapers.

The retreat

Exposed and embarrassed, the Fayette Chamber of Commerce and all the pro-TDK Extension propagandists ran away from the road project. It turned out that Rep. Lynn Westmoreland and others were receiving significant campaign contributions from the real estate developers on the Coweta side of the border. The Peachtree City Development Authority was in legal ruins and officially disbanded.

By January 2008, Mayor Logsdon officially announced in the city’s “Update” bulletin that he had changed his position on the road extension. He noted it was not in the best interest of Peachtree City.

By 2008, only then-real estate developer Jim Pace, at that time the former chairman of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, still supported the project. The Fayette County Board of Commissioners returned Peachtree City’s seed capital of $200,000 back to the city. The administrations of Brown, Logsdon, Haddix, and Fleisch have all expressed opposition to building the TDK Extension. Even Mayor Kim Learnard begrudgingly signed a resolution in opposition after much protesting.

The Coweta County Board of Commissioners approved the land plans and rezonings for the massive development on their side of the border. This move likely led Logsdon to abandon the road extension project, as it became impossible to create a counter-narrative following Coweta’s official actions. However, I do commend Logsdon for publicly changing his stand.

The traffic was predicted to be so heavy from the new Coweta development that Coweta’s zoning administrator said the approval of the giant McIntosh Village development should be delayed until the TDK Extension was built.

The developer agreed only to build a portion of the proposed development until the road extension was completed. The planned developments for Coweta are so significant that they required “Development of Regional Impact” approval from the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. The impact on Peachtree City was obvious.

The regional agencies said the TDK Extension bridge had to be four lanes instead of two due to the amount of traffic that would be generated in Coweta. They also provided a list of expensive road projects in Peachtree City that would be needed to compensate for traffic from the road extension, including an extensive revamp of the State Route 74-54 intersection.

Thank God, we blocked it. It cost me an election, but it was worth it for the city. Getting the neighborhoods to band together was the key. Several of those neighborhood leaders eventually asked me to run for the county board of commissioners, where I served two terms before leaving.