By Tara DeRock Mahoney
Senior Staff Writer

The Morgan County Planning Commission recommended approval last Thursday of a variance allowing an 11-year-old mobile home to be moved here from the Eatonton area.
The owner of the trailer, Connie Bryans, hopes to move the manufactured home to a lot in the Madison Woods subdivision on East Washington Street; the Bryans Foundation plans to donate the home to a needy family in the community.
County Planner Danielle Peck noted that the foundation’s options as far as where a manufactured home could be placed were somewhat limited.  Madison Woods is in an R-3 zoning area, which allows for homes as small as 800 square feet.
“This is the only zoning classification in Morgan County that allows for a manufactured…single-wide home,” said Peck.
County ordinances generally limit manufactured homes brought into the county to 10 years of age. The trailer in question is a 1998 model, but staff said under the circumstances—and with a local foundation hoping to donate the home to a local resident—they had no major objection to the approval of this variance.
Staff members said that they had checked out the home and it appears to be in good shape; it will have to meet all Morgan County building codes before a new owner can occupy it.
In other business, the planning commission recommended approval of a zoning change and a conditional use brought forward for the same City of Madison property, namely the 11-building Madison South office park on Hwy. 441.
City planners recommended approval of the zoning change from P-2, a professional-commercial zone, to C-3, general commercial. The development has had a number of planning issues in its short history, most dating back to a mistake allowing smaller-than-required, industrially-zoned lots to be sold in the development shortly after it was built. Madison planning officials have been working with owners for a couple of years to define what is in the area, what is planned for the area, and what the zoning of the area should be.
“This essentially gives a legal blessing to what is already there,” said planner Bryce Jaeck. Put another way, said Jaeck, the re-zoning “hits about four or five birds with one stone.”
The manufactured home variance is expected to go before the Morgan County Planning Commission next Tuesday; the city re-zoning and conditional use will go before the Madison City Council at their next regularly-scheduled meeting.

Published in the March  5, 2009 edition.