You might also want to take note that Venturi's lawyer Mr. Sams is asking that all those 'exceptions' they agreed to in 2004 be scrapped, not just the one regarding 'Pawn Shops', this could allow usage for pool halls, paint and body repair shops, breeding and boarding kennels etc.
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Sunday, 29 April, 2012
Dear Mr. Simmons:
In a 10/4/04 City Commission meeting, the City approved Ordinance No. 2004-50, which changed the zoning on the Venturi property from PUD to City HGB and that change was specific in saying: "adopted subject to the following conditions: 1) Sept. 28, 2004 letter from Sams, Larkin and Huff (attached hereto)".
This comprehensive 5 page letter, at page 2 had exclusions of otherwise permitted uses under the HGB District listing items a. through z., and at item s. we find "Pawn Shops" as one of the excluded uses. This letter was signed by Mr. Garvis L. Sams, Jr.
An attorney for Mr. Venturi, the property owner, now 8 years later, comes before the current City Commission to complain with a 'Constitutional Challenge' that Mr. Venturi had his rights under both the United States Constitution and the Georgia Constitution of 1983, trampled by the City of Kennesaw in restricting his client's usage of the property.
Further this attorney seeks rezoning of the Venturi property to eliminate all conditional HGB exclusions from the 2004 agreement.
It seems that the lawyer used by Mr. Venturi in 2004 must have been totally incompetent to allow his client Mr. Venturi to enter into such an agreement in order to get the zoning changed so he could build a strip mall on a piece of residential property.
But wait a minute! The attorney in the current 2012 Constitutional Challenge is Mr. Garvis L. Sams, Jr and wasn't the Venturi lawyer of 2004 also a Garvis L. Sams, Jr?
Mr. Venturi has the attorney who brokered the agreement, denounce this same agreement as unconstitutional and an infringement of Mr. Venturi's rights! The obvious question here is that, if the 2004 agreement was so bad, unconstitutional and infringed on Mr. Venturi's rights, why did Mr. Sams draft it in the first place?
What we have before the City Commission is a land owner who made an agreement to get his land rezoned in 2004 and when this strip mall proved to be an under performing bad investment he is now desperate to get any tenants into his mall with no regard to the earlier willing agreement to exclude various types of 'undesireable' businesses.
Prior to this Cruchelow license being mistakenly issued, I was told that 3 other applicants for licenses in this strip mall had been turned down. Mr. Venturi keeps sending to the City those businesses that he knows can not be licensed in the hopes that they can slip through the vetting procedures. In this case that happened.
It is now time to correct this error.
The defense that Mr. Venturi "did not know" that there was to be a Pawn Shop in the mall is belied as the 37 page lease Venturi drafted and signed, states clearly on pages 2 and 7, that a Pawn Shop was the intended usage for the 2 units lease of 60 months.
Mr. Venturi made a bad business decision in building his 2nd strip mall and he is desperate to get ANY business to rent there. 3 of his 17 units are now empty and only 2 of the businesses in the mall seem to be doing enough trade to stay afloat.
I hope that the City of Kennesaw will make short work of this Constitutional Challenge nonsense and enforce the current zoning regulations which bar Pawn Shops.
Sincerely,
Bill Harris
P O Box 535
Kennesaw, Ga 30156
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