Chickamauga Zoning Administrator Jim Powell
Under Georgia law, communities must adopt a local comprehensive plan with the state Department of Community Affairs to help guide future development.
In Walker County, a comprehensive plan update for 2012-32 is wrapping up.
“It doesn’t have the effect of law, it’s just a guiding document. The [local] zoning ordinance is going to control what is built,” said David Howerin, planning director for the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission, the agency that prepared the several hundred-page plan for the 447-square-mile county.
The plan covers the unincorporated parts of Walker and its four cities: Chickamauga, LaFayette, Lookout Mountain and Rossville. It carves the county and cities into “character areas” with “objectives” and an “implementation measure” for each.
For example, in Chickamauga, one of the character areas is the section of Lee Avenue that consists entirely of a mobile home park that’s “generally substandard,” the plan states.