Former landfill gets rezoned

A former Columbia County landfill is being given new life.

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The Columbia County Planning Commission recommended rezoning the inactive landfill at 590 Baker Place Road during a Thursday meeting to the special district classification.

Several passive recreational activities will be allowed on the 171-acre site, including model airplane takeoff and landing, cross country and mountain biking, archery and skeet shooting. Other proposed uses for the property are sports fields, horse and walking trails, a playground, ropes course and possibly a dog walk.

The landfill closed in 2006 after nearing its capacity level.

For now, recreational clubs and organizations wanting to use the land for the listed activities are given access to the gated property, but plans to develop the site won't happen in the near feature, said Don Bartles, the county's solid waste manager.

Each club currently monitors its own operations on the site, which consists of about 60 acres of fields and 90 acres of woods.

County oversight and individual use of the property could increase if the project takes off, Bartles said.

In other planning and zoning business, the planning commission gave approval for a Halloween haunted attraction at a 21-acre plantation along Dodge Lane near Grovetown city limits.

Two other rezoning requests also received planning commission approval. Nearly 5 acres on Collins Drive were rezoned to planned unit development for a subdivision with 17 lots. A rezoning also was granted to allow a temporary mobile sales office for the Bartram Trail subdivision.

In addition, the planning and zoning board approved final plats for a four-acre planned unit development off Collins Drive and the second section of Ellington within the Canterbury Farms subdivision. A preliminary plat was approved for an additional section of the Ashbrooke subdivision off Chamblin Road.