When residents in the South Fulton area learned about a nearly 2 million-square-foot project including three large warehouses being planned for their community, they jumped into action to stop it, gathering 1,000 signatures on a petition.
Raising concerns about the development’s environmental impact, residents highlighted that a large forest would be cut down and the project would bring more traffic and pollution to the area. But above all, residents expressed their frustrations with more industry coming to their community.
Yvonne Cole Boone, a longtime local resident, said she wants to move toward a cleaner, greener future as the majority-Black cities in the southern part of Fulton County — like Fairburn, Union City and South Fulton — have been plagued with factories, warehouses, and industrial developments for years.
“Our residents don’t want this,” Boone said. “What we know is it’s going to bring a bunch of diesel trucks, a lot of traffic, and the cutting down of our tree canopy. We know that emissions and a lack of tree canopy — it’s not good for the environment. It’s not good for the people who live here.”
The project’s developer, KMT Partners, applied for a request to rezone the property from agricultural use to industrial use to clear the way for the warehouse project.
The city’s planning commission recommended that the City Council deny the developer’s rezoning request, but a report prepared by the city’s community development affairs team recommended approving it.
When the project finally came to a vote last October, the City Council voted 4-2 to deny the developer’s zoning request. Residents thought the fight was over.
But in November 2025, KMT Partners filed a lawsuit against South Fulton, alleging that the denial was “arbitrary, capricious, and without any rational basis” and alleged that the city violated state and local zoning laws.
Court records show that after the lawsuit was filed, the city and the developer agreed to take the zoning request back up for a revote, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melynee Leftridge signed off on a court order to hold a revote by March 24, 2026.
On that day, the City Council unanimously voted in favor of the development.
“Either you keep staying in litigation and have a court tell you that they’re going to get the zoning regardless of what you think, or you can make the responsible decision to follow the law and approve it. And so we made the responsible decision to approve it,” said Councilwoman Linda Pritchett, whose district is where the new development is located.
But community members have called into question how South Fulton handled the process as some argue that the city could have defended itself against the lawsuit, failed to protect the community’s greenspace, and favored the wishes of the developer over those of its residents.
Siding with the developer
According to city documents, the project is set to occupy nearly 200 acres of land.
While KMT Partners is the developer of the project, MAPCO Farms, a convenience store retailer, reportedly owns the land.
Due to the size of the project and its overlap with the city of Fairburn’s boundaries, it was required to go through the Developments of Regional Impact review process, which is state mandated for all large-scale projects that are likely to impact neighboring municipalities.
The Atlanta Regional Commission, which conducts DRI reviews, stated in its documents that the development would “require clearing of much of the currently heavily forested site which will have significant negative local and regional heat island and stormwater impacts.”
The ARC also wrote in its review that the development is not aligned with the group’s recommendations for “preservation of critical environmental locations and resources, as well as agricultural and forest uses.”
KMT Partners did not immediately respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
Pritchett, who voted in favor of the project’s rezoning request in both October and March, said the development will bring jobs and revenue to the community. According to city documents, as part of the developer’s requirements, they must make a $400,000 contribution toward “future park projects” in South Fulton.
While she said she understood her constituents’ desire to protect the trees, she argued that the property owner has the right to do what they want with the land.
“If he wants to cut down every tree and do nothing with the land, these people can’t stop him. Those are his trees. He owns them. It belongs to him. So you just can’t tell other people what to do about their land, no matter how passionate you feel about it,” Pritchett said.
In a City Council meeting last April, Pritchett motioned to approve an amendment to the city’s Comprehensive Development Plan, which is a city planning document guiding the future development of a local municipality. The amendment sought to change the land where the development is located from a “Rural Neighborhood Character Area” designation to the “Industrial Zone Character Area” designation. The council approved the amendment and updated the CDP.
The city’s deputy director of public affairs, Denise Wells, declined to give comment on the lawsuit due to “active litigation.”
Questioning the development process
Fairburn resident Julie White lives with her family on property they own next to the planned development site. She’s concerned about how the massive project will impact her and her elderly father.
“You are encroaching on the residential property of myself and my father, who is 94 years old — he’s going to walk out his door and see that warehouse. It’s going to be right up against his property line,” White said. “The wildlife that lives here, that have lived here forever, you’re running them out, they have nowhere to go, then it’s going to overcrowd my property with wildlife and make it harder for us to live here comfortably.”
She, along with other residents like Boone, question how the city has handled the entire process as council members who opposed the zoning request in October flipped their vote in March.
Councilman Jaceey Sebastian, one of the council members who in March flipped from opposing to supporting the project, declined Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment due to the “active litigation.” Councilwoman Keosha Bell, who also flipped her vote, did not immediately respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
The two other city officials that voted to deny the rezoning request in October are former council members Helen Willis and Carmalitha Gumbs. Willis has left her position to run for the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Gumbs is now South Fulton’s mayor and can’t cast a council vote unless it’s to break a tie.
Matt Garbett, land use chair of a southwest Atlanta neighborhood association, said that it’s common for local municipalities and cities to acquiesce to developers when faced with a lawsuit due to the costs of defending themselves in court.
“A lot of times, cities say, ‘We don’t want to deal with that, so we’ll just approve this rezoning so we don’t have to go to Superior Court and pay our lawyers,’” Garbett said. “It sounds like the city basically didn’t want to pay for a lawyer to fight what, in my mind, sounds like a frivolous lawsuit. But even if you fight a frivolous lawsuit, it costs money.”
One allegation KMT Partners makes against the city in its suit is that South Fulton broke state and city zoning laws by allowing residents to speak in opposition of the zoning request during the public comment period of a July 22, 2025, meeting.
Another argument the developer makes is that because the city amended its comprehensive development plan in April 2025 and approved the industrial zone character area designation for the site, the property is in line with the city’s plans and there is no reasonable explanation for rejecting its rezoning request.
Garbett said both of those claims would be defendable in court, adding that a city is not legally required to follow its comprehensive development plan and also believes there isn’t anything illegal with allowing additional public comment outside of the zoning hearing itself.
“The council members are not familiar enough with the law,” Garbett said. “Most elected officials don’t actually become experts in these kinds of things, and so they can get easily bullied. … They don’t actually ever read the CDP or understand it or what the state requires of it.”
Residents continue to fight
While Fulton County’s court database shows that the lawsuit between the city and KMT Partners is still listed as an open case as of April 7, court documents show the city must report back to the court with the outcome of the zoning request vote by or before April 16.
Opponents of the project haven’t given up yet, as residents say they also plan to take legal action against the city.
“We’re not going to be quiet about this,” Boone said. “This is not a good thing for the city to do, to roll over, to show favoritism, it’s not a good thing to remove the voice of the people. That has got to stop.”
Despite residents’ concerns, Councilwoman Pritchett indicated little interest in coming back to the table to speak with her constituents on the matter.
“The only reason that they want more meetings is more opportunities to bash this project, in which many of them — not all, but many of them — have been extremely disrespectful, not only to the developer, but to me,” Pritchett said.
Pritchett, who admitted she didn’t read the lawsuit, said she believes that taking the developer’s zoning request back up for a revote and approving it was the right move by the city.
The project is reportedly set to be completed by January 2029.
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