TONIGHT: Public Hearing on "The Pitch" and Why You Need to Show Up

By Martha Jean Schindler, Founder and Leader, North Georgia Community Action Network

There is a major development proposal going before the Woodstock City Council tonight, and if the past few years have taught us anything about how this council operates, it is that the decisions they make in that chamber rarely reflect what residents actually want. The least we can do is make sure our voices are in the room.

The hearing is at 7 p.m. tonight, Monday, April 27, at Chambers at City Center, 8534 Main St. in downtown Woodstock. Be there.

Here is what is on the table. A developer called Freestone Real Estate is asking the city to rezone 12.81 acres at the southeast corner of Reagan Street and Ridgewalk Parkway from neighborhood commercial to general commercial vertical mixed-use. The project, called The Pitch, would include a soccer stadium starting at roughly 1,200 seats with the potential to eventually expand to 5,000, up to 236 apartment units, and approximately 26,866 square feet of commercial uses including restaurant space, office space, and soccer support facilities, according to city documents. Freestone Principal Joe Knight described it to the planning commission as a "mini-Battery," explicitly drawing a comparison to the Battery Atlanta mixed-use development that surrounds Truist Park. If approved, the stadium would serve as the home of Georgia Impact Soccer Club's future professional women's team competing in the Women's Premier Soccer League Pro, a planned national women's professional league targeting a 2027 launch, as well as the club's semi-professional women's team in the WPSL and its semi-professional men's team in the United Premier Soccer League. That is three teams playing out of this venue, not one.

The Woodstock Planning Commission already voted 4-2 to recommend approval. The full City Council votes tonight.

This proposal is not purely bad or purely good. So let's talk about both sides.

On the pro side, there is something genuinely exciting about professional women's soccer coming to Cherokee County. Georgia Impact has deep roots here under its former name, the Cherokee Soccer Association, and a walkable mixed-use development with restaurants and a year-round activated venue could bring real economic energy to this corridor. Done right, this could be a community asset that serves people across the county for decades.

But the devil is in the details, and the details of this development are where it gets complicated.

Traffic: The City Knows This Road Is Already Broken

The Reagan Street and Ridgewalk Parkway corridor is officially recognized by the City of Woodstock, Cherokee County, and the Georgia Department of Transportation as one of the most congested bottlenecks in the entire North Atlanta region. Mayor Caldwell himself said publicly that it is "one of the most busy commercial intersections and corridors in North Atlanta now," according to WSB Radio reporting from September 2025. Three residents raised traffic concerns at the planning commission hearing. Two commissioners voted no specifically over the density this project would bring.

(Note from the author: I now live off of Ridgewalk Parkway. I drive this road almost every day. I am telling you it is already at its limit.)

A $13.7 million project to convert the Ridgewalk and I-575 interchange into a diverging diamond is currently in planning, with construction beginning in 2028 at the earliest. The city's own acknowledged fix for this corridor is still years away. Tonight, the council is being asked to approve a stadium that could draw 5,000 people directly onto that same road. The proposed mitigation is a single added turn lane on Ridgewalk Parkway.

The question no one has publicly answered is whether Freestone Real Estate is being required to pay traffic impact fees to offset what this development will add to an already failing road network. Based on publicly available city documents, this question remains open. Residents deserve that answer before any vote is taken.

Parking

According to city documents, the developer is formally requesting variances from the city's own requirements on both the number of parking spaces and their physical location, seeking official permission to build fewer spaces than city code requires. The entire overflow plan rests on a private agreement with Woodstock City Church for use of their ancillary lot during off-hours on game days. City documents provide no answer to what happens when that agreement lapses or a scheduling conflict arises, or who bears accountability at that point.

Woodstock City Church deserves specific attention here, because its relationship with this city government is a documented one. That is the same church that hosted Mayor Caldwell's State of the City address on private property with a $15 ticket price, then called the police on residents standing quietly outside with signs about ICE enforcement in our community.

(Another note from the author: I was one of those residents. I was detained and removed from church property for holding a sign. I documented what happened in detail here.)

A civic institution with that kind of documented relationship to city government is now being written into a parking agreement for a major development this same government is voting to approve. Residents deserve the full terms of that agreement, whether it is legally binding, how long it lasts, and what the consequences are if it falls apart.

Water and Sewer

Woodstock's water and sewer system has a documented record of financial strain. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that rapid growth followed by a sudden slowdown left the city's water and sewer fund so stressed that Woodstock spent $5 million in reserves to cover infrastructure improvements, a move significant enough that Moody's Investor Service downgraded the city's bond rating at that time. The city's own website acknowledges that growth has put exponential pressure on the system over time. Georgia received a C+ for drinking water, a C- for wastewater, and a C- for stormwater on the 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card, according to the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District. The city's own stormwater management page flags increasing impervious surfaces from new development as an accelerating runoff and flooding risk, directly relevant to a nearly 13-acre paving and building project situated within the Noonday Creek watershed.

We do not have specific current data confirming pipe or treatment capacity is at its limit today. What the public record does show is a documented history of strain, a statewide infrastructure system receiving failing grades, and a proposal that lists a water and sewer agreement as a future condition rather than a confirmed current reality. The city would be approving a zoning change tonight before that question has a verified answer. Given everything the public record shows about this system's history, that warrants serious scrutiny from every resident in this city.

The Unfinished Promise Next Door

The Woodstock City Center project was announced in 2022 with a stated three-year completion window. The city delivered its side of the deal, building a six-story, 647-space parking deck using SPLOST dollars. As of the writing of this post, the city's own website reads that "the private sector is working to deliver the commercial components." As of October 2025, the city had only just signed a letter of intent with a Florida developer called Southern Ventures for a hotel now targeting a 2028 completion. The DDA is investing $2 million of public Hotel-Motel Tax revenue into the conference space component. The public built the deck already. The private commercial side remains undelivered on its original timeline.

That documented timeline is directly relevant when evaluating a new and far more complex public-private proposal from a developer with no publicly listed completed projects.

Who Is Freestone Real Estate and What Is Their Track Record?

The following is based entirely on publicly available information including Freestone's own website, professional profiles, and publicly accessible business records.

Freestone Real Estate is an Atlanta-based firm headquartered at 1380 West Paces Ferry Road. Its principals are Joe Knight, David Izlar, and BJ Haisten. Their senior advisor is David Knight, who brings over four decades of real estate experience including his time as co-founder and Chief Development Officer of Walton Communities, where he helped develop over 10,000 apartment units, according to his own professional biography.

Walton Communities built Walton Woodstock at 735 Market Street, one of the first apartment developments in downtown Woodstock. The senior advisor guiding Freestone's most ambitious project has a direct prior history of development in this city specifically. (Another author's note: I lived at Walton Woodstock until this week, and I can tell you from personal experience that the parking and traffic complaints in those public reviews are not exaggerated.)

Publicly available resident reviews of Walton Woodstock consistently cite parking as a serious problem, particularly during downtown events and weekend nights. That pattern is relevant context when evaluating a project from the same development lineage that is now requesting parking variances for a project ten times the scale.

Based on publicly available information, Freestone itself as a company has no completed development projects listed on its website or in publicly accessible records. Their website shows placeholder images where a portfolio would typically appear. The experience cited in their marketing reflects what individual team members accomplished at prior employers, not projects Freestone has delivered as a company. Joe Knight's background before co-founding Freestone included Tanalta Real Estate, focused on small industrial and office properties, and Go Doorstep, a waste and recycling service company for apartment communities that was sold in 2020, according to his professional profiles. If completed projects exist and are simply not publicly listed, the developer has every opportunity to present that information tonight.

Residents have a right to ask whether the city has conducted any independent vetting of this developer's capacity to deliver a project of this scale, and to see that analysis made public.

Georgia Impact: Real Roots, Real Questions

Fairness requires saying this clearly first. Georgia Impact Soccer Club is the former Cherokee Soccer Association, which has served this area for 50 years according to their own website. They have over 2,000 players, 150 coaches, programs running in 9 Cherokee County schools, and what they describe as the only middle school soccer league in the metro Atlanta area. Their WPSL semi-professional women's team already plays locally at Tommy Baker Field on the Cherokee High School campus. Their roots here are real and their youth programming has genuinely served thousands of families in this county.

A rooted community organization and a viable business anchor for a 5,000-seat stadium are two very different things, and the gap between them is where serious questions live.

A Stadium Journey review of Georgia Impact's current WPSL operation from June 2025 described the Tommy Baker Field crowd as consisting primarily of family members of players and families in Georgia Impact's youth pipeline, with the reviewer specifically writing that the team has not yet been able to tap into the broader community. General admission runs under $11 and parking is free at a high school field. One reviewer's assessment, but one consistent with what most people in this county would tell you from direct experience: women's semi-professional soccer in Cherokee County draws primarily from within the club's own pipeline, and has yet to build a broad independent community fanbase. That may change. The public record shows it has not happened yet.

The professional league meant to anchor this entire stadium carries its own documented uncertainty. The Women's Premier Soccer League Pro has not played a single game. According to the league's own website, it is actively seeking sanctioning from the United States Soccer Federation. Without that sanctioning, it cannot operate as a professional league. When Georgia Impact signed their letter of intent in February 2024, WPSL Pro was planned as a Tier 3 league launching in 2025. The league then announced an upgrade to Tier 2 launching in 2026, per ESPN reporting from April 2025. The launch then slipped to 2027. The WPSL's own expansion page as of this writing describes it once more as a Tier 3 league. The tier classification has shifted back and forth. The launch timeline has moved three times. Each franchise has paid a $1 million entry fee into a league that has not played a single professional game and whose own materials cannot consistently describe its place in the soccer hierarchy.

Women's soccer nationally is genuinely growing. The NWSL has seen record attendance. The gap between that elite-level momentum and a new unsanctioned league whose tier keeps shifting, in a county where the existing semi-pro crowd consists largely of club families, is where the financial risk for this project lives. The city should have a publicly stated contingency plan for what happens to this stadium if WPSL Pro gets further delayed, loses its sanctioning bid, or does not survive its early seasons. Who owns it? Who operates it? Who maintains it? These are fair questions, and they deserve public answers before any vote is taken tonight.

The DDA Arrangement and Who Benefits

Under the proposed three-party development agreement between the Woodstock Downtown Development Authority, Freestone Real Estate, and Georgia Impact Soccer Club, per city documents, the developer would donate the land the stadium sits on to the DDA, while Georgia Impact would own and operate the stadium itself.

The DDA board that would be a party to this deal consists of Lisa Morton (appointed by Mayor Caldwell), Trent Chambers (appointed by Ward 1 Council Member Warren Johnson), David Leggett (appointed by Ward 2 Council Member David Potts), Spencer Nix (appointed by Ward 3 Council Member Colin Ake), Jason Sheetz (appointed by Ward 4 Council Member Tracy Collins), Melissa Madigan (appointed by Ward 5 Council Member Brian Wolfe), and Dwight Waggener (appointed by Ward 6 Council Member Rob Usher), according to the city's official DDA webpage. Council Member David Potts simultaneously serves as the City Council Liaison to the DDA itself, per the same page. Every member of this board was appointed by the same elected officials voting on this project tonight. That is the publicly documented structure of how this body works.

What every resident has a right to ask is whether any of these DDA board members, or the council members who appointed them, have any financial relationship with Freestone Real Estate, Georgia Impact Soccer Club, or any investor or contractor connected to this project, including business partnerships, real estate holdings near the development site, or campaign contributions. This question has not been publicly asked or answered. It should be answered transparently before any vote is taken. The burden of demonstrating the absence of conflicts of interest belongs to the people in that room tonight.

Who Else is Impacted

The following reflects my analysis and opinion about the likely distribution of benefits and risks based on the deal's publicly documented structure.

The people who stand to benefit most from The Pitch if it succeeds are the developer, who builds and profits; the DDA board and the council members who appointed them, who get to claim a landmark civic achievement; the soccer club, which gains a facility it could not otherwise afford; and property owners near the site, whose land values are likely to rise.

The people most exposed to the downside risk if this goes wrong are working families in the surrounding neighborhoods who already sit in some of the worst traffic in North Atlanta and face years more of it before the planned interchange fix even breaks ground. Commuters who depend on Ridgewalk and Reagan every day with no structural relief in sight until 2028 at the earliest. Homeowners and renters throughout Woodstock who are likely to face upward pressure on housing costs as a mixed-use luxury development reshapes the corridor. Latino families and immigrant communities in this area who are already living under economic and enforcement pressure and who, in my direct observation and experience, have little effective voice in how this council makes decisions. Small business owners whose customers may struggle to reach them on event days. Every Woodstock household paying a water bill that has already risen sharply and may face further pressure as infrastructure absorbs new demand.

(Final author's note: I am on that list. I moved this week from Walton Woodstock to an apartment on Ridgewalk Parkway. I am not a disinterested observer and I want you to know that. I am raising these concerns because they will land on me and on my neighbors just as directly as they will land on anyone else in this community.)

The people who will live with the consequences of tonight's vote are overwhelmingly people who are not casting it.

This council has advanced development projects over resident concerns about traffic and quality of life. They have allowed financial arrangements to proceed without the transparency the public deserves. They have made decisions in ways that left residents feeling like the outcome was settled long before the hearing started. Tonight is your opportunity to put your concerns into the public record before the vote happens.

You can support professional women's soccer and still demand real answers about the parking variance, traffic mitigation and impact fees, water and sewer capacity, the terms of the church parking agreement, Freestone's development track record as a company, the current sanctioning status of WPSL Pro, and the DDA's obligations under this deal. You can want economic development and still insist that your elected officials explain how this gets built responsibly and who bears the cost if it does not go as planned.

The Woodstock City Council holds this hearing tonight at 7 p.m. at Chambers at City Center, 8534 Main St. in downtown Woodstock. Public comment is your right. Use it.

Read the original Tribune-Ledger News coverage here.