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Woodstock Delayed The Pitch Vote Again. The Stadium Still Has No Parking Of Its Own.
- 52 minutes ago
- 18 min read
Council met for twenty minutes on August 10, tabled The Pitch indefinitely without hearing a presentation, and filled a Downtown Development Authority seat on the way
On Monday, August 10, the Woodstock City Council took The Pitch off the table, put it right back on, and went home. The motion carried 4 to 0. The item is tabled indefinitely.
Since then we have read the 105 page agenda packet the council would have voted from, the city's adopted council policies, the Downtown Development Authority's minutes back through last year, and the DDA's balance sheet.
Here is the meeting, then the file, then the one provision that lets four council members reopen this to the public.
The meeting
Present: Warren Johnson (Ward 1), David Potts (Ward 2), Tracy Collins (Ward 4), Brian Wolfe (Ward 5). Absent: Colin Ake (Ward 3), Rob Usher (Ward 6). Every vote carried 4 to 0.
In order: oath of office for new DDA member Meg Davidson; announcements; meeting decorum; public comment, one speaker; consent agenda, five items, none pulled, no discussion; no new business; Item 8-1, The Pitch, removed from the table and tabled again; July 27 minutes approved; fire department report; executive session; adjournment. The public portion ran twenty minutes.
The tabling
Mayor Michael Caldwell told the room, before public comment began, that he had heard from at least one council member that the item might be tabled.
The Pitch had been on the table since April, so the council voted to remove it before it could table it again. Potts moved to remove, Wolfe seconded, 4 to 0.
The mayor asked whether council wanted the presentations first. Potts said he would rather table beforehand so the two absent members could hear the whole pitch at once. He called it a very contentious case, said a lot of people have been emailing about it, and said he wanted more members present for a big vote.
That last part is a councilman stating on the record that your emails landed.
Potts moved to table, Wolfe seconded, 4 to 0, indefinitely. The mayor summed it up: they had successfully taken it off the table and put it right back on. Staff said calendars would be coordinated and the date announced at the following week's work session.
Watch the word "tabled"
On August 8 we warned that a case tabled indefinitely drops off every schedule and returns on a routine agenda posting. That is how The Pitch came back to an August calendar after April. On Monday it happened again to the same case.
Indefinitely means no date on any calendar. Check both pages every couple of weeks:
One more thing: Council Policy 000-0004 posts meeting video within three days and keeps only the current and previous month's video on the website. The archive rolls off. Download August 10 while it is up, and request April 27 through the clerk. April 27 is the only hearing this case has had.
The rule on speaking, and what happened to it
Council Policy 000-0003, Public Hearings and Participation, effective September 14, 2015, states the rule: members of the public do not speak on agenda items unless those items have been advertised for public hearing, or unless the Council, by a simple majority of affirmative votes, has decided that public participation is necessary in its deliberative process.
The Civility Code, Policy 000-0002, sets the same line. Public comment is for matters not subject to a Public Hearing. Public Hearing comment is for matters designated for one, by people who signed up before it began.
Two doors: an advertised hearing, or a majority vote of the council.
The Pitch had its hearing on April 27 and it closed. On August 10 the council took no vote to permit public participation.
Mike Donovan of Sundance Drive, a Woodstock resident of more than twenty years, asked in advance whether he could address an item on the agenda. He was told yes, and spoke against The Pitch for under three minutes. He was the only person signed up.
His access came through permission from someone at the city, granted to one person on one night. The same discretion that produced a yes for him produces a no for the next resident. What the policy provides is a hearing, noticed in advance, where everyone who signs up gets the same allotted time.
What Donovan said
The project solves a problem the city does not have. Soccer grows in Woodstock with or without a stadium, and by his description Impact Soccer is an excellent organization with or without this development. Building a district around one narrow niche is the wrong use for that land right now.
Traffic impact is unknowable until the projects the city has already approved are finished. The other side of that road is approved for a diverging diamond, and running construction on both sides at once sits next to one of the largest retail sites in Woodstock.
Apartment residents will look out at a large green space they cannot use. If the venue fails, a purpose built stadium is among the hardest things to repurpose.
He wants the site developed, and would rather see jobs and office space, given that the mixed use the city already has stands partly empty. On the Battery comparison the applicant's team has leaned on, he said the Battery has failed to deliver for the small independent businesses there.
His closing line: the project solves no problems and potentially creates many. He asked the council to vote no.
That is a twenty year resident making a land use argument on the merits, and the only substantive thing said about The Pitch on August 10.
The DDA seat
The first item of the night was the oath of office for Meg Davidson. The appointment belonged to Councilman Usher of Ward 6, who was absent. Wolfe moved on Usher's behalf, Potts seconded, 4 to 0. The mayor administered the oath. The agenda item was submitted by Brian Stockton, Economic Development.
The mayor told the room that the DDA is one of the most critically important boards the city has, that it is state established, and that it is the only appointment the mayor and council make that they cannot also remove. Only the Governor of Georgia can remove a member, he said.
About ten minutes later the same four members tabled The Pitch.
What runs through the DDA
Under The Pitch agreement, the stadium land is deeded to the DDA at no cost, in a transfer the parties value at $3.0 million. The DDA leases it to Georgia Impact. The DDA pays Woodstock City Church $250 every time its lot is used for an event, on a ten year term that renews automatically to twenty, and that obligation stands whether or not the club reimburses a dime. Section 4.3, Additional DDA Commitments, is a heading with nothing under it. Condition 10 sends event hours and lighting into the private lease between the DDA and its tenant.
The club is contractually required to field a minimum of one professional and two semi-professional teams, and to host a minimum of thirty ticketed matches a year. Thirty is the floor. The packet caps nothing, and the DDA's exposure scales with every use.
The financial architecture of this project runs through a public authority the mayor and council appoint and cannot remove.
The seat, meeting by meeting
Dwight Waggener held Ward 6 as Usher's appointee. The DDA's own minutes track the seat emptying.
January 15, 2026. Waggener on the board roll, marked absent.
March 5, 2026. Waggener present and voting. Seven board members in the room, votes recorded 7 to 0.
April 2, 2026. Meeting canceled.
April 27, 2026. Council holds the public hearing on The Pitch and tables it.
May 7, 2026. Four board members present, the absent listed by name. Waggener appears nowhere on the roll. Votes 4 to 0.
June 2, 2026. Six board members named, no Ward 6 member, votes 4 to 0.
July 9 canceled. On August 6 the board was still taking up June 2 as its most recent minutes.
The seat emptied between March 5 and May 7, 2026, and the only regularly scheduled meeting in that window was canceled. We have asked the city for the reason.
The city's roster still lists the seat as vacant on a term running January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2027, two days after Ms. Davidson was sworn into it. She serves the remainder of that term.
So a seat on the authority that receives $3.0 million in land, signs the stadium lease, and carries a twenty year payment obligation to a church sat empty through the summer while this application moved toward a vote, and was filled ten minutes before the council took the case up.
The rest of the board: Lisa Morton, appointed by the Mayor. Trent Chambers, Ward 1. David Leggett, Vice Chair, Ward 2. Spencer Nix, Chair, Ward 3. Jason Sheetz, Ward 4. Melissa Madigan, Treasurer, Ward 5. Brian Stockton is Executive Director and the city's Economic Development Director.
One more name on that page: Councilman David Potts is the DDA's City Council Liaison. Potts moved to table The Pitch on Monday night.
Four days before the vote, the DDA took up a sign and a slab
The DDA met Thursday, August 6, four days before the scheduled council vote. The entire business portion of that published agenda:
A discussion and vote on a downtown directory sign, a metal kiosk with a locking door and a corkboard map, quoted at not more than $12,000.
A vote to approve a $24,053.58 contract with Benning Construction to pour a concrete pad in the Towne Lake Parkway roundabout for a public art sculpture.
Then a financial report, board comments, adjournment. The public agenda of the body that receives the land, signs the lease, holds the parking obligation, and privately sets stadium hours and lighting contains no item on any of it.
The agenda also carries an executive session for property, personnel, and litigation. So does every DDA agenda we pulled: January, March, May, June, August. It is a standing item scheduled in advance. On January 15 the board sat in closed session for eleven minutes. On March 5 they were in for fifty four minutes, 5:16 to 6:10, then emerged and voted 7 to 0 on a lease agreement to WS Main Street Freestanding LLC, a parcel split at 213 Bentley Parkway, a parking and access easement, and a quitclaim deed. On May 7 and June 2 the minutes record the motions followed by the words: no executive session held. August 6 minutes are not yet posted.
A closed door belongs on an agenda when there is a specific reason to close one.
What the DDA can afford
The August 6 packet carries the authority's financials. As of August 4, 2026, total assets of $696,551.65, with $658,852.22 in bank accounts. The adopted FY27 budget projects $632,650 in income against $892,400 in expenses, a net operating loss of $259,750.
The DDA explains most of that loss in its own June 2 minutes: roughly $212,000 is a planned drawdown of cash reserves from previous property sales, earmarked for Tract B MOU projects. That is deliberate spending of restricted money.
The Pitch obligation is unrestricted, recurring, uncapped, and payable regardless of reimbursement. Against thirty or more events a year for twenty years, this balance sheet carries it.
Anyone voting to route this through the DDA should be able to state the maximum annual exposure and the line item that absorbs it. That figure appears nowhere in the 105 pages.
The policy that governs Monday's appointment
Council Policy 000-0012, Appointment of Directors of the Downtown Development Authority, has been on the books since January 25, 2010.
The recommending member handles the replacement. Directors are recommended by an individual council member or the mayor and are considered, for reference, the director associated with that member. The policy exists, in its own words, so the city can determine when terms begin and end and which member recommends a replacement upon a vacancy. When a director's office becomes vacant, the council member who recommended that director follows the process to recommend a replacement for the remainder of the term.
Waggener was Usher's recommendation, which made the replacement Usher's to recommend. Usher was absent, and Wolfe made the motion on his behalf.
A meeting is required first. The council member making a recommendation shall meet with the candidate, the Chair of the Downtown Development Authority, and the Executive Director to discuss the scope of a director's duties, the goals of the authority, and other appropriate matters. The Chair is Spencer Nix. The Executive Director is Brian Stockton. Whether that meeting happened is documented somewhere, and we have asked for it.
Qualifications are specific. A director must be a taxpayer residing in the city, or an owner or operator of a business within the Downtown Development Area who is a taxpayer residing in Cherokee County, or a combination. A business owner or operator must have held a City of Woodstock Business Occupation Tax Permit for at least ninety days.
Terms run concurrent with the recommending member's term, which is why the Ward 6 DDA seat carries the same January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2027 window as Usher's own.
One open question. The mayor said Monday that only the Governor can remove a DDA member. Policy 000-0012 provides that the authority has an ex officio director appointed by the mayor, who serves at the will of the mayor and may be removed and replaced at any time. Which seats are removable, by whom, and under what authority is a question the council should answer in public.
The standard that applies to every director
Under O.C.G.A. § 36-62A-1, directors of a downtown development authority must comply with the state code of ethics at O.C.G.A. § 45-10-3, and as a general rule shall not engage in transactions with the authority. The statute supplies one path for an authority to contract with an organization a director is involved with, and it requires all of the following: the interest is disclosed in advance to the other directors and recorded in the minutes; where the value exceeds $200.00 per calendar quarter, the authority publishes the interest once in the county's legal organ at least thirty days before the transaction closes; and no director with a substantial interest is present for that portion of the meeting.
A $250 fee per event, against a minimum of thirty events a year, clears that quarterly threshold easily.
Georgia builds economic interest into these boards on purpose. O.C.G.A. § 36-42-7(b) requires that at least four directors have, or represent a party that has, an economic interest in downtown redevelopment. The statutory question is whether specific interests are disclosed, published, and recused from, before the vote and on the record.
So here is our question, asked in public and in advance of any DDA action: will each director disclose any interest or involvement with Woodstock City Church, with the applicant, or with any party to this agreement, on the record and in the minutes, before the authority acts on The Pitch?
The executive session
Council closed the August 10 meeting for litigation, personnel, and or real estate. City Manager Jeff Moon flagged in advance, twice, that staff would seek no action afterward. Johnson moved, Wolfe seconded, 4 to 0. Council returned, took no action, adjourned.
Under O.C.G.A. § 50-14-4(b)(1), the presiding officer must execute and file with the official minutes a notarized affidavit swearing the closed portion was devoted to matters within the exceptions provided by law and identifying the specific relevant exception. Woodstock adopts that requirement as its own in Policy 000-0004, lists the exceptions one by one, and ends with a single line: this affidavit must be kept with the minutes.
Note the word specific. The reason announced from the dais bundled three categories with "and or."
As with the DDA, the closure was scheduled in advance. Item 13 of the printed August 10 agenda reads: EXECUTIVE SESSION - Personnel, Litigation, Real Estate.
What we are requesting
We are filing an open records request with the City of Woodstock for the following, and we will publish what comes back, whatever it says:
The executive session affidavit and closed session minutes from August 10, 2026.
The board and committee application submitted by the Ward 6 appointee to the DDA.
All correspondence relating to the nomination and appointment to that seat, and any record of the meeting Policy 000-0012 requires between the recommending council member, the candidate, the DDA Chair, and the Executive Director.
Any resignation letter or correspondence regarding the Ward 6 DDA vacancy between January and August 2026.
The record of who requested that Z#167-26 be placed on the August 10 agenda. Policy 000-0004 lists who may make that request and requires agendas to state who did. A case tabled since April returned to a calendar because someone asked.
The portal takes about four minutes: https://woodstockga.justfoia.com/publicportal/home/newrequest
The DDA's next regular meeting is September 3, 2026, at 5:00 PM in the Board Room at the Office of Economic Development, 1 Innovation Way. It meets the first Thursday of the month and cancels often: three of eight regular meetings so far in 2026, and six in 2025. Check the schedule before you go, and consider adopting that meeting.
What the applicant told the city
Density. In the Response Statement filed with the original application, the applicant states that the district allows 12 units to the acre and the project proposed roughly 18.44. The stated plan for closing that gap was a text amendment to the Ridgewalk Overlay District proposed by the City of Woodstock, letting Council grant density bonuses in special circumstances.
That described the 236 unit version. Condition 1 now caps the project at 185. On 12.81 acres, 236 units is about 18.4 to the acre and 185 units is about 14.4. The district allows 12.
The ordinance's Approvals of Zoning section grants four things: the rezoning to GC-VMU, the Conditional Use Permit for multi-family and ground floor residential, a variance allowing more than two rows of parking between a building and the street, and a variance for the numbers and locations of parking and loading spaces. A density variance appears nowhere in that list, and the 105 pages are silent on the overlay text amendment.
The council should answer, out loud and before any vote: under what provision does this project exceed the district's density, and has the Ridgewalk Overlay text amendment been adopted? A density bonus granted case by case is a tool that gets used more than once.
Parking. Exhibit B, the revised site plan in the August packet: multifamily, three buildings, 185 units, 241 spaces required, 278 provided. Commercial, 26,866 square feet of restaurant, retail, and office, 134 spaces. The buildings serving the field are listed at zero spaces required.
Every space belongs to a resident, a diner, a shopper, or an office tenant. Stadium parking sits across Ridgewalk Parkway on a church's lot, under an agreement that was an unsigned draft on the night of the scheduled vote.
Stadium size. Press reports have ranged from 1,200 initial seats to 2,500 to an eventual 5,000. The applicant's sewer summary sizes the sanitary load line by line, and the stadium line reads Assembly (Stadium), 4,500 persons. That is the figure the developer's own engineer planned around.
The agenda and the ordinance disagree. The August 10 agenda describes a maximum of 236 multi-family rental units, and so does the staff report narrative. Condition of Zoning 1, in the ordinance in the same book, caps the project at 185.
The developer's letter explains the gap: the count was cut from 236 to 185, a 51 unit reduction he says matches units given up by another project so the city's homeowner to renter ratio holds. The reduction is real and appears in the revised site plan. The agenda the council read from on Monday carried a number the ordinance beneath it had superseded by 51 units. Unpaid residents reading a PDF caught it.
Two Exhibit Cs. In the staff report, Exhibit C is the letter from First Baptist Church Woodstock about the land donation next to Enon Cemetery. In the rezoning ordinance in the same book, Condition 5 binds the development to the concept plans "attached hereto as Exhibit C." When you write to the council, name the document rather than the letter.
Traffic. The original Response Statement said the required traffic studies found no major infrastructure upgrades necessary, including adding traffic lights at our entrances. MOU Section 4 now has the developer, at its sole cost, designing, permitting, and installing a new traffic signal at the Church's entrance off Ridgewalk Parkway.
The developer disclosed that change directly to the Council. In his letter in the August packet, Freestone principal W. David Knight writes that they understand traffic is a concern, and that is why they agreed to pay for a new traffic light at the intersection with the church's driveway, which he says will improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety along the corridor.
The question that leaves: the same traffic study concluding no signalization was needed now underpins a project that adds one. A resident has entered a related concern into the record, arguing that a pedestrian Hawk beacon was dropped from the design and replaced with a standard signal near an active rail line, and that a crossing there requires rail preemption engineering. We are unqualified to evaluate that claim. It is specific, it is in the packet, and the record shows no city response to it.
The church. The applicant described the arrangement from the beginning: an agreed letter of intent with Woodstock City Church for game day parking, the Church's ability to use the soccer field, and its benefit from the multifamily and retail. The applicant also states there will be no events at the stadium on Sunday mornings. Over the intervening months that letter of intent became a twenty year payment obligation carried by a public authority.
The state of the file
We read the August 10 packet cover to cover. It was compiled Friday, August 7. Here is where it stands, with the conditions quoted rather than characterized.
The parking MOU remains undecided about its own nature. Section 11(a) carries a bracketed instruction to the drafters: confirm with counsel whether the parties intend this MOU to be legally binding in whole or in part. The effective date is blank. The $75,000 figure and the $250 per use figure each carry a literal question mark printed beside them.
The pedestrian crossing is deferred. Condition 13 requires an approved plan for pedestrian access across Ridgewalk Parkway to the church parking, plus an executed parking agreement, at or before Site Plan submittal. That falls after the zoning vote. Council asked for pedestrian safety answers in April.
Sewer is open, in the applicant's own words. The summary's open items: the city must confirm the survey scope; field survey is required at 55 manholes for which the city has no as builts or GIS data; the city has no flow meter data for the route; a meeting with the city has been requested and remains unscheduled. Condition 4 requires the final water and sewer agreement before Site Plan application, again after the vote.
The cemetery study was scoped to the fence line, and the report says so. The archaeologist delineated the boundaries the cemetery shares with the tract, probing with a four foot tile probe at one to six foot intervals within roughly twenty feet beyond the fence, with surface inspection to about thirty feet. The report calls that swath the Delineation Corridor and found no graves in it. Condition 16 provides that if human remains are found during grading, work stops immediately and the coroner, the city, and the adjacent cemetery are alerted. That procedure begins after an excavator finds someone.
Section 4.3, Additional DDA Commitments, is a heading with nothing under it. The framework's own open items list confirms it, alongside the parcel donation terms, the church parking threshold, the escrow draw conditions, and one line that stopped us: legal entity names and addresses for all three parties. The agreement routing $3.0 million in land through a public authority has yet to identify who the parties are.
The zoning can evaporate. Condition 2 provides that if the Development Agreement between the DDA, the developer, and Georgia Impact goes unexecuted for one year, all entitlements become immediately null and void and the zoning reverts to Neighborhood Commercial without any required notification or Council approval process.
Three conditions in the ordinance carry real public force, and you should hear them from us. Condition 11 caps outdoor amplified sound between 7:00am and 11:00pm. Condition 15 bars trash service and deliveries between 10:00pm and 6:00am. Condition 3 requires the developer to build an eastbound left turn lane on Ridgewalk.
Condition 10 is the narrow problem: hours of operation for events on the outdoor field, including lighting, live in the private lease between the DDA and its tenant. The amplified sound cap survives it. How late the lights burn, and how often, is written where no resident will read it.
What to do this week
1. Write to the two who missed the vote. Potts wants them in the room. What they read is up to you.
Colin Ake, Ward 3: cake@woodstockga.gov Rob Usher, Ward 6: rusher@woodstockga.gov
Full contact information: https://www.woodstockga.gov/your_government/elected_officials.php
The whole body at once: mayorandcouncil@woodstockga.gov
2. Demand a second public hearing. Four votes can order one.
This is the most useful thing we learned this week. Policy 000-0003 sets the one hearing rule and holds it regardless of how many times final action is deferred, which is why April 27 stands alone and why tabling twice produced nothing. The same sentence carries the exception: unless a simple majority of members of the City Council vote to conduct such additional public hearings. A second path in the same policy lets Council decide by simple majority that public participation is necessary on any agenda item.
Four votes, either route. Put this in your email:
I am asking the Mayor and Council to exercise its authority under Council Policy 000-0003 to vote to conduct an additional public hearing on Z#167-26 and CUP#094-26 before any final action. The packet has changed materially since the April 27 hearing closed, and the public has had no opportunity to be heard on those changes.
3. Ask for what the delay makes possible. A list of what should exist before this returns:
Ground penetrating radar across the full 12.81 acres before any land disturbance permit issues.
A signed, executed parking agreement in the packet.
The sewer meeting held, its scope agreed in writing, the 55 manholes surveyed.
The pedestrian crossing plan produced before the vote, as council asked in April.
Event hours and lighting written into the zoning conditions where the public can read them.
Section 4.3 filled in and public before anyone votes.
Every one of those is a document the city needs anyway.
4. Put it in the case file. Email planning@woodstockga.gov with Z#167-26 and CUP#094-26 in the subject line. Comments to planning staff enter the permanent case file and go to the Planning Commission and City Council.
5. Watch the work session. Staff said the date would be announced there. Agendas post here: https://www.woodstockga.gov/your_government/city_clerk_s_office/meetings_agendas_and_minutes.php
One more thing
Four council members sat in that room on Monday, and one resident spoke by permission.
The council's rules guarantee that is what the minutes will show regardless of turnout. Open comment caps at three speakers and closes on any item being decided, so attendance at a rezoning leaves the official record untouched. Remember that the next time someone tells you nobody objected.
What made the record: a councilman said from the dais that a lot of people had been emailing about this case, called it contentious, and held the vote for a full body. That is the trace your emails left, and it is the form of pressure this process registers.
Everything in this post came from documents the city published. The packet, the ordinance, the minutes, the balance sheet, the policy manual. It took somebody reading 105 pages, four sets of board minutes, and a policy manual, and setting the pieces beside each other.
The unit count on the agenda contradicted the ordinance beneath it. The section listing a public authority's commitments is blank. The agreement moving three million dollars in land has yet to name the parties. The parking plan carries a note asking the lawyers whether it is a contract. Two documents in one book are both called Exhibit C.
Catching those is the job of a professional staff. This city employs planners, engineers, a city manager, and an attorney.
The case is alive and the next date is unset. Write to the council. Ask for the hearing by policy number. Adopt a meeting. Send us what you catch and we will run it against the documents, the way we ran this.
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