Time to take Action
Coweta commissioners are putting a 220 acre(!) sports complex in residentialneighborhoods this spring! It has as many athletic fields as the ESPN WIDE WORLD OFSPORTS COMPLEX at DISNEY! Someone else’s backyard today… maybe yours tomorrow.
The traffic will be unimaginable on our already over-congested roads. Stadium lighting, loudspeakers, thousands of additional cars per day! Infrastructure is not in place for this. No feedback from Coweta citizens was asked for. They just did it. The neighbors are fighting back! These neighbors have a short deadline and today (Oct 28th), they’re asking us to do what we’ve successfully done several times recently, which is reach out in unity to contact these commissioners again, letting them know you’re a Coweta resident opposed to this project, at least in its current state, before the Nov 4th deadline for public comments!
Email addresses are below, as well as some topics you could include in your email. But if nothing else, could you please just send an email asking the commissioners to listen to the concerns of the neighbors living close to this? Tell them Coweta citizens are FED UP WITH THE OVERDEVELOPMENT AND WE WANT THEM TO STOP. We can also send a map if you are interested in seeing the layout of the complex. Please see below and thank you!
You can include any or ALL of these topics in your email; a list of concerns follows:
Regarding DRI #4744 – Prowell Park Recreation Complex - Comment window to send email
is October 21 to November 4, 2026.
• Who to contact at Coweta County (Commissioners and the Administrator):
• Include this statement with whatever you email: “ …Please include my email in the record and share for the public comment period of the DRI... “
• Points you can make in your email: Commissioners, please address:
* Even if SPLOST money pays for the full development, it cannot cover maintenance and employees. And our property taxes continue to go up. People keep voting these SPLOST in and our property taxes keep going up because our county does not spend wisely. The county could’ve used that SPLOST money FOR ALREADY NEEDED infrastructure… not THIS!
* The fields back right up to existing homes. The soccer fields along the south line sit behind the Shoal Creek Forest and Beaumont Farms lots. The plans show only a 25' setback line and a “100' structure buffer” there. A “structure” buffer may not cover fields, parking, or light poles. The northeast parking and soccer fields also run along the Beaumont Farms lot lines. We need:
• The county to adhere to its own 200ft buffer for public use athletic fields.
• A planted or bermed buffer that stays undisturbed
• Fencing around the perimeter of the public park and can be closed after hours.
• A clear statement of what is allowed inside the 100' buffer
* Noise isn’t addressed at all. Nothing covers PA systems, traffic noise, tournament hours or Sunday use. Add protections for noise!
* Traffic studies aren’t thorough. Trips are drawn only from a 10-minute-drive market of about 10,800 people. A complex this size will host regional tournaments, and those visitors come from outside that area. This likely understates weekend traffic.
* The county’s traffic own numbers don’t match. Form 2 lists 350 AM / 1,540 PM peak-hour trips. The traffic study shows 63 / 608 on weekdays. That’s a 2.5x gap in the PM figure.
Which is right? How will this traffic affect people who live in this residential area?
* Friday was dropped from the traffic study, but the county’s own table shows it’s a busier day. The study then says Friday “would not yield significantly different results.” Its Table 12 contradicts this stating 6,275 daily trips on Friday versus 4,117 on Thursday, and a PM peak of 793 versus 608. Friday evening is when neighbors feel it most, so we want the Friday analysis. Why was traffic study intentionally inaccurate/incomplete like this?
* The new road could become a cut-through. The park road will connect Andrew Bailey Rd to Fischer Rd, near the Beaumont Farms entrance. The study doesn’t analyze drivers using it to skip the intersections. We want gates or closing hours or have cut-through traffic studied with the adverse effects for neighborhoods taken into consideration. This was overlooked!
* Road fixes have no funding commitment!? The SR 34 widening and the roundabouts are “recommended” but with no money or timing attached! This shows the county creating a problem using funds from the public (the Sports Complex) only to turn around and increase taxes to fix said problem. A simpler way to phrase that is plainly putting the cart before the horse… again. SR 34 is a GDOT road. Improvements need to be built before each phase opens, NOT AFTER. This is smart growth… not putting in a giant complex with road improvements as an after thought. Do better with traffic planning on behalf of the entire county on ALL projects so we don’t keep having the same compounded problems.
It’s just good common sense and a basic best practice.
* Septic for crowds in a water supply watershed is a problem. Restrooms serving thousands of visitors on a busy Saturday will utilize septic, on a site the county itself marks as in a water supply watershed with floodplain. This is irresponsible. Where is the septicdesign and how was the capacity determined?
* Fences and boundary recognition are issues. The survey labels about 15 “encroachments”, which are mostly neighbors’ wood fences that cross onto the county parcel, plus 5 “apparent property gaps.” Will these owners and their fences be affected?
Neighbors want and deserve these answers before any changes are made to residential yards.
* The traffic study was conducted from May 21-23, 2026. Northgate Seniors’ graduation took place on May 21. No extracurricular activities such as sports or clubs were taking place. How much worse is traffic going to be during school? Was this even considered by those conducting the traffic study?
* Applicant and developer is whom? Coweta County itself. The county contact is Jim Gay, and the traffic study lists Michael Fouts as the county contact. Why has our county applied for and planned a development residents DO NOT EVEN WANT? Why was the county not asked if this park was wanted or needed? Why are these county officials acting outside of the will of Coweta citizens (again?) This is not Orlando. We don’t need a sports complex this size, especially not near homes!
* Location: 1011 Andrew Bailey Rd. It refers to this as an expansion of Andrew Bailey Park, which gets renamed Prowell Park, but this is an entirely independent project, not an expansion of the previous park. Different rules apply as expansions and we believe that's the reason it's being called that. The correct description should be used in the county's documents. (Not "expansion".) All new facilities totaling 27 athletic fields, 8 courts, disc golf and two public playgrounds will be on the Fischer Rd entrance the only reasons to use the Andrew Bailey address was to skew the traffic impacts and hide the fact that "construction of a new park" was not on the 2025 SPLOST project list. Now they want to call this an expansion. We have a copy the 2025 SPLOST Resolution. Andrew Bailey expansion was not one of them. Prowell Park was listed without verbiage of location or verbiage of construction.
* Parking count dilemma: The plan shows over 2,200 parking spaces when they combined existing parking from Andrew Bailey to the new construction of Prowell Park. This triggered a DRI and the county only adhering to apply for a DRI because we the citizens reported them to the State. County Administrator Michael Fouts is on record that the county had no plans to apply for one. Again cart before the horse.The county allocated SPLOST funds without performing the proper due diligence prior to burdening the taxpayer with the bill.
* Value: $18M for Phase 1 and $30M at buildout. Possibly up to $52 million (stated in other meetings) but not publicly disclosed. Why? It’s publicly owned, so the public should know through easily accessible means.
* Utilities and environment
• Water: 40,000 gallons a day for irrigation plus 2,000 for drinking water, from the county water authority. We have yet to see where these calculations have come from as of today. Coweta open records request yielding no results to back up this claim.
• Restrooms: served by septic, not sewer. No disclosure on how many stalls, sink, or water fountains.
• Trash: 280 tons of solid waste a year.
• Paving: 20.7% of the site will be impervious.
• Sensitive areas: Form 2 checks “Yes” for water supply watershed, wetlands and floodplains (FEMA Zone AE on the plans). One road crossing will disturb wetlands and may need a 404 permit. What is the plan to deal with this sensitive area?
• Buffers: 57 acres are marked “environmentally sensitive / no mass disturbance.”
* Traffic:
• Trips at buildout: 4,117 per weekday and 8,285 on Saturdays.
• Phase 1: only 57 extra weekday trips. That’s because removing one ballfield on paper offsets the 6 new soccer fields.
• Fischer/Minix, Fischer/Andrew Bailey and SR 34/Andrew Bailey are all below standard ALREADY today… now we’re ADDING THIS to the massive existing traffic issues? This is this wise? We do not want this.
* Improvements called for:
• a roundabout at Fischer/Minix (Phase 1).
• added lanes at SR 34/Fischer and SR 34/Andrew Bailey. This "improvement" will still have an LOS F.
• the study counts on the planned roundabout at Fischer and Andrew Bailey being built; however construction hasn’t even begun at this intersection.
• The traffic study figures also turned up an inconsistency in the county’s own counting: one existing field is described as being rebuilt into two, yet Phase 1 is listed as a net loss of one ballfield.
* This is not “smart growth”. We, the citizens of Coweta demand this project be put on hold or scrapped until more responsible planning is done, infrastructure developed, and the questions of local taxpayers answered. Take community feedback. This is a residential area and you have a responsibility to the existing owners, voters, and (your) neighbors.