The Woodstock City Council will cast the deciding vote on Monday, August 24, on whether to annex and rezone the 31-acre Ansley Park mobile home community so David Weekley Homes can build 220 new single-family houses on Dupree Road, a decision that could ultimately push out the roughly 130 households now living there. The vote, set for 7 p.m. at the Chambers at City Center, comes after weeks of pointed public debate over what should happen to one of the last affordable manufactured-housing communities left in a fast-appreciating Woodstock market.
Ansley Park of Woodstock has operated as a family-owned manufactured housing community for more than 30 years, offering one- to three-bedroom homes for sale or lease-purchase near Interstate 575, according to Ansley Park of Woodstock. The property currently sits in unincorporated Cherokee County, zoned R-40 for single-family homes on lots of at least 40,000 square feet, but David Weekley Homes is asking the city to annex it and apply R-4 zoning, which would allow roughly seven homes per acre, according to the City of Woodstock. As reported by CBS Atlanta, the Woodstock Planning Commission has already partially approved the application, denying the requested variances while voting 4-1 to approve the annexation and rezoning themselves.
What the Developer Wants to Build
Per CBS Atlanta's reporting, the proposal as reviewed by the Planning Commission included several variance requests: a decrease in the front setback from 15 to 12 feet, a narrowing of side setbacks from 5 to 3.5 feet, an 18-foot distance from garage to sidewalk, and a reduction in minimum lot size from 5,500 to 2,500 square feet. Commissioner Brandon Williams voiced hesitancy about approving those variances, saying he lacked sufficient information about why they were needed and, in his words, did not have enough understanding to make a good decision. The commission ultimately denied the variances while still advancing the underlying annexation and rezoning.
Weekley Homes is represented in the application by Marietta-based land-use attorney Parks F. Huff of Sams, Larkin & Huff, LLP, according to the City of Woodstock's public hearing records. Huff recently represented a developer before the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners, which on August 4 approved reclassifying 39.5 acres along Highway 92 for 298 multi-family units and 96 townhomes after eleven months of review, a case that shows local elected bodies in the Woodstock submarket have recently been willing to approve significant density increases.
Relocation Money and an Unresolved Agreement
An attorney representing David Weekley Homes told the Planning Commission there was no vote on closing the park itself, framing the meeting as concerning only how the property should be redeveloped after closure, and said the privately owned park's owner had simply decided to retire, per CBS Atlanta's account. The current property owner has stated that relocation assistance would be available to eligible tenants if the plan wins approval, and the owner reportedly offered residents $15,000 to help with relocation. Tony Eyl, who represented the property owner at the meeting, said multiple tenant situations complicated determining who was living at the property and how to meet residents' needs.
Even so, the annexation, rezoning and variance package included a condition that the owner would help existing Ansley Park residents find suitable housing, but the Planning Commission said it had not received the owner's actual agreement spelling out that help. Williams pressed to understand the terms of any such arrangement between the property owner and residents. The Development Process Committee had conditionally approved the annexation, rezoning and variances in July, but the underlying relocation commitment appears not to have been finalized by the time the matter reached the full commission.
Residents Say the Offer Falls Short
Residents and activists gathered outside the Chambers in downtown Woodstock to press their case before commissioners voted. Axel Vera, one of the residents speaking out, said moving mobile homes would cost significantly more than the relocation offer on the table, and argued that Ansley Park residents deserve to live there because many have called it home for years or decades. Volunteer advocacy coalition Woodstock CAN launched a campaign and petition in July opposing the development, citing worsened traffic near Interstate 575, added strain on public schools, and the loss of low-cost housing stock.
Residents have also circulated a proposed timeline showing Ansley Park households would need to clear their lots and vacate by June 2027 if the project moves forward, according to posts shared through the Stop Ansley Park Teardown campaign. That timetable collides with Georgia's legal framework for manufactured-home evictions: under Georgia Code § 44-7-59, a tenant who fails to move a manufactured home within 10 days of an eviction order can have a state-licensed carrier remove the unit at the tenant's own expense, with the resulting moving and storage fees becoming a lien against the home, according to Justia Law.
A Market Squeezing Out Options
The stakes of relocation are steep in a Woodstock housing market that has moved well beyond what many Ansley Park households could afford. The median listing price for homes in Woodstock reached $508,805 in July, with typical overall home values ranging between $465,000 and $485,000, according to Movoto. That gap persists even though Cherokee County's median household income reached $108,115 in 2024, with average household income at $131,625, per U.S. Census Bureau figures cited by Point2Homes — a level of prosperity that has fueled demand for market-rate subdivisions but done little to preserve lower-cost housing stock nearby.
David Weekley Homes has described its plans as building a community of new single-family homes meant to meet local residents' housing needs, and the company remains a prospective purchaser of the property, with the sale and any redevelopment still contingent on the city's approval. Woodstock's Community Development Department, now overseen by director Melissa Sigmund, administers the city's zoning process that will ultimately decide the outcome. Whether the City Council attaches binding relocation terms, extends the timeline, or approves the annexation and rezoning as submitted will not be known until the August 24 meeting, when Ansley Park's roughly 130 households — and the developer waiting to build 220 new homes in their place — will finally get their answer.
