Note: Smith & Miller Funeral Home in Cedartown are sponsors of Polk Today content.
The Cedartown City Commission will get to decide during their September meeting whether they should allow for expanding the parking area at Smith & Miller Funeral Home through a rezoning request coming up.
The Cedartown Planning and Zoning Board gathered this morning to hear the request from Norman Smith, who operates the funeral home at the corner of East John Hand Drive and North Main Street.
What used to be the Georgia State Patrol’s post here in Polk County has been for the past several years operating as a funeral home under Smith, who is also the county coroner.
Smith said his plan is to expand the parking lot behind the funeral home onto an empty lot in order to allow for additional area for families and friends to park and see their loved ones a final time during visitation and funeral services.
The parking area (see above) would utilize a lot Smith purchased for the purpose that otherwise would remain empty, since it is not big enough for any real residential or commercial development.
One person – not in his official capacity – stood up to speak out against the proposal during the morning meeting: County Manager Matt Denton.
He explained in a brief conversation over the phone following the meeting that his main concerns with the addition of the parking lot was taking away greenspace that catches water before it comes downhill toward his and other’s homes in the area around East John Hand Drive.
However, he expressed no issues about the funeral home expanding since a requirement for any new parking lots in Cedartown to take care of drainage issues ahead of time.
That means they have to design and install some sort of system to capture the water and contain it before it drains onto neighbor’s properties or the roadway.
Plans are for the design to include an underground system to capture and divert stormwater from impacting the neighboring community.
The request to rezone the property commercial to allow for it to be used as a parking lot will still require City Commission approval, but the Planning and Zoning board members gave it their approval without any issue.
City Commissioners will get to decide on the rezoning request during their upcoming September 11 regular session.
