A northwest Cobb resident, who disagreed with the rezoning of a neighboring property and subsequently filed suit against Cobb County, WellStar Health System and Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, has come to an agreement with defendants. The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved that agreement, with the stipulation that all litigation be dismissed, 5-0 Tuesday.

The agreement comes after a more than two-year legal battle over the property located 1,800 feet from Lake Allatoona, at the corner of Cobb Parkway and Awtrey Church Road. Commissioners voted 3-2 on July 17, 2007, to rezone the 68-acre tract, allowing for a 400,000-square-foot satellite church for Johnson Ferry Baptist Church and 440,000 square feet of medical office space for WellStar. The development would also have retail stores.

However, the development was halted when neighbor, Teresa Stendahl, and her son, Timothy Cannon, filed suit in Cobb Superior Court in August 2007. Stendahl lives on an 11-acre tract immediately south of the proposed development.

Cobb Superior Court Judge Robert Flournoy III dismissed the suit in January 2008, stating that there was "no set of provable facts" asserted in the plaintiffs' claims that would entitle them to relief. But the Georgia Supreme Court reversed that decision in October 2008.

Stendahl and Cannon's lawyer at the time, Kyle Williams, of the Atlanta firm Weissman, Nowack, Curry & Wilco, said after the ruling that his clients had always contended the rezoning of the property was inappropriate, citing concerns of environmental impact, traffic and diminished quality of life.

"They believed that it was an incorrect zoning decision because it doesn't take into effect the uniqueness of the property and its close proximity to Lake Allatoona," Williams said at the time.

The Supreme Court ruling returned the suit to Cobb Superior Court, where a trial would then take place should an agreement still not be reached. The county's attorney, Fred Bentley, Jr., said the county was prepared to go to trial, but the plaintiffs and the church and WellStar came to an agreement, thus creating a Consent Order Remand.

"The plaintiffs went to the court of appeals to see if they had a claim, and the court found that they did, but just barely," Bentley said. "That is probably why a settlement was finally reached without the suit going to trial."

Bentley said that there was no financial settlement involved in the agreement, only property conditions and stipulations that will be dealt with between the other two parties. He also said he expects the litigation will now be dismissed, as was stipulated by the board of commissioners.

Some of the changes to the original zoning that were specified in the Consent Order Remand include: a 100-foot-wide landscaped buffer that will run along the shared boundary line and be maintained by the church and WellStar; the construction of a sewer line to the Stendahl property provided by the church and hospital group; a tie-in by Stendahl that will be at Stendahl's expense; and that the detention ponds for the proposed developments be hydroseeded with a wetland grass mix, with some stipulations on the planting of trees at one of the ponds.

"The county will have oversight of the conditions, but we have oversight of the zoning anyway," Bentley said.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, the church and WellStar could not be reached.

Also Tuesday, commissioners approved 5-0: allowing James Turner to build a warehouse on his property off of Atlanta Road for his restoration cleaning business; rezoning a quarter of an acre tract off of Canton Road for the purpose of allowing a light auto repair shop; a land use permit that allows Holy Family Catholic Church in east Cobb's preschool program to continue operating out of the church for another 24 months.

Board members voted 5-0 to deny a permit that would have allowed Delano Dryden and Kolu Vezele to run a salon out of their basement off of Heritage Crossing Drive, after one resident attended the meeting in opposition and the applicants failed to attend.