Three office floors, two parking levels—and a buffer request marked denied

Sandy Springs, Georgia, planning staff recommended easing neighborhood-buffer rules for a 2025 office redevelopment at 5825 Mountain Creek Road. The city’s register records the variance, V-25-35, as denied.⁠[1][2]

The plan called for demolishing a commercial building that the staff report described as housing a café and personal services in a converted 1958 ranch house. Its replacement would have three office floors of about 14,000 square feet each, plus two basement parking levels at the rear.⁠[2]

The exception concerned the eastern boundary beside residentially zoned land. Neighborhood transition buffers are intended to separate large commercial structures from protected single-family neighborhoods and screen dissimilar uses. But staff argued that the adjoining stream buffer and floodplain already created approximately 180 feet of naturally unbuildable separation, allowing reduced zoning-buffer requirements without defeating their purpose.⁠[2]

Staff’s support was not for eliminating all screening. Its proposed conditions would retain a 20-foot vegetative buffer planted with evergreens reaching at least 35 feet at maturity, plus a fence or wall. Staff also wanted the building plan changed to leave room for access between neighboring, similarly zoned properties.⁠[2]

The report nevertheless acknowledged a significant limit to the hardship argument: the requested exception was not the minimum needed to build. A smaller building could be constructed. Public Works separately found that the site plan failed driveway-spacing and sight-distance standards and needed its driveway slope revised. Those were staff findings—not established reasons for the board’s denial.⁠[1][2]

The report is dated Oct. 12, 2025, and both it and the register identify a Nov. 5, 2025, Board of Appeals meeting. The register does not separately establish the denial date or explain the board’s reasoning. These records describe that proposal and its recorded variance outcome—not the property’s current permitting or construction status.⁠[1][2]