MILTON, Ga. — Kyle and Cindy Hester found their dream farm on Hopewell Road in 2018, where they now train horses to compete. But in recent months, they discovered that Seven Porches Farm is under threat from a proposed, neighboring active park.
One park design, drafted by Milton city staff, shows three multipurpose fields just a few yards from where the Hesters’ horses graze. The design also includes four baseball fields.
“The whole plan was we move to Milton because we’re protected,” Kyle said. “We could have gone anywhere when we retired. We could have gone back to Perry where we grew up. We chose this place…”
Two concerned residents who live nearby, attorney Ben Leonard and Don McGuffey, sat around a table in the Hesters’ barn house. The Hesters, Leonard, McGuffey and Christy Hayes, a horse owner who lives across the street from the Hesters, were responsible for creating a petition in early June opposing the development. It has more than 1100 signatures as of Aug. 10 and references plans for an indoor athletic facility on Bethany Bend.
“These farms are disappearing. As someone who came from Alpharetta, that has nothing but neighborhoods, apartments … We chose this community that markets itself as a quaint, equestrian area,” Hayes said in a phone interview with Appen Media. “… If this goes in, we might be forced to leave.”
In The Chronicle of the Horse, a weekly equestrian magazine, a Milton advertisement asks for people to purchase farms in the city.
Two-year-old plans
Kyle, the first of the small but vocal group to come across park plans, was blindsided at a Milton City Council meeting in January, where the last of about 40 total acres was finalized for purchase. At the meeting, a city official introduced himself to Kyle and asked him what brought him there. Kyle inquired about the land contract on the…
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