City to consider expanding NURA map: Public hearing on Apr. 23 | News

“We felt that now may be a good time to do that since we’re in a post-COVID environment, post tornado,” Moody said. “We’ve recently done a housing conditions survey in these redevelopment areas.”

Property owners in the proposed areas would benefit from being included by becoming eligible for the programs available from NURA, said Tracy Dunnavant, the city’s planning director.

“We’ve actually had people who made applications for programs that are currently in our NURA boundaries, but because they’re outside of it, specifically over in this Westgate portion, we ended up unable to work with them on it,” Dunnavant said.

Moody said that for some reason, one portion of Westgate was included in the 2009 map while another was not. He’s unsure why.

“The housing stock in this section is identical,” Moody said. “They’re all the same age, generally the same condition, and have the same rates of homeownership.”

Moody said the city’s original Urban Redevelopment Plan was adopted in 2009 and the Newnan Urban Redevelopment Agency was created in 2010. He said the urban redevelopment area map was amended in 2013 to add some commercial areas with the hopes of creating enterprise zones, but that has not happened yet.

“The plan stayed the same; the map was changed,” Moody said.

He said the purpose of targeting redevelopment areas is to address housing concerns, and in Newnan, that means ensuring people have safe, habitable…