Gun range proposal up for debate in Lumpkin

When this newspaper hits newsstands, Brian Hill will most likely be on a plane to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Yet back home in Dahlonega, he seems to have caused a bit of a commotion.
“I just didn't really see it coming...We were just teaching classes and this just kind of crept up in the last six months,” Hill said. “I don't really know how it changed dramatically. We really haven't changed it...Something changed in the area and it's irritating people.”
Those classes are taught by Hill and are designed to enhance self-protection skills for what he refers to as the “armed citizen.” When he’s not on the road teaching these skills, Hill offers his services, known as The Complete Combatant, from a gun range off Porter Springs Road, which he leases from a friend. However, at the moment the range is quiet, due to a county-ordered cease-fire.
“The planning department has received several code-enforcement complaints via the website, email and telephonically regarding shooting going on up Porter Springs Road,” Bruce Georgia, the county’s Director of Planning, said at the July regular meeting of the Board of Commissioners. “If you look at McDonald Road where it reaches Porter Springs, there’s three large tracts. One has a farm with cows on it on the first parcel. The next parcel over and the following parcel are all owned by one individual. The center parcel has a pavilion on it with some target ranges. I met with [Deputy Planning Director] Mary Catherine [Beutel] and the owner of the shooting range and basically brought them in and talked about what’s going on out there.”
Once Hill told Georgia that the range was being used commercially, everything had to be put on pause.
“Basically, he’s got a commercial business going on there,” Georgia told the board. “...The owner of the business is not the owner of the property, he’s leasing it. He has a website and they’re bringing in folks from all over to this specialized training that they do on that property. So I issued a stop work order basically and told him he needed to do a Special Land Use Approval based on noise and the commercial use of that property.”
Hill, who runs the business with his wife Shelley, is still able to teach their classes that don’t involve firearms. Whether they will be able to resume the business in full on the property and to what extent now lies in the hands of the commissioners. A public hearing will be held on Tuesday, August 17 and could see an immediate decision from the board.

SHELL SHOCK

For Steve Sylvester, who lives with his wife Lynn around half a mile away from the range, shooting guns is not the problem.
“We all live in the woods and we all hear gunfire,” he said. “A lot of us do shoot guns. It's not an anti-gun thing...All the people up and down my road target practice occasionally, but it's one thing to get out in your yard and shoot, but it's another thing to invite people over the internet to come and hold a class from all over the United States and shoot. I'm talking many rounds, not just a box of shells.”
Hill said his classes with a group usually consist of a nine hour day, with shooting sporadically from around 10:30 a.m. to around 5:30 p.m. and that he usually averages around one class a month.
“Sometimes we've had two, but mostly we try to limit our hours up there to be considerate of the environment,” Hill said. “Also I do a couple private lessons but those are only three hours and we limit our shooting time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but we do shoot on the weekends, because that's when classes really work for people.”
As for the amount of sessions, Hill said that business hasn’t exactly been booming, and joked that even if he wanted to hold classes more regularly, he likely couldn’t because “ammo is incredibly scarce right now.”
“Maybe it's a little bit more than it used to be but we're still probably talking about a total of maybe 30 hours a month of instruction,” he said. “That would be a 16-hour weekend and then a couple private lessons. I wish it'd ramped up more, but with me being on the road, I just simply can't be there to teach.”
Sylvester said it seemed more often than once a month and that he isn’t the only one around with complaints about the gun range.
“It started off slow, I was thinking maybe once a month but I never kept track of it honestly,” he said. “But I have noticed the business has picked up...The intensity has picked up. I think that's what's upset some of the neighbors, the number of times that it's being used now...None of the people that border the property have been, that I've talked to anyway and I've talked to all of them that border the property, have been happy.”
Hill said he was surprised by the complaints, as he’d only heard from one neighbor.
“One gentleman and I went back and forth quite a bit on text and we tried to get together... I guess he gave up and just decided to go a different way with it,” Hill said. “That was the only communication we had. We did several things to try and mitigate noise, from putting a soft berm in and a covered area. We planted trees up front, so we were trying to be good neighbors, it wasn't like we wanted to start a big brouhaha with everybody.”

ZONE COVERAGE

For Sylvester, the problem isn’t Hill’s use of the gun range as much as it’s the system that allows it.
“I think the bigger story here is the lack of land use protections and zoning or whatever. I think that's really the big issue,” he said “…When you look at the land use character area map for the county, when I first saw it, I thought I was in a protected area, an agricultural preservation area...but if you read the fine print in those, the land use, anything can really go anywhere. The only stipulations are the setbacks that you have to have and some other small things. It's not the preservation area you may think it is.”
Property owners are meant to follow the land use defined for their property on the county’s character area map. However, the owner, or in Hill’s case the lessee, can make a request with the Planning Commission for variances or fill out a Special Land Use Application and go before the Board of Commissioners for approval.
“My big point is you come to find out that if you have a large piece of land next to you, almost anything can go in next to you,” Sylvester said. “I didn't realize that. I thought I was in a protected, agricultural preservation area, but that wasn't true...I think that's the bigger issue.”
Sylvester said he worries if the SLUA is approved that his property values could plummet, but that he’d be able to accept the result if the board implements requirements that negate the sound and preferably limit the times when excessive gunfire is allowed.
“I think that they could do something,” he said. “There's some sound buffering things that they can implement. Something to negate the sound so it wouldn't be so intense. Definitely some sound buffering and also the times that they hold their live-fire classes. I think right now they're mostly on the weekends and the weekends are when the neighbors are off work and outside at their houses trying to relax, so I think some sort of limitation on the times should be considered.”
Hill said he’s willing to do whatever to compromise with his neighbors, as he plans to be their neighbor for the long haul.
“We want to be good neighbors and we're willing to compromise a great deal on anything we can do to make this better for the neighborhood,” he said. “There's a lot of shooting going on up there. We hear gunshots all the time, so people are shooting around there. We want to be able to offer a safe place for people to learn how to actually handle guns and be safe with it and to carry guns and be safe in that way. Our goal is to respect the county that we're in and hopefully come to some sort of compromise where it's more palatable to our neighbors. And of course we're willing to do whatever we need to do to do that. We bought a house up there, we have two acres just down the street from the range so we're spending the rest of our life here.”
The SLUA Public Hearing is currently scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 17 in the Commissioners Boardroom. The public is encouraged to attend.