A community planner with the city of Perry revealed Monday night that Home Depot, one of the nation’s largest retail chains, has submitted plans for a new store near Interstate 75 in Perry.

Perry Community Planner Mike Beecham told the Perry Planning Commission that the home improvement retailer plans to build along St. Patricks Drive near Sam Nunn Boulevard. He said Tuesday that the store will sit between Wal-Mart and the former St. Patrick Catholic Church on the site of Horton Homes. Building plans, if approved, call for an approximately 130,000-square-foot complex with an additional 20,000 square feet for parking and landscaping.

“I don’t know the ownership situation, whether they’ve bought, but the special exception itself takes about six to eight weeks,” Beecham said Tuesday.

The project will have to win the approval of both the Perry Planning Commission and the Perry City Council. Beecham said the city’s “big box” ordinance requires planning and council approval for single tenant residential developments of over 35,000 square feet and shopping centers of over 50,000 square feet.

Beecham said that the planning commission plans to look at the project during their first meeting in August. If approved, the site plans will move to the Perry City Council, which will decide the project’s ultimate fate.

Beecham said he was first contacted by an architectural company representing the retail chain about a month ago. Don Harrison, a spokesman with Home Depot’s corporate offices in Atlanta, said he could neither confirm nor deny that the company was planning a move into Perry, but said that most projects are kept quiet until the property where the project will be built has changed hands.

Also during Monday’s meeting, a developer for the Houston Springs active adult resort community submitted new plans for the 494-acre development, including consolidating two development areas into one and relocating a proposed commercial district.

Jeff Moredock, president of developer Woodland Property Partners, said that his company decided to move the commercial district to a more central location near the resort community’s 112-foot-wide entrance boulevard along U.S. 341. The boulevard also connects to the Airport Road Extension.

Moredock’s new plans also call for the construction of condominiums and patio homes. The city’s development standards require a certain amount of lawn space on each side of a home, but patio homes allow developers to build lots with different lawn shapes. Instead of a home with 5 feet of lawn space on each side, patio homes allow for lots with 10 ft. of lawn space on one side and 0 feet on another.

The company’s new site plans call for the consolidation of two residential villages, Pecan Hill and Pine Crest, into one Pecan Hill development. Moredock said the new site plan calls for 10 separate residential villages. The company has already completed development on the 174- home Fairway Ridge residential village near the Airport Road Extension. Master plans for the community call for a total of around 1,500 new homes and an 18-hole golf course, but changes supported by the planning commission could allow the developer to build close to 2,000 homes. Moredock said he is not concerned as much with density, as design.

“The changes allow us to build about four units per acre, which would obviously be more than what we need,” he said.

“I don’t think we’ll get there.”

Site plans call for a pro shop, swimming pool and tennis courts, a driving range, 82 acres of forested nature preserve and more than 100 acres of greenspace in the golf course itself.

Moredock’s submitted changes were endorsed by the Perry Planning Commission, but will have to be approved by the Perry City Council next month after two readings.

“I think it’s a great development and I support it,” said Commissioner Jim Mehserle, who added that he liked the project’s greenspace design.

Also during Monday’s meeting:

• The commission agreed to allow developer Art Hall, who owns a partial interest in Permac Properties, a company that owns a car wash and laundrymat along Swift Street, a variance to build a 600-square-foot storage shed along a 3,409-square-foot strip of residential property between 1003 and 1101 Swift St. They also endorsed a request to rezone the property from a R-3, multi-family residential district, to a C-2, general commercial district.

City planners expressed concerns about the commercial district encroaching into a residential area, but Hall agreed to build a door to the building facing Macon Road, and also agreed to extend a fence to the front corner of the building facing Swift Street.

The Perry City Council will vote on the proposed rezoning with a first reading and public hearing Aug. 2 and a second reading and final vote Ag. 16.

• Continued to discuss the creation of a new OC, office commercial, district for the city, which will serve as a buffer between residential and commercial areas.

Perry Building Official Steve Howard suggested during the planning commission’s last meeting in late June that guidelines for the district should include a blanket statement to cover possible commercial uses for the property, but commissioners expressed concerns that a blanket statement could attract a wide range of businesses, even tattoo or massage parlors, which would escape the restrictions defined under the guidelines submitted to the commission Monday. Commissioners asked Beecham to research other communities that have developed similar districts.

• Closed a loophole in the Perry Land Development Ordinance, the city’s zoning rules, which will now require landscaping to be completed before the city will issue a developer a certificate of occupancy.

HHJ Student Writer Tim Hoskins contributed to this report.