Walton withdraws request for South Jackson project

The Walton Group has withdrawn its request to the Jackson County Planning Commission for two zoning requests for a proposed development in South Jackson.

The county planning office received a letter from Peter Langham, planning and development manager for The Walton Group, asking that the requests be withdrawn. No details were given in the brief letter.

The two map amendment requests were to have been on the agenda of the Jackson County Planning Commission at its Aug. 23 meeting.

Map amendments requests are heard two times each year by the county planning commission. The next time that a request could be submitted is at the January planning meeting. The Walton Group representatives have not indicated whether they plan to apply again for the map amendments.

The Walton Group had applied for a map amendment for two tracts, 47.2 acres and 667.6 acres. The large undeveloped tract begins across from South Jackson Elementary School and runs south along Hwy. 129 to Mary Collier Rd. The Walton Group, an international land-banking firm, recently purchased the property and has syndicated small shares of the land to investors.

The firm also syndicated the large tract near Arcade known as the 4-W Farm. The rezoning of that land is stalled after a dispute between the City of Arcade and the Jackson County Water & Sewerage Authority over who is to provide service to the tract. Arcade wants to annex that land and provide those utilities, a move that would allow the owners to have higher density housing. But the water authority already has service in that tract and won’t agree to allow Arcade to provide utilities.