Commissioners deny annexation request for Jones Petroleum site

NEWTON COUNTY – In a somewhat unsurprising decision, the Newton County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to oppose a request to annex a potential truck stop site into the city limits of Social Circle.

Developers with the petroleum and service station giant Jones Petroleum (JP) are seeking to construct approximately 86,274 square feet of buildings at 370 Highway 11 near I-20. 

According to a June 12 Development of Regional Impact filing with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA), the project outlines a commercial travel center with a convenience store, truck fueling and parking, restaurants with drive-thrus, a tire center, a hotel and three lots for future development. 

In doing so, JP and its construction subsidiary JPC Construction are seeking to annex the land into Social Circle city limits and rezone the property from agriculture to business and heavy industrial within the city’s zoning ordinances. Currently, the site sits in unincorporated Newton County where it is zoned as agriculture. 

However, this is not the first time that JP has sought to develop this particular site.

In 2021, the board of commissioners approved a conditional use permit that would allow a scaled-down version of the proposed truck stop. This came after a months-long battle – which included litigation – to develop the site.

The permit allowed JP and JPC Construction to build a convenience center as well as three fast-food restaurants, but barred overnight truck parking. District 1 Commissioner Stan Edwards said that he and JP CEO William “Bill” Jones had reached a compromise during a meeting over four years ago.

“Bill Jones and I… we simply walked away from what I thought, probably would have been a deal for an agreement,” Edwards said.

But outside of timber removal, the site was never developed. Now with a proposal back before the board in a much grander scale, Edwards said he was “angered” by Jones’ latest move.

“I find it appalling, absolutely appalling, that a citizenry can say, ‘We don’t want that element in our neighborhood. We don’t want that element in our county,’” Edwards said. “And the citizens of Social Circle reached out to me and told me they didn’t want that element in Newton County… I found it appalling that a company, in the name of the almighty dollar, will say, ‘We don’t care what you want.’

“Even after the citizenry stood up and said, ‘We don’t want it,’ and the commissioners that sit up here voted the 24-hour truck stop down, Jones Petroleum has told us to go take a hike.”

District 5 Commissioner LeAnne Long, who was a citizen advocate against this project in 2021, shared a similar sentiment as Edwards.

“I’m just appalled that we’re dealing with this truck stop for the third time,” Long said. “I was a citizen that worked very hard with the board of commissioners to have that truck stop stopped. I had a lot of help from a lot of commissioners [and] former commissioners that helped us on that truck stop, and I really do appreciate it. And I don’t want to see it again.”

Long added that she thought the scaled-down travel center was “wonderful,” hoping that it is built instead of the truck stop.

The site will now go before the Social Circle Planning Commission on July 22 where it will undergo a recommendation of whether or not to accept the annexation request. Then it will go before the Social Circle City Council on Aug. 19 for a final verdict from the city. Both meetings will take place at 138 East Hightower Trail.

If the city votes to approve the annexation request, it is likely that the case will go before an arbitration panel.

However, a site for a proposed data center just north of the property is another element that could play into JP’s annexation hopes.

Earlier this year, Social Circle City Attorney Tony Powell submitted a letter to the DCA alleging that a proposed data center site located at 708 N Highway 11 was never properly deannexed from the city in 2009. The DCA sided with the city, paving the way for the Social Circle City Council to approve a rezoning a special use permit to be administered to TPA group to allow a nine-building, 2.5 million square-foot data center site 

Plans for the TPA group-backed data center have reportedly fallen through, though the land still remains under Social Circle jurisdiction at this time.

Newton County has contested the land’s jurisdiction in court, citing that the city has not claimed jurisdiction of the land nor collected property taxes since 2010. Social Circle has since filed to dismiss the lawsuit, in which the case remains pending.

If the land were to revert to unincorporated Newton County in the future, it could spell long-term problems about any sort of annexation plans for the proposed truck stop site as it is directly adjacent to the contested land jurisdiction case.