In South Cobb County, Georgia, Three Cities Are Rezoning Simultaneously – and Small Infill Developers Stand to Benefit Most

Written by:

Alejandra Rodriguez

Date:

04 Sep 2026

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South Cobb County, Georgia, encompassing the cities of Austell, Powder Springs, and the newly incorporated Mableton, is undergoing a coordinated wave of policy changes that could reshape its development landscape. What makes the area unusual is not any single rezoning approval. Three adjacent municipalities are all actively revising their land use frameworks at the same time, creating a corridor-wide opening for developers who can navigate the regulatory complexity that still sits between vision and construction.

Derek Caffe, Principal & Founder of Code Black Properties, a vertically integrated firm combining commercial brokerage, general contracting, and property management, operates at the center of this shift. He also serves as an elected council member for the city of Austell, giving him visibility into both the policy side and the development side of the equation.

A County Where Three Cities Are Moving at Once

Mableton incorporated roughly three years ago and immediately became the largest city in Cobb County by both land mass and population, with approximately 80,000 residents. Caffe has attended Mableton’s planning meetings and describes a municipality actively working to increase quality of life through commercial development.

Powder Springs has already reshaped its downtown, adding an estimated 200 to 300 apartment units and expanding its retail focus. And Austell recently passed an infill overlay district, a zoning tool designed to align what developers are allowed to build with what the city’s comprehensive plan and LCI (Livable Centers Initiative) study envision for the downtown corridor.

“With that infill overlay district, we aligned the zoning and what people can do with our LCI study,” Caffe says. “So we could provide more certainty to those investors and developers who are looking to help us to revitalize our downtown.”

The practical effect is that developers working in Austell’s downtown corridor no longer need to pursue individual rezonings to build what the city’s own plans already call for. That reduction in process risk, fewer hearings, fewer denials, less upfront cost, matters most for smaller developers who lack the legal budgets of institutional firms.

Why Zoning Alignment Alone Does Not Solve the Problem

The infill overlay district removes one barrier, the gap between a city’s stated vision and what its zoning code actually permits. But Caffe identifies the obstacles that remain even after a rezoning is approved.

For projects above two units, developers cross from the International Residential Code into the International Building Code, triggering ADA compliance requirements, stepped-up mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design standards, structural engineering upgrades, and fire sprinkler systems. Parking minimums add another layer.

“If people are in residential and they haven’t dealt with fire sprinklers before, it can be a hefty cost,” Caffe says. “Even once we approved it, being someone who’s in the industry, I still understand that there are many other hurdles that can still get in the way of having this missing middle housing become a reality.”

The financial burden of pursuing a rezoning or variance in the first place also stops smaller developers from entering the market, the very developers Caffe considers most suited to building the housing the area needs.

The Mismatch Between What Gets Built and Who Needs Housing

Caffe frames the housing challenge less as a supply shortage and more as a mismatch between what is constructed and who is looking to occupy it. Household sizes have been shrinking since the 1950s or 1960s, and he estimates, citing U.S. Census Bureau data, that somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of households are single-occupant. Yet the dominant new construction remains four-bedroom, three-bath homes aimed at traditional families.

“What I really think it winds up being is just a mismatch between the housing products that are needed and the housing products that are being built,” he says. Small infill developers, in his view, have an advantage over institutional builders because they can experiment with housing formats that larger firms cannot risk.

He points to a concrete example from his own work: in 2023, the city of Austell approved him to build a duplex, one of the first such rezoning approvals of that type in 50 to 60 years. The design looked like a single-family house but contained two units built for a multigenerational family. One wing was a stepless two-bedroom, two-bath unit designed for older residents; the other was a two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath unit.

Adapting the Housing Format to Current Demand

Caffe sees co-living arrangements, ADUs (both attached and detached), and multigenerational formats gaining traction as adults move back in with parents and household configurations shift. His advice to investors: stop trying to make older housing formats perform the way they did in previous market conditions.

“Sometimes as investors we complain like, oh, this isn’t working. And what’s happened is the market has changed, and we’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” he says. “The housing product has to adapt with the times.”

His current pipeline in Austell reflects that philosophy: a 42-unit mixed-use development with 6 commercial and 36 residential units, an adaptive reuse of an early 1900s house into three studio units with ground-floor office and restaurant space, and 3.6 acres of light industrial land he is brokering for a seller.

For investors considering South Cobb, the corridor’s simultaneous policy shifts create a narrow window. The zoning barriers that historically kept missing middle housing out of these downtowns are falling in multiple jurisdictions at once, but the construction code requirements, financing hurdles, and parking regulations that follow still favor developers who hold both a broker’s license and a contractor’s license, or who partner with someone who does. Caffe’s own dual-licensed structure exists precisely because each additional credential, in his words, helps “mitigate some of the risks associated with investing.”

About the Expert: Derek Caffe is Principal and Founder of Code Black Properties, a vertically integrated commercial brokerage, general contracting, and property management firm in South Cobb County, Georgia. He also serves as an elected council member for the city of Austell.

This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.