Land Surveying in Dunwoody, GA

Dunwoody Plats Go to the City, Not the County

Dunwoody occupies about 13 square miles of DeKalb County and was incorporated in 2008. The Fulton County line runs along its northwest side and the Gwinnett County line along its east side, so a tract at the edge of town can sit one index over from its neighbors.

DeKalb County deeds and plats are filed with the Clerk of Superior Court Real Estate Division, on the ground floor of the DeKalb County Courthouse at 556 North McDonough Street in Decatur, due south of Dunwoody. Ownership and valuation records are separate, held by the DeKalb County Property Appraisal Department at 325 Swanton Way, whose public search accepts a parcel ID, an address or an owner name.

The part that trips up out-of-town firms is that Dunwoody is carved out of the county's development review. DeKalb County GIS states directly that it does not manage address changes, land disturbance approvals, plat updates or status checks for properties in Dunwoody, and that those go to the city's own planning department. Lot combinations, lot divisions and boundary line adjustments inside Dunwoody are submitted to the city, not to the county. Getting that wrong leaves a plat sitting in the wrong queue.

The city's final plat and minor subdivision application goes to Dunwoody Community Development. Staff confirm within seven days whether the application has been accepted. Plans are reviewed internally and by DeKalb Water and Sewer, but every revision goes back through the Community Development permitting window rather than to the individual reviewers, and revisions sent straight to a reviewer are not treated as received. A minor subdivision also requires a public notification sign posted on the property before the plat can be approved. The governing rules sit in Chapter 16 of the city code, Land Development.

The drafting requirements here are unusually explicit, and they are worth reading before fieldwork starts. A Dunwoody final plat has to carry enough data to reproduce on the ground the location, bearings and lengths of every right-of-way, street line, lot line, boundary line and building line, curved or straight. Dimensions must be accurate to the nearest one hundredth of a foot and angles to the nearest second. The plat must show tract boundary lines, land lot and district lines, city and county limit lines, easements, the special flood hazard area contour and setback line, state waters and state streams, wetlands and the required stream buffers. House numbers are assigned by the city geographic information system department and placed on the final plat.

Those buffer and flood items are not boilerplate in Dunwoody. Ball Mill Creek, Nancy Creek and the North Fork of Nancy Creek all run through the city, so a surprising number of otherwise plain residential lots have a buffered stream across a back corner. The city has also adopted master plans for Dunwoody Village and Georgetown, and redevelopment under them produces the commercial end of the work: ALTA/NSPS surveys, topographic surveys for grading and detention design, and as-builts.

S&S Land Surveying is based at 549 West Ave in Cedartown. William "Bart" Sims, the licensed Georgia land surveyor, signs and seals whatever gets filed. The firm is licensed in Georgia only.