Boundary retracement, plats, topographic surveys and construction staking in Kennesaw, where a plat clears a city Plan Review Committee before it reaches the Mayor and Council.
Kennesaw is a clean case on the county question. Census boundary data puts the whole incorporated city inside Cobb County, and no neighboring county so much as touches the city line. Every deed and every plat for a tract inside those limits runs through a single index, which removes a step that still has to be worked through in towns whose limits cross a county line.
That index belongs to the Cobb County Superior Court Clerk. Deeds are recorded at the Real Estate Division, 10 East Park Square, Building C, in Marietta, about eight miles southeast of Kennesaw. Plats are handled differently: Georgia has required all plats to be filed electronically through the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority, with the content requirements set by O.C.G.A. 15-6-67. Recorded documents can be searched at research.cobbsuperiorcourtclerk.com.
Anyone wanting to see their own parcel first can start at cobbassessor.org, the Cobb County Board of Tax Assessors site, which carries owner, value and building records. The Cobb County GIS portal at gis.cobbcounty.gov keeps a Plat and Deeds page that is usually the quickest route to a recorded plat book and page.
Kennesaw puts an extra body in front of the plat. A final plat goes to the Zoning Office for review by the city's Plan Review Committee, which is staffed from Public Works, the City Manager's office, Police, Economic Development, Planning and Zoning, and Building Services. Once the committee is satisfied, the plat goes to the Mayor and Council, and only after that does it get recorded at the county. Anyone starting a project is expected to check with the Community Development Department first to confirm the current zoning supports what is planned, since a rezoning or variance has to clear the Planning process before the plat sequence begins.
The rules themselves live in the Kennesaw Unified Development Code, adopted in 2011 and carried as Appendix A of the city ordinances. Chapter 10 of that code carries the plat procedures, including the submittal requirements and certificates for preliminary and final plats. The Planning and Zoning Department describes itself as the advisory and enforcement arm of the adopted Comprehensive Plan, which is a useful thing to know before a submittal, because the question asked of a plan is often whether it matches the plan the city adopted rather than only whether it meets a dimension.
One local condition changes how a boundary gets retraced here. Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park is headquartered at 900 Kennesaw Mountain Drive in Kennesaw, and the Park Service notes that most of the roads running through the battlefield are county roads. Where a private lot abuts park land, the adjoining line is a federal boundary and gets located in the field rather than scaled from an aerial. Kennesaw State University's Kennesaw campus sits at 1000 Chastain Road, and an institutional edge like that one raises the same kind of question for the parcels next to it.
S&S Land Surveying works out of 549 West Ave in Cedartown. Bart Sims is the licensed Georgia land surveyor who signs and seals the plat, and S&S is licensed in Georgia only.
A city with a federal battlefield, a state university campus and an active plat review committee generates all three kinds of work: retracement, design survey and construction layout.
The body that approves a plat changes from one of these to the next. Vinings has no city government at all, so plats there are reviewed by Cobb County.
Tell us the address or the Cobb parcel number and what the survey has to satisfy: a lender, a closing, a permit, or a plat headed for Plan Review Committee. There is no charge for the estimate.
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