These companion appeals arise from a superior court’s grant of the developers Robert Buckler and Anthony McCullar’s motion to dismiss the petition for certiorari of the Druid Hills Civic Association and two of its members collectively, “the Association” as to the DeKalb County Planning Commission’s approval of the developers’ plans for Clifton Ridge, a subdivision in the Druid Hills area of Atlanta. Case No. A14A0138 is the Association and certain of its members’ interlocutory appeal from the trial court’s grant of the developers’ motion to dismiss the petition for lack of standing. Case No. A14A0139 is the developers’ cross-appeal from the superior court’s ruling in the same order that the Association’s 2012 petition was a valid renewal of its original 2011 petition.1 We conclude that the Association’s 2012 petition is a valid renewal action, but that because the developers failed to raise the matter of the Association’s standing before the Planning Commission, they were not entitled to raise that issue for the first time in the superior court. We therefore affirm in Case No. A14A0139 and reverse and remand for further proceedings in Case No. A14A0138.
This is the fourth time this litigation has required this Court’s attention. In 2004, the developers bought the three contiguous lots at issue on Clifton Road, Atlanta. The first major stage in this litigation, including its first three appeals, involved proceedings before DeKalb County’s Historic Preservation Commission HPC.2 The second and current stage in the dispute began in December 2010, when the director of the DeKalb County Planning Department told one of the developers that the HPC did not have jurisdiction over the subdivision of the property because the subdivision of vacant land in an historic district did not require a certificate of appropriateness. In February 2011, the developers applied directly to the Planning Department for approval of their plans for the subdivision, which would transform three preexisting residential lots into seven new ones. On March 2, 2011, the Planning Department informed the developers that although the Department’s own staff had approved their application, the DeKalb County Law Department had advised the Planning Department that the developers “most likely” needed a certificate of appropriateness from the HPC.
