Who Is G Owen Brown & Why Does He Want To Incorporate East Cobb? – Part 1
by PV
There was a story posted a few weeks ago on social media from the website called “Medium” that posted a link to a house that disclosed G Owen Brown, the initial financier of the City of East Cobb (“initial financier” in that he supplied a major portion, if not all, of the $36,000 to pay for the Feasibility Study performed by Georgia State University) had a home in Ponte Vedra, Florida.
Ponte Vedra is located in St. Johns County, Florida. In checking with that county’s property appraiser site, you can plug-in Mr. Brown’s name into the search bar, and come up with this current home owned by him and, presumably, his wife, Cheryl:
There are two ways we know this is G Owen Brown’s home: 1) His name on the record, and 2) if you read down the page to the record of Sale Information, the house was “sold” to them by an entity titled “PONTE VEDRA RESIDENTIAL PARTNERS LLLP.”
That LLLP is registered with the Georgia SOS to have existed at the 35 Johnson Ferry Road address…which is the identical address as RETAIL PLANNING CORPORATION (the company in East Cobb that Mr. Brown has been the CEO of for many years). This is the link to the LLLP record on the Ga SOS Website:
This is a link to the Active Status Record of Retail Planning Corp, which shows G Owen Brown to be the CEO….and that “35 Johnson Ferry Road” address:
This is the legal entity that was formed to build the “Cityhood” organization, where you can dig-down and see that Mr. Brown is the Registered Agent and Sole Incorporator of “Committee for Cityhood in East Cobb, (INC.)” with the Georgia Secretary of State-Corporations Division:
SO…Mr. Brown does NOT appear to live in Cobb County as a legal resident, does he? After all, this Ponte Vedra house has a $50,000 Homestead Exemption on it, and you cannot claim homestead at more than one location (as that would defeat the purpose of the very legal definition of what “homestead” means).
If he does not legally live in East Cobb, or, even Georgia, why is he interested in the formation of a City of East Cobb? Why is his name on all incorporation documents with the State of Georgia?
He cannot even vote on this incorporation election, as his primary residence is in Florida, which generates several questions:
Why did he contribute money to pay for the Feasibility Study?
Why is he so keen on forming a new city that forces the rest of us who like Unincorporated East Cobb to accept?
One wonders how often Mr. Brown’s Retail Planning Corporation has gotten a local government entity to declare someone else’s property to be waste property under “Eminent Domain” and be able to get it for a song to develop for his clients?
Cityhood is a bad idea, and a big time Real Estate Developer, who does not even legally live here in East Cobb, is likely just the tip of a giant iceberg.
