In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini speaks with City Manager Brian Johnson about several key developments happening around the city. From proposed traffic improvements near the Forum to the shift toward more equity-based residential housing, Brian provides updates on what’s being considered and how the city is approaching growth and redevelopment.

The conversation covers changes in Tech Park, details about the new Curiosity Corner mobility hub, updates on zoning and land use policy and the city’s efforts to manage potential data center projects.

If you live, work, or invest in Peachtree Corners, this episode offers a clear and timely overview of where things stand and what’s on the horizon.

Downloadable Content

• Peachtree Corners Memorandum Roundabout Assessment (PDF)
• Final PTC Circle Roundabout Feasibility Study 03-01-2023 (PDF)
• Final PTC Circle Roundabout Feasibility Study APPENDICES 03-01-2023 (PDF)

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🔍 Key Takeaways

• New Roundabout proposed at Peachtree Corners Circle near the Forum to address traffic safety.
• Multiple equity-based residential projects replacing outdated office spaces, including at 20-22 Tech Park, the Day Building, and 333 Research Court.
• Curiosity Corner Mobility Hub coming to Tech Park, featuring EV stations, food trucks and drone test areas.
• Autonomous vehicles like May Mobility already operating with zero drivers on Peachtree Corners streets.
• City’s proactive zoning changes include special-use permits for data centers and new infill residential zoning.
• Merger of Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals to streamline decisions and reduce redundancy.

Timestamps of Major Topics

• 00:01 – Introductions & Sponsors
• 02:00 – New Roundabout Near the Forum: Safety & Traffic Study
• 09:45 – 20/22 Tech Park Development: Downsized, Equity Apartments
• 13:30 – Day Building Townhome Settlement & Safety Upgrades
• 17:00 – 333 Research Court: Office-to-Townhome Conversion
• 20:00 – Curiosity Corner: Tech Park’s New Mobility Hub
• 23:45 – May Mobility Driverless Car Stories
• 26:45 – Why Peachtree Corners is Restricting Data Center Development
• 31:30 – Merging Zoning Boards: Efficiency & Transparency
• 34:00 – New Infill Residential Zoning for Smaller Sites

38:00 – Wrap-up and Magazine Plug

Podcast Transcript:

Transcript:

00:00:03 – Rico Figliolini

Right. Hi, this is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. Appreciate you guys joining us. This is me with Brian Johnson, the city manager. Hey, Brian.

00:00:09 – Brian Johnson

Hey, Rico. How are you? 

00:00:15 – Rico Figliolini

Good. Good to have you. We haven’t done this in a while, but before we get into this, let me just say thank you to two of our sponsors, EV Remodeling Inc. and Eli, the owner, based here in Peachtree Corners. They’re a great company, great family. They do design to build. So from everything from rebuilding your house to adding a deck or an extension or just redoing your kitchen. They’ve done over 260 family homes and stuff. So check them out. They just will do great work for you. Our second sponsor is Vox Pop Uli, also here based in Peachtree Corners. If you have a company and you’re doing either trade shows or you have a company and you’re trying to get your brand name out, they’re the company to do it with because they deal with everything from vehicle wraps, wrapping that whole truck or that car, to trade show booths, to garments for your business, or to if you’re doing a Peachtree Corners Festival and you need the tent and you need branding, they’ll take care of that. So anything you need, your logo imprinted onto almost any object, they’ll figure it out for you. So check them out Vox Pop Uli is the company. Tell them we sent you, so thanks for supporting us. So Brian it’s been a while, I think we got a few things to touch on to talk about. Lots happening this year as one city councilman told me, it’s going to be an exciting year of stuff going on. But things going on right now. So let’s start off with I guess one of the biggest things, we just had an informational meeting about. So we had a lot of comments on our social posts about this. And this is about installing possibly another roundabout. This was an informational meeting, right? And the roundabout, similar to the one that’s on Peachtree Corners Circle and Medlock Bridge Road, right? But this one’s going to be located between the Forum and Creme de la Creme on also Peachtree Corners Circle. So can you give us the, you know the the details on that or eye level?

00:02:20 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, so it boiled down it really comes to this if anybody’s ever left the Forum on the south end by Trader Joe’s and wanted to turn on the Peachtree Corner Circle, really any direction but certainly if you’re trying to make a left out of there, it’s kind of a dangerous you know intersection. It’s unsignalized there, you know Peachtree Corner Circle coming from the west or the right side if you were, you know leaving the Forum is coming over down a hill around a corner. You’re crossing over, I believe what at that point you’re at least five lanes of traffic are at two lanes each way in a middle turning lane. And it’s a dangerous intersection. And as the activity at the Forum increases, the property right across the street, right next to Creme de la Creme is zoned for condos. So that could get developed. And then we’re going to talk here shortly about just up the road, the Day Building properly, which is actually the next property over that just got approved. And so traffic is going to even increase even more. We cannot put a signal, another traffic signal at that intersection because it’s too close to the Peachtree Corner Circle, Peachtree Parkway intersection. So we either have to leave it the way it is or a roundabout allows people, especially the most dangerous turning movement is leaving the Forum turning left.

00:03:54 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, for sure.

00:03:57 – Brian Johnson

And that, there’s no way to resolve that with, I guess unless you did a four-way stop, which I’m not, I mean, that’s, again, not just two lanes of traffic each direction. It can’t put a signal. So a roundabout allows people who want to turn left to actually turn right first into the roundabout and then just stay in the roundabout as you can go around to the left. So it’s almost like making a turning right to ultimately make a left. But you would turn right and enter the roundabout and then just follow the roundabout around until you’re now facing Peachtree Parkway and then you head straight. So we did a big traffic analysis, the city did along with Gwinnett County DOT and Georgia DOT, and a roundabout fits at that location. And so right now where we’re at is council, the city had an open house recently to solicit public comment on it. We’re sharing with you, have some, and we’re sharing the remainder of the information with you, Rico, so people can get on your social media posts and see, you know, but ultimately, you know, a lot of this detail will be hosted on our website, but they can see everything from the traffic analysis, the accident reports, the design concepts. But we’re doing that so that council can ultimately decide if this is you know a good to go project, and so that’s where we’re at with that project.

00:05:37 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. And we’ll have links we have an article being written about it but we’ll have links to the website, to the resources that you talked about, we’ll have that in the show notes. And this video I think a 3D video also that we’ll be sharing.

00:05:52 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, it’s an actual traffic model. So we took real traffic data from that intersection and then applied it at different times of the day on how this new roundabout would address that traffic count, that real traffic count. So that is not like, oh, let’s just throw a number of cars going through it. It is actually from the traffic counts.

00:06:16 – Rico Figliolini

And I remember the consultant telling me that I asked him, I said, it looks like an awful lot of cars. And he says, well, this is based on what the traffic is.

00:06:25 – Brian Johnson

Well, yeah, at the worst time, like, say, at 5:30.

00:06:30 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:06:31 – Brian Johnson

You know, how would it handle that? I mean, it’s easy to handle traffic there if it’s, you know, two in the afternoon, you know, nine in the morning, but we want to know what it’s like, you know, especially in the evening and rush hour, because the Forum’s not open in the early morning, so the morning rush hour traffic isn’t so bad. Evening is definitely, afternoon into the evening.

00:06:50 – Rico Figliolini

When you have people leaving the Forum, when you have people coming through wanting to go into the Forum, you have people leaving Creme de la C reme, you have people going left out of the QT station. Which once this is put, if I understand correctly, it’ll be a right in, right out only. Because there’ll be a median across the way. Correct.

00:07:13 – Brian Johnson

Correct. And you won’t be able to make a left out of the J. Alexander’s curb cut that’s closest to Peachtree Parkway.

00:07:21 – Rico Figliolini

You won’t be able to do that.

00:07:22 – Brian Johnson

Because that’s also, that’s actually going across.

00:07:25 – Rico Figliolini

That’s actually worse.

00:07:26 – Brian Johnson

Seven lanes of traffic with the turning lanes included.

00:07:29 – Rico Figliolini

I can’t even see how someone wants to make a left out of there. That’s dangerous right there.

00:07:32 – Brian Johnson

But people do.

00:07:33 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. It’s crazy. And making a right out of, or coming out of the Forum by the Trader Joe’s, that driveway. I mean, I’ve personally seen anecdotally, if you will, one or two accidents roughly a year every months or so. And that’s what I’ve seen there. And I’ve seen people in the median stacked two, three, four cars. And if the first car doesn’t do their turn. The car behind them wants to play chicken and wants to come through sometimes. It’s like, you know, so I’m looking as I’m coming towards Peachtree Corners Baptist Church with the QT behind me. I’d have to be looking at the right side to see the Forum people, either people coming out to make a right or cutting straight across or wanting to go from that median going into the Forum. And even sometimes the Creme de la Creme people wanting to make a left out of there as well. Cutting across and who’s going to go?

00:08:30 –  Brian Johnson

At the same time, somebody may want to make a left out of the Forum and Creme de la Creme.

00:08:35 – Rico Figliolini

Yes.

00:08:35 – Brian Johnson

And then there, you know. Yeah. So the only two options we have really, again, GDOT won’t let us put a traffic signal there because it’s too close to their signal on Peachtree Parkway.

00:08:49 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:08:50 – Brian Johnson

You can’t really put a four way stop where you have that many lanes. So we either leave it alone and just hope. Keep hoping for the best, or we do something that allows anybody who wants to make a left to technically do it by making a right into the traffic circle and then coming back around.

00:09:08 – Rico Figliolini

And I think there’ll be some improvements based on what we learned, what was learned from the roundabout at the other place that there’ll be some, what’s called brambles, I guess, stopping people cutting across from one lane to the other as they’re coming around. So there’ll be areas where they can feed into naturally into the lane. But yeah, so I thought that was good. So if you guys want to check out the links, you’ll be able to see that information and stuff. So that’s cool. So let’s talk about also 2022 Technology Parkway. That was the, that was originally had an old developer that came in. That was actually approved, I think, for just almost 300 units, apartments.

00:09:54 – Brian Johnson

A little more than 300, yeah.

00:09:55 – Rico Figliolini

More than 300, right? So now a new developer came in. And so tell us a bit about that, because now it’s moving towards equity property, I think, or?

00:10:06 – Brian Johnson

Well, no, that one isn’t. So the original application that was approved for rezoning was to combine 20 and 22 Tech Park South, which is at the corner of PIB and Technology Parkway South. And to combine the properties and then put, you know, around 350-ish apartment units on two different, I don’t know if you want to call them towers, but, you know, I would say six-story properties there built on top of where the existing buildings had been demoed. And the original owner, you know, ends up selling it. And so when the new developers come in, we work with them. And the ultimate product that they ask to be developed is reducing it by, I don’t know, somewhere near 100. So there’s like about 100 less units going in as tall. But it is still a multifamily development right there at the corner, all being built on existing parking lot or foundation of existing building. Anybody’s driven there recently that’s an old building that had structured parking there, it’s derelict people are breaking into it and and so it’s a code enforcement you know kind of challenge right now but the developers were approved for this less dense product than was previously approved so in that vein that’s a good thing. And again tech park and the businesses in tech park need, you know, it’s healthy to have a mix of housing units in amongst these buildings because employees like to be able to work close to or live close to where they work. So this is a good node right there, right there at PIB. So, yeah, we’re excited about the project and, you know, have every reason to believe the developer is going to jump right on it.

00:12:08 – Rico Figliolini

It’s amazing how we, how is its transition, Tech Park, 500 acres of office, all office, to slowly being more residential in there as well.

00:12:19 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, the mix.

00:12:20 – Rico Figliolini

The mix of it. Because you know the world has changed there’s still a lot of people working remote still a lot of you know office buildings, just you know going the way of this if you will.

00:12:32 – Brian Johnson

And we did part of that small area plan that council just approved recently was a office inventory in which we graded the quality of the remaining office And we identified the offices that are, you know, and it’s a lesser percentage, but there are some that are almost at a point where you’re not going to ever see somebody fill it with, you know, commercial tenants anymore because the building requires too many upgrades for it to be competitive. So those are ones that council will be, you know, more amenable to consider transitioning it to residential. Some of the office product, if an application came in and they wanted to demo or repurpose an office, council would say no, because we do want to also protect our office product. It’s still a very important part of our, you know, local economy. So we’re being very, you know, selective in which ones we might allow for this to happen, which ones we won’t.

00:13:34 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Talking about another one, also the Day building, which is on Peachtree Corner Circle. People might be familiar with that building. It’s just, it’s before the Creme de la Creme on the right-hand side going up a hill. So they’ve originally came in, wanted to do 225 units or somewhere about there, retail, townhomes, so mixed use. That was denied, I think, at some point. And then they filed suit, trying to figure out, you know, we want to use this land, let us use this land. And then they went into a settlement with you, with the city. So tell us a bit about that. And they resubmitted, I think, right?

00:14:13 – Brian Johnson

Yes. And that is all true. And so they came back as part of settlement discussions and changed it from a mixed use product that had 225-ish or so apartments to an all equity development of around 60, maybe a little bit more than 60 townhomes on that product or on that property. That property has two entrances, one on Peachtree Corner Circle and then the back side also has ingress egress onto what’s Data Drive. Then if you take Data Drive up it goes into Triangle Parkway near Cornerstone Christian. So this development will have two entrances so it won’t have to dump everything out on Peachtree Corner Circle all the time. But it does allow us, as part of this settlement agreement we mandated, if you are on Peachtree Corner Circle, say, heading from Spalding towards Peachtree Parkway, and you start coming around that, you know, down the hill around the corner, getting close to the Forum, Creme de la Creme, the current entrance doesn’t have a deceleration length. So people don’t realize there’s an entrance there and all of a sudden when you’re on this corner where you would think there’s no entrances anywhere we’re at a higher rate of speed people turning into it all of a sudden slow down and people behind are like why are you slowing down. So we required a deceleration lane so now they can get out of the you know normal, you know travel lane and decelerate outside of it that will help. But yeah, this product goes from, again, 200 plus apartment units down to 60-ish equity townhomes, and that’s it. No commercial, no retail, just residential. And it’s an office product that probably would remain vacant if we didn’t allow this because the office is so old, it would require more money than they could make by keeping it office just because office product, like you said, is just not at a premium right now.

00:16:29 – Rico Figliolini

No, no. Changing environment out there and more density, you know, I mean, even multi-use, right? Multi-use is changing also. There’s not, right? There’s not as much, unless you go up to Johns Creek, I guess. They just approved some big multi-use retail density apartment.

00:16:50 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, but that’s part of their new town center, though.

00:16:52 – Rico Figliolini

Right. so that’s a whole different thing. So to, okay so there’s quite a few you know things going on there as far as residential development and stuff the other thing that I noticed.

00:17:04 – Brian Johnson

Real quick, we have one more at our last council meeting we’re talking about that’s 333 Research Court.

00:17:11 – Rico Figliolini

Right, okay I was going to save that for later but let’s go into that.

00:17:13 – Brian Johnson

Oh, okay. Well I mean it was all kind of in the whole genre of having selected office buildings that were of poor enough quality that the occupancy or call it the vacancy was so high. And the property owners had come in and said, we’re not, we can’t keep it as an office. We’re never going to be able to get tenants without pouring a lot of money. And right now the demand isn’t high. So it was another one. It’s at the end of Research Court. Probably the best way to know is if you’re looking at Norcross High School, right of their main building is a bunch of classroom trailers, then into the woods, there’s a buffer there. You would come into the back parking lot of somewhere that the only way to drive through it is you got to go into Tech Park, onto Technology Parkway Research Court at the very back. Anyway, this is converting that property into their original attempt was to put about, I don’t know, 100, just maybe under a hundred stack flats. Was an equity product, but it was stacked flats. They were not able to make the numbers quite work on that. And so they’ve, they decreased the density of the equity and that’s going to be around 60-ish or so townhome product as well. So that’s where that is at. And again, a carefully selected node within Technology Parkway where we feel like having a small cluster of residential will meld well with the existing higher quality office to create the mixed use that Tech Park is becoming.

00:18:57 – Rico Figliolini

You know, I like the fact that we go from I mean there’s a reason for multi-use and the reason for multi-family development actually. But I like the fact that we’re moving towards equity like the these equity properties. I think that more stabilizes the community also a bit. That’s a lot of development decisions that have been made. There’s been some also first reads of some other stuff that will be in the next city council meeting. So we’ll have links to these things that you all can visit because the city set up on their website a special page showing development applications. So you all can actually go there and you can actually look through the applications and see the you know, the maps and stuff and what’s coming up over the next month or two. There’s somewhere else also in Technology Park, things going on there. I saw some clear cutting just recently. So something’s happening. Something’s beginning. I remember seeing a check, a federal, I think it was Congressman Bordeaux at the time, gave a check for over a half a million dollars back in 2022 for this. And it’s a mobility hub in Technology Park. It’s called Curiosity Corner now. So tell us a little bit about that and what’s coming there, Brian.

00:20:15 – Brian Johnson

So it’s at the corner of Scientific Drive and Technology Parkway. And, you know, really most across the street from Global Aviation, you know, that area. It is, you know, what, a three plus acre parcel. And it’s going to be everything. It’s a mobility hub. So all things mobility can come together there. Everything from the Gwinnett County Transit bus has their route there to EV charging so that you could have electric vehicles, e-bikes, e-scooters, all things mobility can come together there. Testing around that with the Curiosity Lab ecosystem can happen there. There’s also drone, location for drone, both testing and as well as if we have interested companies that are starting to get into the drone delivery space, a number of companies like Amazon, Google, that have arms that are doing, you know, point to point, you know, it’s like, I guess, retail to customer direct delivery of things like medicine and other things, but they need locations and cities to make this work. This could be one of those. We’re also turning it into an amenity to make the employees within businesses here in Technology Park have a place, an amenity to go to, to kind of create the sense of place within the entirety of Tech Park. Here, we’re going to have food truck stalls with, you know, plugins right there, covered seating with fans underneath it and public 5G Wi-Fi. Our hope is that it creates an opportunity for employees in Tech Park businesses to be able to go to maybe for lunch and not have to get on that river of cars that’s either Peachtree Parkway or PIV. To get together, to socialize. There’s some open space there that there could even be some you know, organized events, maybe in the evening, you know, something, you know.

00:22:31 – Rico Figliolini

You’re going to have some green space.

00:22:33 – Brian Johnson

Green space there, yes. So it’s a mix of a lot of stuff. It is a mobility hub, but it’s going to be both for practical, you know, purposes and testing as well, which is what this ecosystem of Curiosity Lab has become.

00:22:49 – Rico Figliolini

It’s amazing. We did a podcast about May Mobility. and people that have gone through Tech Park probably have seen this car, has a wrap and stuff like that. It drives like 35 miles an hour at least and it’s going through and people will see no driver.

00:23:08 – Brian Johnson

There’s not even a person in the car.

00:23:09 – Rico Figliolini

Not a person in the car, right. So it looks really strange when you see it. When I drove in it, getting into that middle seat with some people and seeing this car drive by itself it’s kind of weird too because it takes you a little while to like, damn, look at that. It’s just moving.

00:23:27 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, there’s nobody there in case something happened for them to grab the wheel.

00:23:31 – Rico Figliolini

That’s right. Yes.

00:23:36 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, we’ve had safety stewards in some of the other autonomous vehicles. So they’ve been autonomous, but you always had that person that was sitting there and they weren’t driving, but they were there. This one doesn’t even have that. So it is a little bit of a unique experience.

00:23:49 – Rico Figliolini

So the interesting part is too that it goes, so it’ll go up and down Technology Parkway and it goes through City Hall parking, you know City Hall area and then comes out it goes to with the former Anderby, jug turn if you want to call it that where it comes out and make a left back out onto the street to come on back. So we’re doing a photoshoot.

00:24:11 – Brian Johnson

It also goes through the Marriott parking lot.

00:24:16 – Rico Figliolini

Right, the Marriott, yep. So we’re doing a photo shoot in front of City Hall. We have the marshals there and we’re doing this photo shoot. The cars are parked right literally in front of City Hall. And we’re doing the shoot. And all of a sudden I noticed there’s a car waiting to get through. And I’m like, it turned and it’s the May Mobility car. And it’s like, it stopped and it’s just waiting. I’m like, is that supposed to be staging from here? What is going on? No, the damn thing, it’s just waiting. It’s waiting. And it’s like, I think we need to let it go through. So we step off the parking lot a bit. Now, mind you, these marshal cars are pointing towards us away from the building. They were like, we had three of them there like that. And so we stepped off. We’re still near the edge. And it’s not moving. So I was like, maybe it’s the cars or maybe it’s us. What if we take a couple more steps back? We did that. All of a sudden, after a second or two it decides okay maybe I’ll slowly start moving so it slowly starts moving, weaves its way up and then picks up speed and then goes. And I was like, it was actually waiting for us look at that. It actually worked the way it’s supposed to.

00:25:23 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, it does although you know it’s interesting without people there you know normally if somebody was there and you didn’t want to move you know you could like motion them to like go around or something.

00:25:30 – Rico Figliolini

Really? Oh, you know what yes.

00:25:31 – Brian Johnson

You know, because if you were driving up there and I’m like, Rico, we’re doing something. Can you go around? You’d be like, okay.

00:25:35 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, right. But that car won’t do it.

00:25:38 – Brian Johnson

It’s like, look, this is the direction of travel I’m supposed to be driving, you’re in my way. My, you know, A .I. and my, you know, all our sensors say I can’t go until you get out of the way. But once you do, it’s like, alright, it looks clear. Alright. And then it goes. I mean, so it works.

00:25:59 – Rico Figliolini

No. And it made the right choice because there were three cars that were pointing at it pretty much as it was going and but it was waiting for us to get off and then it made that decision that those three cars are parked that even though they weren’t in parking spaces so it had to make that intelligent choice to say it’s not going to move they’re just pointing that way it’s stable for the last five minutes. Yeah it was just an interesting thing to see. Alright. So we’ve got just a few more quick things, that we talked about a little bit about a special use permit that’s being, this is a bit proactive decision the city council is making and the city’s making about data centers and creating special use permit for that. Walk us through why that as a proactive thing, why that makes sense.

00:26:51 – Brian Johnson

Yeah. So also at this last council meeting we had, we had a couple of preemptive moves. This one is just merely for us to require anybody wanting to construct a data center and by data center I’m essentially saying these are large buildings that are constructed to house server farms. And this is when somebody says, oh you know I’m saving something to the cloud, well there’s not anything actually in the cloud, it’s still going to a server. But the cloud is really server farms and these can be hundreds of thousands of square feet of just servers that require a lot of electricity and a lot of water to oftentimes cool the space. And they serve a purpose. But if you’re not careful and somebody’s got the current zoning allow for it, you could find property chewed up with very large buildings that don’t really provide value to the city because you could have hundreds of thousands of square feet of these servers and five employees that are managing it and it’s not generating retail transactions for us to get sales tax. And it’s not the headquarters of a company that would pay us a business license, so we essentially could have large you know very valuable property chewed up with this but it’s not a value add to us as a city. We feel like there might be exceptions where we could have a modest size one, maybe. Maybe in conjunction with something else with a Google or whatever, Amazon, whatever. But oftentimes these big ones are better left for more rural areas. You know, we’ve become more of a redevelopment city because we don’t have a lot of undeveloped property left. So our property is a premium. And so there’s, Metro Atlanta has a lot of tire kicking going on with developers wanting to do it because the demand for cloud storage just keeps going up and up. We want to be very careful. So we made it to where each specific instance has to get in front of council and has to have a public hearing. And so that’s what this is to do.

00:29:11 – Rico Figliolini

So you, at the beginning, before we started the podcast, you were saying there were a lot of tire kickings going on, I guess. Was it from that or was it also from trends that you saw other cities having some of the same issues had that this sort of, you know, get on your list of that we need to take care of this?

00:29:30 – Brian Johnson

Well, reading some of the recent, I think even the AJC had not to, but a couple of weeks ago, recent article about the demand in Georgia as a whole or Metro Atlanta specifically. And so that got it kind of got already on our screen. We did have specific tire kicking going on here by a developer who was actually, you know, my community development director, Sean Adams will get calls with people asking, hey, I’m, you know, representing a property owner or whatever. And I wanted to know, is this an eligible use? And he was getting a little bit of those. So then he did look, you know, he did look out nationally to see what our city’s doing, what are best practices. He took that and crafted his own language, made it ours, and then presented it to me, and I put it on the agenda for council to consider. So all of what you said is added together is kind of how it ultimately got on an agenda, but it is a preemptive move. So we now do have this protection. So if somebody want to do it, council’s got to approve it and there’s got to be a public hearing so the community gets a chance to weigh in on it as well.

00:30:48 – Rico Figliolini

It’s good to see the function of city. Of the city mechanics if you will. How things come about, why you look at certain things and stuff. So it’s good I think for the public to see this, that it’s not just pulled out of nowhere. It’s like why this? Why data centers? Well, because these trends that you all even went out to look at the competitive field, what was being done, best practices, it’s all great. Rezoning Board of Appeals, rezoning board, I guess, and the Planning Commission. There were recently, and I’ve noticed there on the, I guess, is it the rezoning or the zoning board of appeals, I guess. There were a lot of canceled meetings at certain points. Wasn’t being probably needed, but you all decided to merge, I guess, both of those.

00:31:39 – Brian Johnson

Yes. So Zoning Board of Appeals hears cases of, you know, where somebody has, you know, a hardship due to a zoning or a code compliance, you know. And so they don’t have a lot of cases every year. In fact, two years ago, we went the entire year and there was no case for them to hear. No hardship case for them to weigh in on. So it started to get to where it, you know, you ask somebody or somebody is interested in being civically active. You put them on a, you know, the ZBA and they don’t have a meeting for a year or they’re canceled. That’s one, too training. You know, you like to these board members oftentimes go to training and, you know, we want them to be trained up. And so we just thought that, you know what, we’ll, you know support and provide even additional training to one group. And we combine the planning commission and the ZBA together. So now planning commissioners will also hear, you know, appeal cases on city code that the ZBA would have heard. And so we’re combining it, we’re adding, because it’s a more, call it a body that hearing two types of cases, we decided to add two additional spots. So the planning commission grew, but now we won’t have a ZBA. The planning commission will serve in that capacity.

00:33:08 – Rico Figliolini

And for people that may not be aware, planning commission, these are volunteer positions of appointed people, citizens from our community. The zoning board of appeals would look at not only commercial, but residential appeals, right? So if someone wanted a little leniency on the easement on their property, maybe, or they needed.

00:33:28 – Brian Johnson

Or they wanted to park an RV. A common one is park an RV in their driveway permanently if they’re not using it for a long period, you know, where that’s not allowed per code. And they make a hardship case. And, you know, the ZBA would say, yeah, you know, you do have a hardship case. We’re going to allow it on that particular property. So it’s an important role.

00:33:52 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool. So that’s cool. So I think the next one was the new zoning district for the infill residential development. So what does that mean to most people, Brian?

00:34:08 – Brian Johnson

Well, you know, if people knew anything about Peachtree Corners, again, they’re going to look at the city and be like, you know, there’s not a lot of undeveloped property left. So, you know, we are more of redevelopment. So now new projects are oftentimes, they involve the tearing down of a use that’s run its cycle. You know, maybe it was an office building for 50 years, but now it’s time for there to be a new office or something else or maybe a combination. But when that happens, there are oftentimes pockets of smaller properties that maybe things have changed and we could put them to good use. A good example of that would be commercial office buildings used to have a higher parking spot per square foot ratio than we need now. There used to be, you know, the big sea of parking in front of a big, you know, box store is no longer the case. So we oftentimes have office product is a good, you know, again, a good example where there could be twice the amount of parking that they need, but they’d like to do something with it. Well, maybe there’s an opportunity for infill. And so there are pockets, and there’s not a lot of them, but we have pockets where we were kind of like, what are we going to do with these? We don’t have a zoning classification that allows for certain smaller, you know, you could almost argue shoehorn things. But yet, if you don’t do anything, it’s kind of a waste of a property. And so we want to maximize our property and be as flexible as we can. So again, the community development director looked at best practices and came up with the infill residential. So this could be to where you could put smaller, you know, pockets of residential and oftentimes maybe it doesn’t have the same buffer requirement that you would normally have or some of those other things. And so it’s just a way for us to be flexible. Again, there’s not a lot of, cases but there are some cases where we think there could be a use here so it’s just providing us, it’s adding to our you know, our bag of tricks if you will when it comes to trying to maximize what is not. We’re not getting any more property right now, so we’ve got to make that, make the best of what we have.

00:36:36 – Rico Figliolini

So, it’s good to see the city being proactive So not just reactive to everything that’s coming along, right? You want to plan things out. I mean, that’s why the comprehensive plan is there that just got revised and stuff. We’ve hit on quite a few things. So there’s a lot of stuff going on in the city, more things coming. Anything that we’ve left out, Brian, that you just want to mention for the time being?

00:37:01 – Brian Johnson

No, not really. I mean, you know, encourage people to go. I think you put a link on there, the latest edition of Peachtree Corners Life has a, the mayor has a column in there.

00:37:14 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. On our website about deer population.

00:37:15 – Brian Johnson

Yes. And, you know, deer. So for those who want to know what we’re doing and we’ve, we’re actively getting to a point where we will have a deer management plan, but if anybody’s curious as to what we’re doing there, I encourage them to read that. But, you know, right now that was, you know, our last council meeting was a lot of land use stuff. Good things. Essentially all but one project was equity. And, you know, and all of it was city negotiated a less dense product taken into consideration, traffic and other things. So, you know, I think these are going to be, it’s going to be new injection of life into property that right now is stagnated. So good things. And we’ll continue to drive forward.

00:38:05 – Rico Figliolini

Sounds good. We’ve been spending our time with Brian Johnson, City Manager. Always appreciate his willingness to come on and talk about things. Southwest Gwinnett Magazine, let me just show you. This just is probably hitting your mailbox this week. Wesleyan Artist Market, that’s happening at the end of April. So check this out. Some decently good stories in here about summer camps. And local author, Great Atlantic Christian and their expansion and some other things. Even a former Beatles tribute drummer who just opened a coffee shop here on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Well, Peachtree Boulevard, actually. I need to start saying that.

00:38:46 – Brian Johnson

There’s still a section that’s PIB.

00:38:49 – Rico Figliolini

Is it?

00:38:50 – Brian Johnson

I mean, technically, it’s Peachtree Boulevard if you’re heading north from 285 until the split. At the split, if you stay on the right heading north, it’s still PIB. It’s only Peachtree Boulevard while it’s a state route.

00:39:08 – Rico Figliolini

Gotcha. Thanks for explaining.

00:39:08 – Brian Johnson

There is still a section of PIB as it heads up into Gwinnett. Yeah. You got to be a government junkie to know all this stuff.

00:39:17 – Rico Figliolini

No, I appreciate that. And I’m more of a political junkie than government junkies.

00:39:23 – Brian Johnson

I’m paid to be a government junkie.

00:39:25 – Rico Figliolini

For sure. Thank you Brian, everyone else yeah no, hang with me for a second. But everyone else thank you. You’ll find the important links below and if this is on YouTube or Facebook, just check out our website and you’ll for this post, this podcast post and you’ll see all the links in there leading back to pictures and all sorts of things that you need. Alright thank you guys, appreciate you being with us, bye.

The Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) of Georgia held its annual awards banquet on Wednesday, November 13 at Maggiano’s Cumberland Mall in Atlanta.

This year, Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners was awarded the 2024 Outside the Construction Box Award for setting up ghost intersections on Peachtree Parkway (State Road 141). These ghost intersections parallel GDOT facilities and use advanced monitoring, detection, data capture and movement ID allowing them to simulate and test how emerging ITS technologies will work in live scenarios.

The City of Peachtree Corners previously won this award in 2019 with the opening of Curiosity Lab.

About the award

Innovation: Outside the “Construction” Box Award

A creative and unique approach or solution, by an individual or group, to an ITS challenge or issue using ITS architecture, software deployments, network engineering or any other ITS application that is not directly related to a typical ITS construction-esque type project.

About ITS Georgia

The Intelligent Transportation Society of Georgia is a state Chapter of ITS America. ITS America is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to advancing the research, development and deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to improve the nation’s surface transportation system.

ITS America and ITS Georgia members are organizations that believe these technologies can significantly improve the performance of our transportation system and that have a stake in the success of ITS. The ITS stakeholder groups are typically identified as transportation agencies, transportation system users, ITS technology and service providers, and other agencies whose missions are about or affected by the transportation system.

For more information about ITS Georgia, visit itsga.org.

For more about Curiosity Lab, visit curiositylabptc.com.

The City of Peachtree Corners Department of Public Works will be instituting a temporary emergency closure of Corley Road.

This closure is necessary to allow crews to repair underground stormwater infrastructure near 6458 Corley Road. 

The work will require Corley Road to be closed at this location beginning September 7 and lasting for an estimated 12-14 days.  Access to the area businesses will be limited but not restricted, and detours will be required. 

There is an abandoned railroad crossing located at this address.  For locations to the east, access can be made from Jimmy Carter Boulevard, State Route 140.  For all properties west of this address, and at the rail crossing, access can be made from Jones Mill Road to Mechanicsville Road to Corley Road. 

Source: The City of Peachtree Corners