Photos by George Hunter
Consider a high-performance vehicle — bright, shiny and powerful. It leaps ahead quickly when it needs to, but can also settle back to a comfortable cruising speed. It’s nimble, able to turn on a dime or smoothly reverse direction, if need be.
Ever wished for a vehicle like that? The good news is that if you live within the city limits of Peachtree Corners, you already have one.
Gwinnett County’s largest and newest city has a most efficient “vehicle” for governing its home turf — a staff helmed by experienced department heads who put their shoulders to the wheel, are adept at balancing the sometimes-clashing interests of residents, the business community and other constituencies and aren’t afraid to embrace unconventional approaches.
Community Development Director- Diana Wheeler
If you want to huddle with someone who knows the City of Peachtree Corners from the ground up, speak to Diana Wheeler, the community development director. She has the distinction of being the city’s first employee, even before the onboarding of a city manager.
Here’s what happened: Peachtree Corners commenced operations on July 1, 2012. Wheeler, who had been community development director for the City of Alpharetta for almost 19 years, departed that position at roughly the same time.
“Somebody read that I had left Alpharetta and I got a phone call and they asked me if I wanted to help with the start of a new city,” she said. “That was one of the few things I hadn’t actually done before.”
Fast forward to today and Wheeler is well settled into her role.
“I oversee community development,” she explained. “That’s all of the building, all of the planning , all of the code enforcement. So that’s most everything that comes out of the ground and is man-made, other than road and bridge-type public projects.”
Her job requires her to be well-versed in a plethora of different kinds of development: residential, commercial, industrial and institutional. Economic development is also on her watch, although she has a staffer who handles that area specifically.
It’s quite a smorgasbord of responsibilities. And it actually represents a widening of her original career goal.
“I started out to be an architect and I have a degree in architecture and urban design from Columbia,” Wheeler said. “I discovered that I really liked urban planning and designing spaces more than buildings. So then my focus evolved away from individual buildings, more into city planning.”
In pursuing that, she follows the script of the city’s 20-year comprehensive plan that was developed after extensive public input, visioning sessions and city council direction.
She noted that while the city is mainly built out, there are considerable opportunities for redevelopment. That’s led to incentive programs for developers, including one under which those putting together mixed-use developments can earn a way to make their projects more residentially dense in return for instituting value-added improvements from a list developed by the city.
That whole landscape has come with a number of challenges, including dealing with inherited rules and regulations from the days of Gwinnett County control. “What we are trying to do is enhance the quality of life by managing growth,” she asserted.
Focusing on both the larger picture and its component parts constitutes a major motivator in Wheeler’s job.
Take the Town Center concept, which emerged from community meetings and citizen input and became an integral — and literal — part of the landscape. The plan being a 20-year document, she pointed out, the project didn’t come together overnight but “we got to work implementing that vision and it took six years to make it happen, but it’s here now.”
The enthusiasm and passion Wheeler brings when talking about that and other projects is palpable. She’s not a fan of bureaucracy, but of results.
“I’m really fascinated by the projects and all the fun stuff that comes with them and I have had the opportunity to do a lot of that in Peachtree Corners,” she shared. She added that two factors played into that experience: one, the Corners status as a new city and the other, the City Council’s willingness to try new approaches.
When not wearing her development hats, Wheeler said she likes gardening, “and like a lot of people during our COVID break, I have refined my baking abilities.”
