On this Month’s Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager, Brian Johnson

Learn about the new proposed 9.2 acre Peachtree Parkway multi-use development, new townhome application for at Peachtree Corners Circle and Jay Bird Alley, and Cornerstone Academy’s expansion plans.

Timestamp, where to find it in the podcast:
[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:02:14] – Cornerstone Expansion
[00:08:08] – Townhouse Rezoning
[00:12:38] – 9.25 Acre Multi-use Zoning
[00:24:06] – Low Emissions Grant
[00:28:59] – Closing

“This is the first application of the very first of our mixed use development ordinance. The developers have taken advantage of it. And we believe to the betterment of the entire project… it does have certain incentives within that ordinance that we all win.”

Brian Johnson

Rico: [00:00:30] Hi everyone. This is Rico Figliolini. Thanks for joining us for Prime Lunchtime

with the City Manager, we’re going to be discussing three major things that just happened this

past city council meeting. One of them was voted on two of them we’ve done what’s called a first

read and consideration. So there’ll be coming up in the next council meeting. But we’re going to

be covering the cornerstone Christian Academy application for a change of variance. A change

of conditions for their property and expansion of the private school. Also, we’re going to be

discussing the town home rezoning of from our R102 Townhouse that’s happening at Jaybird

Alley and Peachtree Corner Circle that may happen. And also we’re going to discuss a rezoning

application for 9.25 acres along Peachtree Parkway that’s looking to become a multi-use

development. Before we get to that, I just want to say thank you to Hargray Fiber for being a

great sponsor of not only this podcast, but the family of podcasts that we do in supporting

Peachtree Corners Magazine. They are a company here in the Southeast that provides internet

capabilities to small companies, as well as enterprise businesses. Along with the tools, office

tools that you can use to run your business better. Fast internet service. Not like the cable guy.

They’re also a great supporter of Curiosity Lab in the city of Peachtree Corners. They’re really

local and they provide a lot of community support. So check them out. Hargray fiber is the

company. HargrayFiber.com is where you can see them. So before we go any further, let me

bring on of course my guest Brian Johnson, City Manager. Brian, thanks for being with us. What

we’re going to be discussing is a bunch of different things. I’m acting as engineer right now. So

bear with me.

Brian: [00:02:12] No worries.

Rico: [00:02:14] We do this all the time, but there we are. All right, cool. So I know that things

have been crazy going on in the city and stuff, lots of new things going on. I won’t even get into

one of the things we discussed pre-show a little bit which has been in the AJC. And that’ll be a

separate video that I’d like to discuss with some people and talking about what’s going on. And

the horrendous thing that deals with that I cannot believe a government official is allowed to do

essentially. So I’m just going to vent on that on a separate video from this. But let’s dig a little

deep into what is going on in the city. And some of the things, some really good things and

some things on that have taken advantage of the new multi-use ordinance and such. So the first

thing on the agenda for today, is just a quick discussion of Cornerstone Christian Academy, the

private school here in the city of Peachtree Corners. One of the best schools out there. They

just got the best, company for best place to work I think from the AJC that we just covered in our

website. And which is, you know, not easy to get from what I understand. So it’s a great, great

thing for them. So tell us a little bit Brian about, what the application was for, and I’m going to

slide some images on as we talked about it, or at least one.

Brian: [00:03:28] Well, you know Cornerstone, well Peachtree Corners as a community, as a

municipality, we’re very blessed. We have a number of great school options within the city,

Cornerstone being one of them. We’ve got a great public school system offering. We’ve got

Wesleyan and we’ve got Cornerstone. And so it’s, I think sometimes as a community, we

overlook the fact that if you live here, you’ve got some pretty, you got some great options and

those options allow you to keep your world as small as possible. So you don’t, your commutetimes are shorter and your quality of life increases. If you’ve got kids that are active, you can

keep them close to home. And it’s nice. So cornerstone is one of those great options. They have

been doing well. Their enrollment has been such that they’ve been able to, with that and some

fundraising, look at creating a more permanent campus from what they started. They started by

acquiring a commercial office building and expanded from that into multiple buildings. That were

assembled in parcels that were contiguous. So they’ve got a mini campus.

Rico: [00:04:42] In Technology Park.

Brian: [00:04:44] Right. And what they’ve done is when you’ve got these, this assemblage of

buildings that were originally constructed as just standalone office, commercial office, they want

their campus to actually start feeling like a real campus versus just an assemblage of

commercial office buildings. So they are taking one of the buildings and they’re demoing the

building and creating a quad in the middle of other ones. And they’re also expanding that, or I’ll

call it joining that, with adjacent property that is across the street from Peachtree Corners

Baptist church.

Rico: [00:05:29] Now, for the people that don’t know. They, and I don’t have a slide

unfortunately, I thought I did. That’s the property, the parking lot across from the church, that

also has the athletic fields and a little pavilion area on the side.

Brian: [00:05:42] And so Cornerstone has acquired it. They, I guess just have use rights for a

while from PCBC and so they’ve acquired it. So now they’re just creating that campus and that

kind of locks in that part of it. They’re going to continue to use it in the way that it was when they

were just using the property and not owning it. So it’ll still be used for recreational purposes.

There’ll be some parking there, there is a little bit of, there’s plans for a gymnasium on the

property. And then a little, I guess you call it, a clubhouse associated with the ball fields. And so

they have some expansion plans for the property, but it’ll still be used in the way that it has been

so far. We’re excited to you know, have a school here that has done well enough enrollments

such that they can put deeper roots into the community than they had before and expand and

make this educational offering that much more, enticing than it was before this plan came out.

Rico: [00:06:46] Yeah, I’m excited for it. I’ve seen Cornerstone start from a really small school. I

think it was actually within Peachtree Corners Baptist originally. Yeah, I think so. And then they

got the one office building, then they expanded to two. And I think, I guess now it’s three. So it’s

exciting to see that. And if I remember correctly from the plan, the proposed plan, is that the ball

fields would probably stay where they are, the baseball field. The soccer field will probably be

reoriented a little bit. And then that gymnasium is going to be, if you’re facing the property, that

gymnasium building is going to be on the left side of the property. These have taken up probably

two or three rows of parking spaces along that side. Away from residential, obviously there’s

you know, that. And close to the street side of Peachtree Corner circle. They have a great

school. I don’t think there was any opposition to that. I can’t imagine to that request.Brian: [00:07:46] No, there wasn’t. Especially when they’re using it for the same purpose,

everybody has accepted that it’s a recreational use. It’s associated with the church and other

areas too. It’s a known commodity. Yeah, from the city’s perspective, we were very happy to see

their plans and we’re glad that we were able to help facilitate them getting this and moving it

forward.

Rico: [00:08:08] Yeah. I’m excited about it and we’ll be covering that a little bit in the next issue,

not this issue, but the June-July issue of the magazine, Peachtree Corners. We’re going to have

a little profile about, a little story about that. And maybe possibly some of the renderings of

what’s going to be, what’s planned for that. Let’s go on to the townhouse rezoning or the

rezoning of a property at the corner of Peachtree Corner Circle on 3755 Jaybird alley. From

R100 large residential land plot, right? To townhomes. I’m going to slide this on, tell us a little bit

about this. And there was opposition to this. I’ve got to say there were probably 239 in

opposition to this. I don’t know of how many people showing up at the city council meeting, but

there was quite a bit opposition, I think, singed in letters and such. So tell us a bit about this

rezoning.

Brian: [00:08:57] Well, I mean, you know, this is typically what you get when you get a developer

who comes in and is looking to maybe take property, assemble some parcels or take something

that already exists and oftentimes redevelop into something else. This one is one of those

purposes you’re looking at. The easiest way is just to put a townhome community on it. I will say

at this point, that it was just the first read. And so council, there was no discussion. The

discussion and vote will be at the April council meeting. They did have, the developer did have

multiple appearances in front of the planning commission prior to getting to this point. It was

tabled for some inner, for some further interaction with local residents that had some concerns,

at least once. And I know there have been some changes to it. But while this has been going

on, I can attest to, because I’ve pretty much been receiving the same thing, is the local

community there is very interested in this project. And has been expressing things of concern or

at least things that council needs to take into consideration when this is being discussed. So

there is a lot of interest from the community on this project. And mayor and council have

received all of the communication. It’s been organized in a way that, we know how much and

what they’re saying and what are the key points that are being brought up and council is

prepared to discuss it from an educated perspective. Both from what staff provides counsel and

what the community provides. So I look forward to them debating this and, you know, making an

up, down vote on it.

Rico: [00:10:44] Right. What actually butts this development on the other side of this? Not the

roadside, but the other side.

Brian: [00:10:53] It’s a triangle piece. I mean, I guess there’s a subdivision on the other side of

Jaybird Alley from this. A single family, detached residential community. There are at least, I

think two individual, single family homes that are in this triangle piece of property that are, I

guess it’s, what is it? Jaybird, Spalding and Peachtree Corner Circle. I believe is the three roadsthat form the kind of parcel that they’re looking at, or some of it. Now there’s a, yeah, those are

the three.

Rico: [00:11:31] So it butts up to residential, that’s actually probably R100 I’d imagine. So that

would on the face of it to me, I know you may not be able to say anything on it yet. Since

planning commission, did they, did the planning commission actually give a recommendation?

Brian: [00:11:47] They did. Did they recommended denial.

Rico: [00:11:49] Okay. Which makes sense to me, cause by taking a townhouse butting up to

one R100 is just such a drastic change. Usually it’d be like, let’s say R60 maybe or moving,

slightly higher and not going that far up in density next to an R100. That doesn’t make sense.

Brian: [00:12:09] You are right. That is one of the probably most common concerns raised by the

residents, is the increase in density that this would allow in the area where there’s not really the

same level of density. And council has received that message loud and clear and has not

dismissed this lightly. They’re prepared to, they’re probably to a point on this that they would

have, could have voted Tuesday night. It’s just, it was just the first read, so.

Rico: [00:12:38] Sure, sure. Alright. Then the next item that we’re going to talk about is the 9.25

acres along Peachtree Corners Parkway. There’s a request for zoning and this makes sense.

Because we’ve been discussing in the last few meetings, podcasts, about the multi-use

ordinance and the changes that happen in the ordinance. And this is actually being affected by

that ordinance. Their application, from what I could tell is taking full advantage of the credits that

they could get for high density and all that stuff. They have a laundry list of things that they’re

doing that help them compile their density. And it’s, these are basically office buildings. This is

basically Technology Park. The, on that side.

Brian: [00:13:25] Yeah. So this is on Peachtree Parkway. It is just North of the new signal at

Engineering Drive in Peachtree Parkway. Where the racetrack and the liquor store are. The

immediate building to the North of that. It’s a three story building that sits off from the road,

existing commercial office building. And then it’s that parcel and then it’s the parcel or maybe

parcels, but all of those single story, commercial condos, those old ones. There was a physical

therapist and life insurance, and it’s all of those and that existing one, the existing commercial

office building. So that’s the, just under 10 acres or essentially 10 acres. And it’s, you know,

what you see is this is an example as you’re showing here. This is the first application of the

very first of our mixed use development ordinance. Like you just said, the developers have

taken advantage of it. And we believe to the betterment of the entire project. And by that I mean,

given communication that’s been happening prior to this officially being submitted and some

changes since then, the project has actually got less units than the applicant originally

requested. Mixed-use development ordinance steered them down a road that ultimately resulted

in less density. And then it does have certain incentives within that ordinance that we all win.

They’re donating land for green space, there’s adaptive reuse of existing office buildings. They

are going to demo in that photo right there, those single story. And that’s what it looks like now.And if you go to the next one, that’s what it will look like. The couple of things of note. And I don’t

know, do you have any of the other ones? So that’s the single…

Rico: [00:15:33] Yeah. Let me pop one of the other ones.

Brian: [00:15:36] God knows how that will look. And then you have the, there’s the existing three

story office building set back off the road back there. And they’re keeping that and they’re, that’s

not the view. That’s a different, do you have any more? There’s another view.

Rico: [00:15:53] I think I do have this other view here. Hold on. There’s this.

Brian: [00:16:00] That’s on the inside. That’s the interior. I may have had, been privy to a view

you didn’t get. But anyway, that office building is going to be kept. That one right there is going

to be kept.

Rico: [00:16:11] Now, that’s a 1982 building built, I guess. That’s what I understand.

Brian: [00:16:17] Okay. And they’re going to be basically gutting it, reusing it in a number of

ways. Including some similar to like we-work space type of thing. Some of that will be, there’ll

be some amenities for the local residents in there. Clubhouse amenities type of thing. And I

think there’s, and then I think they have templated a coffee shop to go in there.

Rico: [00:16:43] So when they’re talking retail, so this is another view. I think this is the some of

the, I’m not sure if those are the townhouses. I think those are.

Brian: [00:16:52] They are.

Rico: [00:16:53] There’s going to be 26 planned townhouses, 295 multifamily apartments

essentially. And when they say, so they’re going to reuse the three story building, like you said.

Which was a 1982 buildings, so it’s fairly old building. So that makes sense. It’s I guess recall,

gutted out their building, not recalled, what was it? Brightree. And rebuilt there. It’s a beautiful

building by the way now.

Brian: [00:17:16] And they’re doing something similar to that. So the good thing here is there’s a

couple things of note. One is we have an adaptive reuse of an empty building, a building that’s

been empty for five years. And it’s also going to remove those single story office condos, which

if you’ve been back there, they are in a very degraded condition. In fact, most of them were

completely empty as well. The only ones, you know, we never noticed it if you’re driving by

because the front units still had some tenants in it. But man when you went back, it was empty.

People were breaking in. It was, it needs help. So that’s good. Second thing is all the trees

along Peachtree Parkway are remaining. And at the end of the project, there will be more trees

because of the replantings then they started with. And they also are reducing the impervious

surface that’s on the site. So when you get into the existing, all the existing parking lot and

rooftop. And when they remove all that and construct anew, there will actually be lesspavement when the project is done then there currently is. So those are some good aspects of

this project that we’re excited about.

Rico: [00:18:41] With the project you mentioned, obviously there’s, we’re talking about, it says

partial, some retail. Are they, is it just the coffee shop or is it?

Brian: [00:18:52] I’m not sure exactly. I’m not sure they even know at this point. Because again,

the way these things work. And there’s still a few things, a few little details that are even being

discussed, that will probably tweak the final version that council is voting on. And again,

planning commission serves a great, extremely important role here. And that is, they are the

best vetting tool that the city has of getting a project as close to possible as the project that

council wants to approve. Sometimes it’s impossible to get there and council, again, denies the

application. But sometimes, I would maybe even say a majority of the time, planning

commission is able to influence the developers at their stage in a way that then the developers.

Continue to make modifications to their site as a way to enhance the product before council

votes on it, which makes it easier for council to make a decision. Again, sometimes it’s just a

bridge too far and they can’t come to that. But anyway, there’s a little bit there, but on the retail

side, you can’t fill it. You can’t know exactly because they don’t have the zoning approved yet.

Rico: [00:20:19] But don’t they have to give you a plan to say, we’re going to have 10,000

square feet of retail.

Brian: [00:20:24] Yeah. And they do. I just don’t know that off the top of my head. They do,

because mixed use development ordinance has to have three different uses in it. And so they

are going to, their application does have square footage. I’m just saying that right now, before

council that number’s probably changing as we speak right now because the developer is

hearing some feedback and making modifications. But there will be a square footage dedicated

to retail, and here it will be depicted on where it will be. Some to commercial and some to

residential. And if the rezoning is approved, then of course they go out and they try to lock up

some leases. And those uses could be anything from a coffee shop to a sit down restaurant, a

dry cleaner.

Rico: [00:21:14] And it makes sense to me, obviously multi-use is going to be like that. It just

doesn’t make sense to me if there’s only one little 2,500 square foot coffee shop, and we’re

calling this development a multi-use development. When in fact that’s just like the minimal part

of it, right?

Brian: [00:21:31] It is. I mean, of course all projects have to have a minimal. So sometimes, you

don’t get as much as you want. Now we’ll say that the balancing act here on a mixed use

development on just anything, but on this one in particular, is to try to achieve a balance that’s

achievable. By that I mean, It would be great if there was a bunch of retail. Maybe we, you and I

are like, man I would love to have like a little mini shopping area or whatever. That’d be great.

Just for purposes of illustrating this. If we wanted it, that’d be great. But if the developer can’t fill

it, nothing would be worse than for there to be a development that started off with too manysquare feet of retail than they can fill. And that has happened. And so there’s also sometimes

you have to be careful about making somebody try to fit a square peg into a round hole. If the

timing’s not right, if the area’s not right. And retail’s the one that’s the most difficult right now

because retail nationally, internationally is undergoing a unique metamorphosis with the

Amazon’s of the world. So we don’t know where it will be. And so bricks and mortar retail is

scary sometimes to developers if you have too much.

Rico: [00:22:55] And the good part about this though, is that it’s not like they have an anchor

place. That’s 30,000 square feet of retail. So small shops, coffee shops, a couple of small

restaurants, I can see that. Especially if they’re bringing, the whole idea is bringing in over 300

families essentially into there. Whereas the town center doesn’t even have that yet. The

apartments where, the apartment and the Indigo hotel, where the original component of this and

who knows where that is right now. Because that’s still not being talked about. Because that was

almost 300 apartments or 260 apartments I think that would sit right over town center and that’s

not there yet. Which could probably help the retail, the restaurants and stuff like that. The whole

idea of that energy. Energized environment of people just being, I’m going down to get

something for breakfast and, just like you would in the city. In Atlanta, let’s say or Brookhaven. I

did want to ask about this. So the office building in the back, that’s not being converted to this.

This is a whole new building though that would be on there. This five story residential building.

Brian: [00:23:58] That’s a whole new building. That’s correct.

Rico: [00:24:00] Okay. And that would be set back. And the front part would be townhouses or

any of the retail?

Brian: [00:24:05] That’s correct.

Rico: [00:24:06] Alright. Cool. Great. So we’ve covered that a little bit and we’ve got a little bit

more time. So I thought maybe we’d just quickly talk about the, you guys did a resolution to do a

matching grant. Thought that was a great idea that had to deal with EVA, low emissions. Do you

want to talk a little bit about, give a couple of minutes on that?

Brian: [00:24:27] Yeah. So, just to step back real quick. The city, when it comes to economic

development has seen some really good success with Curiosity Lab being the magnet to attract

companies here. And we’ve seen it with Brightree and ASHRAE and some others. We’re seeing

it with some other activity within our innovation center that maybe is only temporary, but it is still

active. And so we have realized though that for us to continue to innovate, for us to continue to

keep market share of being, one of the only, if not only living laboratory of our kind in really the

world. We’ve got to keep doing things to stay out front. And what we’re seeing is, we’re starting

to compete with cities that are way outside our weight class. And the only way we can compete

with cities, like Jacksonville, Florida, just within their own general fund appropriated, I think it

was like $25 million towards autonomous vehicle research and testing on a location of the city.

They’re doing things. And Miami’s thrown, tens of millions of dollars of things. And those are, we

can’t compete with that directly. So what we’ve decided to do was we decided to be moreaggressive at identifying and going after grants. Because that’s the one way that if we are more

aggressive at trying to find and go after them, that’s one way for us to ultimately punch outside

our weight class. Above it is to have other people give us some money to be able to compete

with that. So we have started that process and we’ve gotten some consultants to help us identify

some grants. And we just happen to have one that we identified. It’s a low emission electric

vehicle research and development grant. That has a due date of April 12th. And so we weren’t

going to have another council meeting before then. And the reason council needed to be

involved is it’s a federal grant and the federal government generally wants to see a resolution of

support from the local jurisdiction so that they don’t, what has happened in the past, award a

grant to a community that ultimately, maybe doesn’t support having it. Maybe mayor and council

didn’t want to go after it and staff did, and then you get it and there’s not the community support.

So they’re looking for some measure of proof that the community would support something like

this to make it worth while, and to make sure that they’re appropriating it to communities, that

this would be a big deal. And clearly we think we have a competitive one with our electric

vehicle charging hub, the second largest in Georgia. Largest in Metro Atlanta. The solar

roadway, electric vehicle, or the autonomous vehicle activity we have. And we are looking to get

some more soon, all autonomous vehicles or electric vehicles. And then with partnership with

Georgia power and testing, what electric vehicles do to the power grid. And all that stuff feeds

into the very reason that we had Curiosity Lab and it feeds into economic development, which is

about activity. And activity is what we want here because activity of people, however temporary,

they feed our local economy. Because they’re either eating in our restaurants and are staying in

our hotels, renting office space, renting apartments, and some cases moving here permanently.

And so this grant would help us over a two year period, we would use the grant to get five

autonomous vehicles, which would be electric vehicles here from three different companies. And

those three companies would come out here and in coordination with Georgia power do testing

on the burden to the power grid, interaction with each other, maybe testing of charging in the

roadway. All sorts of things like that, but with all those things come support personnel. They

come technicians, they come with their own partners, other people who want to come out here.

Our resolution of support would be, we will support it monetarily or otherwise if we get awarded

the grant. So that’s why there was a resolution.

Rico: [00:28:59] Cool. Exciting stuff that’s happening in the city between development and EVA

and Curiosity Lab. I think people should be excited that the city is moving the way it is. You guys

are doing a great job. I think that’s it really. We’ve, we could go on and on I’m sure. I don’t want

to keep you too long. Brian, I do appreciate you coming out, helping explain some of these

important issues and things going on in the city. Thank you. I appreciate you being with us.

Brian: [00:29:25] Thanks for letting you know, creating this communication vehicle for us to get

some information out.

Rico: [00:29:30] Sure. So we’ve been listening to Brian Johnson, City Manager of Peachtree

Corners. Listen up for more podcasts coming out. And we have, we’re going to be doing a

podcast soon on the Wesleyan Artists Market, going from a real artist’s market to virtual. That’ll

be coming up next week. Actually, depending on when you’re listening to this. But thank you forjoining us. And again, I want to thank Hargray Fiber for being a sponsor of this podcast, as well

as the family of podcasts and the magazine. Check out Peachtree Corners Magazine in another

week or two, and you will see lots of stuff. Our biggest issue yet. See you then