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Is a City Marshal System in the City’s Future and Updates on the DDA and RDA [Podcast]

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10 months ago

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Is a City Marshal system in our future and what would it look like?

After a short hiatus, Rico Figliolini and Brian Johnson are back with a new episode of Prime Lunchtime with The City Manager. There’s a lot of new and exciting information about what’s happening in the City of Peachtree Corners. Today’s topics include; a possible future City Marshal System, The Redevelopment Authority and Downtown Development Authority plans, honorary road names, and much more.

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:02:44] – City Marshal Office System
[00:13:19] – The Authority of Future City Marshals
[00:18:58] – How the City Will Fund the City Marshals System
[00:23:37] – Honorary Roads Vs. Renaming a Road
[00:27:30] – Downtown Development Authority
[00:30:40] – Redevelopment Authority’s New Ideas
[00:36:57] – Closing

“One of our most sacred services as a city that we provide is to do everything we can to make sure this community is safe. A place to live, do commerce, recreate, and (City Council) felt like this will better provide that service.”

BRIAN JOHNSON

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Podcast Transcript

[00:00:30] Rico: Hi everyone, this is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, and today Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager. Hey Brian, how are you?

[00:00:38] Brian: Rico. Good, how are you?

[00:00:40] Rico: Good, good. Much better. I finally got Covid. I’m on the other side of it, so everything’s all good. Before we get into the show, let me just introduce our sponsor, EV Remodeling Inc. They’ve been a corporate sponsor of ours for over a year now, both for the publication and these family podcasts that I do. So I want to thank them. Based in Peachtree Corners. Eli is a Peachtree Corners resident. Great guy, does great work. You can visit them at EVRemodelingInc.com and find out a little bit more about how he does design, build, and can renovate your entire home. So check him out. I want to thank him for being our corporate sponsor. We have a lot to discuss. I mean, within the scheme of things, we haven’t done this. We skipped a month. It was kind of quiet and stuff but there’s always new stuff. And certainly this podcast, we’re gonna be discussing the city’s look at activating a City Marshall system as well as discussing honorary road names and looking at the RDA and DDA, that’s the Downtown Development authority and the Redevelopment Authority and what they’re going to be doing. Let’s lead off with the City Marshall, the activation of that. I know this is in response to the concerns that citizens have had maybe not directly with the carjacking that happened at the QT and the death of a young man there. And of a young student at Norcross High School. Granted that was, he had left Norcross High School, and that was, I believe off campus that happened. But two violent crimes that occurred. Listen, the city of Atlanta all over the city, there’s, you can get notifications from 11 Alive at least five, six times a day of things happening. We’re thankful that the City of Peachtree Corners is not facing that type of crime wave or activity. But I find that this is somewhat of an innovative way of doing this. Instead of a full on police force doing something that could be a little different and still have the authority of the police. So Brian, tell us a little bit about how this came about and how you’d be looking at this and what you were tasked to do.

[00:02:44] Brian: So, you’re right, you hit on some of the origins of getting to this point. We have had some unfortunate incidents of late with deaths. There’s been some other crime and it’s not uncommon as we densify. As Metro Atlanta grows Peachtree Corners is growing. And the more people you have in an area, there’s just more opportunities for bad actors. So this unfortunate rise in these kind of things. And, you know, property crime is still our main criminal activity type here, but we are just becoming more and more of a target for bad actors. We’ve had intersection takeovers not too long ago, where you’ve got these car clubs that are seizing control of an intersection and doing all sorts of dangerous things with automobiles. You’ve had instances like that, even the failed carjacking that resulted in that death was a group of teens who specifically were targeting communities that had more affluence and better automobiles that they could do that slider crime where, you know, somebody’s pumping gas, or in this case filling air in their tires not near the driver’s side, and they slide into the seat. Because oftentimes the cars are left running, or at a minimum the keys are left in the ignition. So as a community, these instances and incidents rightly get the community, you know, like, hey, what’s going on? It seems like there’s more of it in a compressed period of time. And so we’ve started to notice this ourselves. And you’ve started to see within the last year or so more services and capital assets the city has brought into or brought to bear to help fight or prevent crime. Probably the best example of that would be of late the LPR camera system that we put throughout the city. Which our partnership with fūsus, a local Peachtree Corners Tech Park Atlanta based business that’s created a software platform that allows cameras of any type and owned by private entities. That if they give permission can be tied together to create a video surveillance net, if you will, for use by the police. But those efforts were ways for us to start saying, hey, are we doing as much as we can? And we deployed technology and we’ll continue to. That technology does work. We would prefer it to prevent crime. That’s the best crime is the one prevented. But even in the case of these two murders, our LPR cameras, the fūsus network, tying those and other privately owned cameras that voluntarily became part of the network. They ended up being the method in which the police were able to identify the gunman and find the gunman. So they work. Unfortunately, they were used after a crime was committed. We’d like to do things to prevent it, but that’s examples of what we’ve done so far. But then of recent times, council tasked me with presenting back to them in my opinion, based on all the experts I brought to bear, are we doing absolutely everything we can to make sure Peachtree Corners is a safe community to prevent or call it deflect crime away from our community? Are we doing everything and there were or is, since this hasn’t gone live yet, there is some areas in which there’s a gap. And some of those areas get into, everything from as good of a job as Gwinnett County Police Department’s West Precinct is doing. And they’re gonna remain our official police department, no doubt. But they’re handcuffed with everything from staffing shortages to even policy constraints that a countywide police department has. That if we had something that was solely focused on the city doesn’t have. And so there are sometimes gaps in the ability to direct resources based on Peachtree Corners specific needs. The enforcement of local ordinances and not countywide ordinances. And so I had to honestly, based on the assessment that my team came up with, honestly say that we weren’t doing quite everything and there was this gap that we needed to fill. And so there’s two ways to fill it. One is to stand up our own police department, which we do not want to do. And when Gwinnett PD does have the resources, they are providing a great service for us. But the other way to fill this gap, and this gap is a gap kind of between code enforcement officers, which are specifically oriented to enforcing local code and local code only and law enforcement, that’s enforcing state law. There is a gap. The gap can be filled if we stood up what we’re calling City Marshal office, very similar to what Sugar Hill has. Beauford has both Gwinnett municipalities that have an arrangement with Gwinnett PD, but they identified a gap between their code enforcement and law enforcement that they wanted to fill. So very similar to that, and that is to stand up this program. And the positions would be filled by POST certified officers. POST standing for police officers standard and training. Which is to the, you know, average viewer here is police academy. Having gone through police academy and all the training and to maintain all the certifications that you need to have certain authorities that a code enforcement officer who’s not POST certified will not be able to have. And so the intent here is to have some people who are able to fill this gap by the authority vested in their position. And be able to be controlled by the city so that they can be directed in areas that might be really important to Peachtree Corners, but it’s not, Gwinnett PD does not have the resources to specifically address. A good example of late would be, you mentioned the shooting of the Norcross High School student. That was partly driven by Norcross High School students leaving school during school hours. Truancy, if you will. And there is a truancy problem, of students cutting class and cutting through the woods into the back of businesses that border Norcross High School. Those businesses are being adversely affected. The shooting was an unfortunate result of it. But the truancy continues on students that are trespassing and then doing things like destroying property, dealing drugs, doing drugs.

[00:10:32] Rico: Right. And we were talking a little bit about that before too. About how school security are really not able to stop a kid from leaving the school short of tackling them, if you will.

[00:10:44] Brian: Well they can’t even do that. I mean, Rico, you’re right.

[00:10:47] Rico: I know I’m being facetious.

[00:10:48] Brian: Yeah, yeah. Yes.

[00:10:49] Rico: They can’t touch a kid. I understand. So some of these kids are not respectful of rules maybe, and they’ll leave the school anyway.

[00:10:55] Brian: That’s right. And when they don’t have a support network at home the school is limited to what it can do in the hours that it has the student. And so the discipline within there is certainly been newsworthy recently. But beyond that, when there are instances where they know and have evidence that the kid skipped school, they weren’t in class or whatever. You know, they’re limited in what they can do. And so it’s going to continue to be a problem. Not to say that every school doesn’t have it, but these, some of these students who potentially are bused there so they don’t have transportation or whatever. They’re just going and they’re cutting into the woods and they’re creating problems for local businesses. Now I bring that up to say there’s going to be a lot of little things brought together to help deal with this. But what we don’t currently have is, Gwinnett County PD does not currently have enough staff to run a presence patrol for certain hours of the day where it’s more problematic. And so if we had an internal City Marshal, and it’s important to us because it’s important to these businesses. I can tell City Marshall I want you to go out to the school and I want you to do a presence patrol say during the hours where there’s gaps in these kids’ schedules, they have a free period, and that’s where they tend to cut class and I want you to be driving around the back of those businesses. I want you to be a deterrent to those students. And I want you to be a resource for those. This will allow us to do those kind of things. This will allow us to detain somebody until a Gwinnett Police Officer gets there to arrest them. If they were a witness to the commission of a crime, it allows local code to be enforced at a level that a non post certified code enforcement officer cannot do. And it allows code to continue to make sure that the city is looking in the way it does that buildings are built safe, that properties maintain properly, all that stuff. They continue to do this and now we have, right now it looks like it’ll probably be three City Marshals.

[00:13:16] Rico: Is that to cover a 24 hour period, by the way?

[00:13:19] Brian: No, we’re not needing to run 24 hour at all. That’s again what Gwinnett PD is tasked with. 911 still operates the same. But another example would be the enforcement of the city’s alcohol licensing process. Those who serve alcohol have to get an alcohol license and oftentimes alcohol can be the problem of why certain businesses are not operating properly. Enforcing of that, maybe even pulling license of establishments that are not being good actors. That is a function that unfortunately without City Marshals, we have to coordinate with Gwinnett PD. Because they’re the ones that have to have the authority to enforce certain parts of that. So we depend on that. Massage parlors and licensing of those and trafficking is something that we currently have to use Gwinnett PD. Even when law enforcement gets it to a certain point, we have to stop there because we don’t have POST certified officers that would have that. This will allow us to address those. So it’s filling that gap that right now exists. We don’t have to stand up a police department. We have a good police department. They’re strained by some policy and staffing. But we can, in addition to the technology we’re using, we can have our own individuals who have the same authorities. They’re going to exercise them in a very narrow area.

[00:14:48] Rico: Right.

[00:14:49] Brian: They don’t have the same authorities as Gwinnett PD. And it’ll allow us to fill that gap. And that is what I presented to council and that is what council said, we like it. Go back and give us the exact details, the table of organization and equipment of how it’ll look. And that’s what I’m doing. But the concept of standing this up, council said one of our most sacred services as a city that we provide is to do everything we can to make sure this community is safe. Place to live, do commerce recreate, and they felt like this will better provide that service.

[00:15:27] Rico: Right. So just on a couple of little details, detail things, just clarification for some people. POST certified means they’ve gone through the police academy, the same police academy every other police officer has to go through. Same type of training. How to interact with individuals and all that stuff.

[00:15:46] Brian: Use of force.

[00:15:48] Rico: Correct.

[00:15:48] Brian: The steps of escalation. All the same stuff. Now, mind you again. By policy, we’re going to end up restricting them to a very narrow left and right limit. And that’s the gap that we currently have. So they’re not gonna be going out. The only time I see them working off hours would be if we’re having problems with certain things and they need to be out then. But code enforcement does that by, just so that you know already, is they sometimes code infractions are done after business hours. And so we have a cycle of, there’s a code enforcement officer that works a weekend day every month. They rotate through, but generally speaking, they’re still the normal eight to five type of code enforcement. This will be the same.

[00:16:37] Rico: Same on this. Three officers probably working at the same time through the week.

[00:16:42] Brian: Mostly. Yep.

[00:16:43] Rico: Individual cars for each one of them. Working closely with, or when they need to, with Gwinnett Police.

[00:16:49] Brian: Oh, absolutely.

[00:16:50] Rico: And if they end up arresting someone, they’re not really arresting someone. They’re going to detain them, most likely in the back of the Sheriff’s car

[00:16:58] Brian: Rico. A very important point is, we’re not wanting to get into starting to arrest under our authority. Even though the city has that authority and these officers would have been properly certified to do it. Gwinnett PD is going to still be our police. So these will have the authority, but they, at most would detain temporarily until a Gwinnett PD officer showed up to actually arrest. So, we’re not wanting to get into where you start having unnecessary use of force and all that stuff. No.

[00:17:33] Rico: Okay. And as far as fūsus goes, or the eye in the sky real cloud crime center.

[00:17:39] Brian: Real cloud crime center, right. And just so that you know also that program, the official Connect Peachtree Corners program. First week of January is going to be the big push where we’re going to start encouraging, because it’ll be set up and ready to receive, encouraging everybody that has video camera to at a minimum, register their camera to let Gwinnett PD know you have one. So that if there is a crime in the area of that camera, Gwinnett will know exactly who has cameras in the area, how to contact them to request the video feed of a particular time period. That will be the connect PTC through fūsus, that program will be opened up first week of January. So yes, that is a critical part of the City Marshals because now they also would end up being able to monitor video feeds. Including the city’s, we’ve got what, 82 cameras out at the Town Center now. They will be able to use that. It’s going to be a resource for them to use. And, we can charge people and run them through municipal court. So yeah, these are all assets that we want to better utilize or more utilize than what Gwinnett PD has the resources to do.

[00:18:58] Rico: And I know that some people may ask this, so this will be an important question. How will this be funded? This additional police force, if you will, or sherriff force. It’s within the same budget, right? I mean, there’s no, someone’s gonna say, does that mean that the mil l age rate will start existing or something? So tell us.

[00:19:16] Brian: Thank you for teeing that very, very important question up for me. It’s very important to know that this is all being done within the current and anticipated revenue streams that the city gets on an annual basis. Meaning we can afford it within our own budget. Which is a very important point. I mean, we’re very proud that we’re the second largest municipality in Georgia with no city property tax. And Council does not want to be the first council to levy that. So that was an important part of my proposal to them. Their first question was, alright, great. Sounds good. We see the gap. We see why you’re recommending this to fill the gap. Can we afford it? And, you know, I needed to know that before. And the great answer was yes, we can. We were generating enough fun balance year after year that the run rate for three positions, we can afford. We’ll have a one time large capital, we’re going to have to purchase three police cars, uniforms, some equipment. But once you purchase it, you’re just building in our every, however long, we’re gonna have the life cycle of a police car. Especially one that’s not doing high speed chases or whatever. It’s a pretty long one. But yeah, we’ll have that and then it’ll just be the annual run rate. But it is not going to at all, result in any, none of our services are going to result in us having to levy a city millage rate.

[00:20:46] Rico: Cool. Alright. So if anyone has questions on this, they should put comments in the comments, depending where you’re watching this or listening to it. Or reach out to us and we’ll be doing a further in-depth article on this.

[00:20:58] Brian: And Rico. It’s important to note that while council, considering public safety to be a sacred responsibility that council has. So they will not leave any stone unturned, which is why they’re supportive of this. But the exact details, the exact table of organization and equipment is being done right now. So there are a few details that I may not know yet. This is anticipated to be part of the FY 2024 budget, which starts July one of 2023. So July one of, this coming July one would be, the first time that it would end up becoming a live program because I’m building it into next year’s budget. Which is what starts July one of next year. So this isn’t something that’s going to happen in a couple weeks or even a couple months. We’re looking at six months from now.

[00:21:54] Rico: Okay. Alright. Planning. Everything needs a plan and it takes time to do these things.

[00:22:00] Brian: I mean, think about simple things like we’ve got to get in and lay out all of the policy stuff so that our insurance provider, the general liability insurance provider for the city can include this type of activity in our insurance plan. I mean, you know, people are, you don’t think about that until you get into it. And you know, are we going to have, require body cams so when they’re interacting with somebody that camera’s on. And how do we write the policy so that when they, even though they have the same authority as a police officer, we’re saying, no, this is your lane you’re going to operate in. We’ve gotta write got to policy. And so, there’s a lot of work involved. But you know, what I just told you is essentially the program. And again, we’re not the first to do this. Sugar Hill would be a great example of a decent sized city, not quite our size, but I think their last census was 25, 30,000 people. But they, Gwinnett PD is their police department provider through an intergovernmental agreement like we have. But they also have City Marshals to fill this gap. And so our program would be very similar to those, but it allows the city to be able to control assets, to fill gaps that right now we can’t really fill either very easily. Or in some cases can’t fill really at all.

[00:23:25] Rico: Alright. So more information to come on this. Like you said, there’s logistical issues that you have to deal with. And even interviewing officer candidates for the position.

[00:23:37] Brian: Exactly.

[00:23:37] Rico: Yeah, so there’s a whole bunch of stuff. It all takes time. Let’s move on a little bit towards something a little different about new policy that’s going to be put in place or being looked at to put in place about honorary roads versus renaming a road. So tell us a little bit about where that might be going and how that’s come about.

[00:23:54] Brian: So we had some requests of late of having certain people that have a prominent place in this city’s existence or the population of the area. An example of that would be, you know, Paul Duke. Very prominent name in the creation of, or the population of the area, creation of Tech Park and in the city. We’ve had some other instances where there’s an individual that played a prominent role and their family or friends or others are like, we should rename a street. And while that is done and it’s all fine, renaming streets are not always a popular thing to do and certainly can be complicated. And can cost people money. You rename a street of a business is on and they can have stationary with their address, business cards. You rename a street that a person is getting their prescriptions mailed to them, and they’re worried that it won’t get mailed to them in the right place when it changes. So to be careful, and as a result of me laying out to council when they said, hey, City Manager, what about these requests? Should we? I was like, you know, you can. It’s your right. But I laid it out. They were like, yeah, what other options are there? And there’s one, and there’s an honorary street name. And that is, you could have Main Street be the street name. Then even on the street sign underneath it, it could be the honorary Rico Figliolini Way. You know, or whatever. And so they liked that idea because it doesn’t change any of the addresses or anything, but it does recognize somebody. My community development director, Diana Wheeler, created a great policy on who would qualify. Like, I believe in the policy, you can’t be alive. You’ve got to have certain things. So the certain criteria for it, and that’s what the policy is going to be. So when somebody comes to the city and says this, we can say, no, we don’t entertain formal street renaming. But we do have an honorary street name program or policy, here’s what it is. And if the individual that you’re considering it being renamed qualifies, then well council can consider it and they vote on it, yes or no. And a different colored sign that would go, I guess above the main street name.

[00:26:14] Rico: Right. It sounds like that’s where it would be. I’ve seen them done before like that, where they’re above the main road name. Like a little smaller. So it’s less confusing, I guess. Alright. So, and that’s probably, that’s a policy that might be put in place in, I’m sure in the next City Council meeting.

[00:26:30] Brian: Well, it’ll get voted on this Tuesday, just to remind you.

[00:26:32] Rico: This Tuesday.

[00:26:33] Brian: Our December Tuesday Council meeting is moved earlier because of Christmas. So this coming Tuesday, that’s when they’re entertaining it. And based on their feedback at the work session when the policy is presented to them, I anticipate it’ll unanimously be approved. And so then we will, in fact on the same agenda, we have the very first official request for a street to be named. And it was to commemorate Perry P. Nesbit. The Nesbit family were one of the earliest settlers of Peachtree Corners. And so, that’ll actually be on the agenda after council considers the street renaming policy. So, I guess in theory, they could deny the street naming policy and then the Perry P. Nesbit request that would, obviously can’t happen. But I don’t anticipate that happening. Because, you know, council’s seen all the details so that could happen as early as Tuesday.

[00:27:30] Rico: Alright, cool. Two other things that are going on, or organizations. One’s the Redevelopment Authority, and the other one’s the Downtown Development Authority. So let’s take the DDA first, because you all are also filling some slots on those authorities currently. But part of the DDA right now exists. The mapping exists as an overlay. And the city council wants to be able to expand that it sounds like, to further go south on Peachtree Parkway towards Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Why expand it? And what does that mean, as far as, how that would affect the underlying area?

[00:28:10] Brian: So cities and counties, in probably all 50 states, they utilize authorities. Pseudo-governmental entities with boards of director appointed by the local governing authority, City Council, County Commission to oftentimes their goal is to facilitate economic development under certain column policy focus. So a Downtown Development Authority would be focused on facilitating economic development activity in an area defined as the downtown. And then a Redevelopment Authority would be doing the same thing, but they would have a redevelopment area of operation. And they’re really looking at areas that were developed once, but maybe it’s ran its lifecycle and their job is to facilitate activity in areas that have had initial activity. It’s not undeveloped wooded lots. These are, could be parcels or areas of a city that are seeing a decline in activity in that area. Or there’s a new better development they can consider. These authorities are created because they have certain flexibilities that the government itself does not have. And so they’re tools that cities and counties use because they’re more flexible. They can do things with developers that the city cannot do directly. A good example of that would be, Rico you could be a developer with one really innovative, awesome idea. You want to partner with the city to do something. The city is interested in doing it, and the city’s got to put money, or say it’s going to construct some aspect of it. Say we’re going to build a parking deck for your development as part of a public-private partnership. If the city does it, by law we have to bid it out. Or if we were doing a public-private partnership bid. We have to bid it out and we have to give it to the lowest qualified bidder. If you aren’t the lowest qualified bidder, we lose the right to work with you. Even if we thought your idea was the best. Authorities, like an RDA or DDA, can sole source. They don’t have to do that.

[00:30:37] Rico: They can move faster, also. There’s less red tape on that.

[00:30:40] Brian: Absolutely. And you know, sometimes the board members of these things that they have one focus. Whereas council is asked to do stuff all over the map and you know, they don’t sometimes have the time, energy, and focus to do some of this. And so they essentially delegate certain objectives to these authorities. And then these authorities run with it based on the, kind of objective constraints council gives them. And so these two boards they both exist. Of course at the end of the year we’re having to reappoint board members to other stuff too, like the planning commission, the zoning board appeals. But these two, why they’re probably unique is the DDA had three member and three slots open that council needed to fill. There were two people moved away, one passed away. And the DDA which played an integral role in the city initially, the Town Center was done through our DDA. The DDA was the one who brokered all of the public-private partnership stuff. But when it was done, we kind of shifted focus to the redevelopment authority and the south side of the city. Which is the zone, kind of the area of the city that the RDA was told, go forth and come up with a plan to enhance economic development there. And the DDA to finish up with them, the initial downtown area was drawn relatively small. Kind of around the Town Center, Forum area and that’s about it. We needed to expand probably down to the Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Publix area. Probably the most important part of that is by expanding it down there, it will encapsulate Tech Park. And Tech Park needs to be in the DDA’s area of concentration because they are going to be tasked with really rolling up their sleeves and seeing what we can do to continue to help Tech Park get reimagined. How can we utilize Curiosity Lab to fill vacant office space or to redevelop certain lots. They’re going to be a force multiplier and they’re going to be tasked with going and meeting with property owners and asking questions like, is the city doing everything it can to help you grow and be healthy? Meeting with developers to come up with creative ways to maybe develop their lots or fill vacant office space. And so that’s going to be their mandate. And we needed the board to be filled. And so they’re going to be filled, and that’s their mandate. And then the RDAs mandate, which is going into year two, they finished up a year in which they took their area of concentration, they did a big year long assessment of opportunities within it, and they presented those opportunities to council last month. And there were a couple of really good ideas and the lowest hanging fruit was taking inspiration from how the BeltLine has been used to revitalize areas of Atlanta. To do the same with our multi-use trail, which is our version of it. And they identified some areas along the Peachtree Corner Circle, kind of in between Holcomb Bridge Road and PIB for there to be some trailheads created for the trail system, but also for vehicles to be able to park at these trail heads. Then to become a community recreational amenity connected to our trail. And that will help spurn some of the redevelopment in the area. Maybe some enhancements or upgrades to some of the apartment complexes in the area. Maybe they’re getting better tenant. It becomes more enticing for people to live in the area because there are recreational amenities right there. Just like the BeltLine did in Atlanta. We want to do it right here. And so that’s the first, they have a number of ideas. But that one council has appropriated about 2 million for them to go ahead and acquire and construct some trail heads. Do the final design and construct these trail heads and start moving the trail off of these trail heads to ultimately connect to what’ll be, I think with all said and done, what we have identified, if it all goes well, it’ll be about a 20-ish mile trail system throughout all of the city.

[00:35:25] Rico: Wow. That’s very big. Is the 2 million from SPLOST or general funds, or how is that?

[00:35:30] Brian: It’s a mix of a number of them. There’s certainly some SPLOST, there’s certainly some storm water money because you’ve got some of the improvements are it’s gonna be done along Crooked Creek, that area. So some of the construction is storm water. So it’s a mix of revenue streams so that they have real money to do a real project. And it’s exciting. They took a year and they really came back to council with some really good ideas. Some are big and would be a very large, potentially larger mountain than the city’s prepared to do right this second. Which we didn’t want them to, you know, sky was the limit. Some of them are intermediate that they’re within reach, but there’s a few more things that we need to do. And this one was pretty simple. I mean, it’s a go out and acquire property. These are properties that are generally not developable because they’re in the floodplain stream buffer areas. Acquire it, design these trail heads, construct the trail heads, and let’s start. Let’s create this community amenity and let’s start capitalizing on it and use it to lift the entire area up and make it better.

[00:36:39] Rico: Cool. Sounds great. The RDAs, are those other suggestions, are the plans, were they presented at City Council?

[00:36:46] Brian: Yes sir.

[00:36:46] Rico: At some point? So they’re available somewhere for other people if they want to see what other ideas the RDA has in mind for the coming few years. Okay, cool.

[00:36:55] Brian: They’re on our website.

[00:36:57] Rico: Excellent. Great. So we’ve covered quite a bit. The biggest thing to me is the City Marshal system. And as you’ve explained that before, I mean, this wouldn’t start until likely July 1st, which is the budget year for the city. And out of the existing funds, no extra funds are necessary. So it’s working out of the surplus of money the city has already on an ongoing basis. And city leadership has done a great job in keeping that surplus, to me it seems. And be able to have a good, strong budget to be able to do some of these things without having to raise any taxes or anything. So all good stuff, good leadership. Brian, it’s a pleasure to always talk to you about these things and finding out more about what the city’s doing.

[00:37:38] Brian: Thanks for the opportunity to keep our stakeholders as educated as we possibly can. And hey, have a great holiday. I hope everybody has a great, safe, enjoyable holiday, and we’ll be ready to hit the ground running beginning of next year.

[00:37:53] Rico: Yeah. Let’s not forget the end of the year is coming. And by the way, anyone that’s checking their mailbox, hopefully you’ll see a new copy of Peachtree Corners Magazine. Faces of Peachtree Corners. It’s about 20 people that help make this city a better place to live in. So check it out. Good talking to you Brian. Everyone enjoy the holidays. Be safe out there because God knows, even if you’re looking around, sometimes things can happen. So stay safe. Hug your family, you know, make sure you’re around, because you never know what might happen. Thanks guys.

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City Government

Mayor Mike Mason and the City of Peachtree Corners Join the Mayor’s Reading Club

Published

2 months ago

on

August 4, 2023

By

Mayor Mike Mason

At the July 25, 2023, Council Meeting, Mayor Mike Mason and the Councilmembers issued a Proclamation supporting the Mayor’s Reading Club.

Georgia City Solutions launched the Mayor’s Reading Club program in August 2022 to encourage, support and lead city mayors in improving literacy skills and early reading success for children and youth in Georgia cities.

Designed to foster partnerships and collaborations between the city, county, local nonprofits, schools, libraries and business community, the program can be delivered virtually, in person, on-demand, year-round or at specific times.

In addition to the Mayor, other elected officials, city staff, youth and community members can participate in the program as guest readers. 

To learn more about the Mayor’s Reading Club, visit gacitysolutions.org/Programs/Mayor-s-Reading-Club.

A copy of the full proclamation is below.

A PROCLAMATION OF THE CITY OF PEACHTREE CORNERS, GEORGIA SUPPORTING THE MAYOR’S READING CLUB 

WHEREAS, literacy is not just an education issue. It is an economic, workforce, and quality of life issue; and

WHEREAS, research shows that children who can’t read proficiently by the end of third grade are more likely to experience poor health, have discipline problems, and drop out of high school; and

WHEREAS, each year in the United States, low literacy levels are linked to hundreds of billions of dollars in non-productivity, healthcare, and judicial costs; and

WHEREAS, 68% of Georgia fourth graders do not read proficiently; and 

WHEREAS, collaborative efforts and strategic partnerships must be undertaken to address literacy issues; and 

WHEREAS, the Mayor’s Reading Club program is offered through Georgia City Solutions, a Georgia Municipal Association nonprofit; and 

WHEREAS, the goal of the program is to improve literacy skills and overall success with early reading among children and youth in Georgia cities through encouragement, support, and leadership from city mayors; and

WHEREAS, Georgia City Solutions has commissioned a children’s book series to use as part of the program to teach young readers about local government and a copy of the first book in the series titled, Georgia Caroline Visits City Hall, is provided in the program starter-kit; and

WHEREAS, the Mayor’s Reading Club is flexible and can be delivered in person or virtually and promotes partnerships and collaboration between the city, county, schools, public libraries, local nonprofits, and business community.  

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT PROCLAIMED by the Mayor and Council of the City of Peachtree Corners, do hereby join the Mayor’s Reading Club program and proclaim July 25, 2023 as:

“MAYOR’S READING CLUB DAY”

In Peachtree Corners, Georgia and encourage all residents, businesses, and community partners to help promote and elevate literacy as a community priority and support the Mayor’s Reading Club to improve Georgia’s economic vitality one book at a time. 

SO PROCLAIMED AND EFFECTIVE, this day, July 25, 2023.

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Business

Peachtree Corners Awarded GFOA Certificate of Achievement for Fifth Straight Year

Published

2 months ago

on

July 26, 2023

By


The City of Peachtree Corners’ Finance Department has been awarded a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) for its 2022 financial year-end comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR).

The GFOA’s Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition in governmental accounting and financial reporting, and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management. It is the city’s fifth year of receiving the award and represents a significant accomplishment by the City’s Finance Department and its leadership.

According to a GFOA release, “The report has been judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program, which includes demonstrating a constructive ‘spirit of full disclosure’ to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the report.

“We are pleased to again receive this honor,” said City Manager Brian Johnson. “Our finance department, and Finance Director Cory Salley, are to be commended for this achievement as it is the highest form of recognition GOFA presents.”

The city’s Finance Department produces the CAFR each year and works with independent auditors to verify the city’s financial situation and standing. The CAFR is judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program, which includes demonstrating a constructive “spirit of full disclosure” to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the report.

“This is an important award that validates Peachtree Corners’ commitment to go beyond the minimum requirements to prepare comprehensive annual financial reports in the spirit of transparency and full disclosure,” said Assistant City Manager Brandon Branham.

The Government Finance Officers Association, based in Chicago, is a non-profit professional association serving approximately 17,500 government finance professionals. With offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., it serves the member organization by advancing uniform standards and procedures in financial management for governments and assisting with professional development for public finance managers.

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City Government

On topic with Alex Wright: Ingles Shopping Center, Tech Park Acquisition, Public Safety and More

Published

3 months ago

on

July 13, 2023

By


City Councilman Alex Wright and I discuss a proposal from the owners of the Ingles Shopping Center for redevelopment and other housing developments in Peachtree Corners. Plus, we discuss a new Tech Park acquisition for the city, public safety, the new City Marshal system, a possible Pickleball Complex and its economic impact, and more.

Resources:
Decathlon Info
Promotion Video for Decathlon
The First 48 Episode

Timestamp:
[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:04:06] – Closure of Anderby Brewing
[00:05:56] – The Pickleball Complex and its Economic Impact
[00:09:13] – Ingles Shopping Center and Housing Developments
[00:26:07] – More on Zoning and Developments
[00:31:24] – City Marshal System and the Hiring Process
[00:45:30] – October Decathlon Event
[00:48:37] – Closing

Developer rendering of a possible look of a renewed property that is currently the Ingles Shopping Center.
City acquisition of a building in Atlanta Tech Park, across from Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners.
The Charlie Roberts property behind Chase Bank.

“I think we’ve got a significant housing shortage in that area, and it’s not just limited to one demographic. We’re experiencing a shortage of housing options for younger individuals and families who aspire to own their homes rather than renting. It’s important to address this issue because owning a home provides stability and builds equity, allowing people to invest in their future. By creating more affordable and accessible housing opportunities, we can support the dreams of individuals and families who want to establish roots in our community and contribute to its growth and vibrancy.”

ALEX WRIGHT

Podcast Transcript

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

Hi everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, a monthly podcast with different people, different individuals that influence the things that go on in this city. And today we have a special guest, City Councilman post three, Alex Wright. Hey Alex, thanks for joining us.

Alex Wright 0:00:17

Thanks for having me. It’s good to be back.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:19

Yes, it’s always good to be able to talk to people that know what’s going on because I don’t know everything and to get it from those that are plugged in would be fantastic. But before we get into today’s question and answer and things that are going on I’d like to ask you about, I just want to say thank you to our sponsors. We have two. EV Remodeling Inc. and Eli, who owns that company, and lives here in Peachtree Corners. They are a terrific company that does design and build from ground up remodeling, whether it’s your bathroom or your whole house. EV Remodeling does a great job and they’re local to Peachtree Corners and they’ve been a great sponsor of ours. If you go to their website, EvRemodelingInc.com, you’ll see some great work that he’s done, some videos. You’ll get to know a little bit more about Eli and the work they do and check them out because remodeling is their business. Second is a new sponsor of our corporate sponsor and that’s Clearwave Fiber. They’ve joined us over the last month or two becoming a good supporter of ours, our journalism, our podcast, they are here in Peachtree Corners throughout the state of Georgia, really, and the Southeast. But they’re really big here in the city of Peachtree Corners with more than 5000 businesses that they do work with right here in the city of Peachtree Corners, providing services, launching the fiber optic setup that they have. And they’ve been a clear supporter of the City, of Curiosity Lab, of the recent Criterion Road race that was happening here and they’ve been a good strong supporter of what goes on in the city and a good sponsor. So I want to welcome them. You can find the link in our profile to Clearwave Fiber for the Peachtree Corners Life. So check them out and see what they can do for you, whether you’re a business or even a resident. So check that out. So let’s get right onto it. It’s amazing the things going on in this city and the stuff that I don’t always know about because I don’t know everything. Even though we publish Peachtree Corners magazine, we do these podcasts. But Alex is on here because specifically because I subscribe to his newsletter that he puts out every so often and there’s things in there that Alex has brought up and I just want to know more about. So thank you Alex, for putting out that newsletter to your list of residents and people that follow you. I want to say thanks for doing it.

Alex Wright 0:02:49

It’s definitely a good way to stay in touch with people. Obviously you can reach out to a lot of people at once versus being on the ground. That’s not always the most efficient way to communicate.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:03

No, but doing that and quite frankly, even have life podcasts like this and articles that we put out. I mean, all this stuff that we put out, the content that we put out comes from knowing what’s going on in the city, whether it’s from Brian Johnson, the city manager, or Mike Mason, the mayor, or you or Eric Chris or any of the other councilmen, the great people that work for the city Peachtree Corners as well. So got to say that. So there’s a lot of things going on, and I know you plugged into quite a bit of it because of your position. So I guess let’s start right off. Well, first things first. I hadn’t acknowledged this before as far as and to Be brewing, unfortunately, they’re closing their doors. Actually. They’ve closed their doors as of the weekend of July 4, set to see them go and close up shop like that. I think they may be doing things in the business and the industry still, but and to Be brewing is is no longer a place, I understand. How do you feel about when things like that happen? They were one of two brewers in the city.

Alex Wright 0:04:06

Yes. I’m kind of a risk averse person to a certain extent myself, so I’m always impressed when people are willing to kind of follow their dream like that and put so much at risk to do that. It’s kind of inspiring in a way. So you hate to see it when it doesn’t work out, though. I was over there actually the day closed, talking to one of the owners, and she was telling me that they’re going to continue to be in the, I guess the brand business, if you will, where I think outsourcing some of the brewing of their brands. So they’re still going to be around in that regard. And she said that might lead to depending on how successful that is, just to stay in that route. So you alluded they’re not going. It’s just that bricks and mortar location unfortunately won’t be available anymore.

Rico Figliolini 0:04:57

Yeah. Too bad because they’ve been around for, I think it’s been four years.

Alex Wright 0:05:02

Yeah. I think they went in there right before COVID and obviously that wasn’t part of their business plan. I think they were counting on a lot more office workers right there in Tech Park stopping by.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:15

Yeah. And that blew it during COVID But they sounded like they were coming back at a point. But I guess once you go through that, sometimes it’s never coming back. That was a whole year and a half and they thought they were coming back. There was March 2020 when everything looked life. It was coming back. And then all of a sudden things shut down again, like three months later.

Alex Wright 0:05:37

Yeah. Every time I would drive by there. It seemed like they had a good, decent round. So I I don’t know the details, but it’s I’m not a big beer drinker, but I did like going there just for the I was talking about newsletter. Just had kind of a fun vibe. You could bring your dog or kids. It’s just very welcoming place.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:56

Yeah, no, the owner is precedent. His wife and the other people that worked there very passionate about what they do. I mean, he was doing stuff in his kitchen before he got to the brewery, so it wasn’t like he just decided to do it. He was passionate and still is, I think, with what he’s doing. So the other thing that we’re talking about, business is closing, businesses opening. Maybe there’s been a feasibility study that may be finished by this point or not. I don’t know about a potential pickable complex. Private public partnership, possibly maybe 30, 40, 50 courts. So there’s a company that was hard to do that feasibility study. I think I was at one of several meetings, stakeholders or shareholders, I guess, to give feedback or to give their point of view on it. So have you learned anything more or do you have a thing you want to talk about as far as how you feel about it?

Alex Wright 0:06:50

Nothing really new since that meeting that you’re talking about. I think we actually both were that one.

Rico Figliolini 0:06:55

Yes, correct.

Alex Wright 0:06:57

So still waiting to hear back from that company, though I’m obviously very interested in the money part of it, but I suspect there’s a lot of, whether it be cities or companies or whoever, thinking just like we are, like, hey, this is a huge opportunity. And I’ve used the analogy of 25 years ago, search engines, there’s so many of them. And Google basically won that. Now it’s a verb, but you got to get there first and kind of establish your dominance, if you will. It’s the kind of way I’m thinking about this, where if we wait a couple of years to see what happens, someone else is going to. When I say get in there, I think what we’re looking at is not just say, let’s have ten public pickleball courts. I guess that’s an option. It’s more of an economic redevelopment opportunity in maybe an area that I mentioned my newsletter, like down Holcomb Bridge, where because it’s got a good if you think about that intersection, Holcomb Bridge, and say, 141, that’s only four, actually, probably about 4 miles to 285. So good access to the interstate. Wright but if you built a complex there, I think Brian’s probably mentioned this on one of your podcasts, where the ability to host big tournaments, you can bring a lot of people into town for that. I don’t think we’re just envisioning just pickleball ball courts, but something where it’s a destination unto itself, almost, where you’ve got locals going there, whether they’re playing or not, just to hang out. So you’ve got your local crowd that be there all the time and then layer on top of that the tournament aspect, that could bring in a lot of activity for the city, hotel rooms and restaurants and things like that. So my thought is if the numbers look good, you got to move quick because someone else is going to move quick as well. So the quick you get in there, you’ll get the word out, hey, we’re almost like a dog mark in this territory. Like, hey, we’re here, and other people will say maybe just move on. We don’t want to cannibalize.

Rico Figliolini 0:09:13

I think you have to if you’re going to go in, go in big the expression, I guess, yeah. I think part of that discussion was obviously private public partnership versus the city running it. City doesn’t want to have a parks department or anything where they’re going to do ten pickable courts and have to maintain it. Right. And if it’s going to be a pickable complex or center, it’s really maybe an entertainment complex that has pickleball restaurants, maybe playgrounds, maybe certain other amenities that draw besides the pickleball. I would think Wright or something along those lines.

Alex Wright 0:09:51

Yeah, that whole Holcomb Bridge corridor, if you will. Literally almost from day one, the city has tried all kind of different things to get, I say redevelopment, some kind of I always use the example of over. I used to work, I still work over in Cobb County, but worked near Franklin Road, which street of kind of dilapidated apartments. Marietta came in, bought several of those up, tore them down and they said, hey, here’s some dirt, come in, try to attract come in. They got landing. United’s Training Facility there. Home Depot did a big data center there. The reason I mentioned that is you really just need say one thing to come in, make a big splash and it can create redevelopment. I mean we’re already seeing that, like with the town center where areas around that they want to be near that. I use the analogy or the metaphor of an anchor, people want to be near it. And we’ve had several different things that just didn’t come to fruition, unfortunately in that area. But kind of the way I look at this is we inject some of the money deal, but to your point, we’re not owning it, we’re not running it, but if it’s enough to make the numbers work for a private company, then ultimately the ripple effect more than pays for the money we would inject into it.

Rico Figliolini 0:11:15

It’s similar to, I guess, the town center when that first happened. I mean the city bought property there and then eventually sold it to the developer that developed the property there. And I guess we own certain portions like the parking deck and the town center, but the surrounding part of that town center versus the green and the veterans monument probably.

Alex Wright 0:11:35

Yeah. So that land originally was 21 acres, we ultimately ended up with eight. And the reason that kind of worked out that way was the developer to kind of make their numbers work, they wanted to build apartments. And for that particular piece of land, we had just bought it to stop apartments. It was like, okay, that doesn’t really make any sense. So to make the numbers work, we said, well, we’ll keep these eight acres and do these other things with it. So that’s an example of they need to show a return on their investment. The city doesn’t have to do that. So those eight acres, we can say, well, three years, we’re going to have an ROI that pays for that. But I would argue that by basically putting that money out there to hold that property, to build the green, which the developer didn’t even want to build because he couldn’t monetize it without the green, that was just another kind of almost a shopping center. The Green is really the difference maker there. And so that’s the difference what government can do. They can invest money and they don’t have to have a private equity firm that’s breathing down their neck to pay. Where’s our 22% annual return, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:12:40

Especially when it’s a developer that’s just a retail developer that has no interest in managing really the place. I mean, I understand Fuqua Development probably wants to sell most of what they have already. It’s just they don’t want to be a mold developer, right. Or retail developer like that. They want to flip it. So that worked out great. I mean, we get we there are concerts there with 5000 people showing up. There’s all sorts of events that go on. I know that at the beginning, some people were vocal about why is the city doing it? Why are they spending money, why are they buying that land? But to me it was similar to life. The Simpson Wood Park. Why did the city put up a million dollars to help that purchase or get involved in it? Well, that was also going to be sold to apartment developers, or to developers, I should say, because I don’t know if apartments would ever have been able to be zoned there. But it’s still a park because the county came in and bought it and is managing it versus the city being having a parks department and doing it. So there’s potential out there. And then you have North American properties right, that bought the Forum and they’re committed to it. They’re willing to put green space. They’re willing to put a stage in there. They’re willing to do things similar to Avalon. And I know there’s always another side to that. People don’t want that type of density coming or that type of traffic coming. But you know as well as I do, the Forum was heading south with almost 17 vacant storefronts. At one point, you were part of the group that decided that that made sense North American Properties being there. Right.

Alex Wright 0:14:23

The purchase of that, someone definitely needed to buy the forum. The previous owner, I think, was a REIT out of Boston. We had approached them about this green idea in the middle and even said, we’ll help fund that because we were so worried about the Forum and they had no interest, which I found baffling was like, we’re offering to literally almost give you money and you don’t want it. So someone that sat incompetently run it’s good that North American Properties bought the property. There are aspects of vision that I’m not crazy about, but as a whole, one of the things I did like about North American Properties was unlike most of the other developers that we’ve interacted with, mr. Perry definitely had a vision beyond just their little piece of property that this whole downtown Peachtree Corners life idea had. I liked that because I agree that there’s some synergies between the two properties and he got that that these other folks were just looking for that return every quarter. So NetNet it’s definitely good that they ended up with the property.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:34

So talking about also that whole area, Alex, I think that whole area, I think, has an overlay. That’s an entertainment overlay, if I remember correctly, right, that includes the Forum, includes town center, then goes into where Lidl is and also includes the Ingle shopping center, that whole part there, which is what we are calling the downtown area, essentially. Correct. So to that effect, there’s other things going on. For example, ingle shopping center. At one point, Ingles came in, they wanted to see if they can do gas pumps there, similar to, let’s say, Costco’s or Kroger’s. That was denied probably for a variety of reasons. But now the owner of that shopping center, not just Ingles, but everything that’s in it, has approached the city, I guess. Tell me a little bit about what’s going on there, what they’re looking to do.

Alex Wright 0:16:26

Wright so just back up just a second. Sure. They have developers that will approach the city kind of a regular basis, all kind of stuff. For example, a lot of the office parks near the town center, we’ve had people approach and say, hey, we’re interested in doing some kind of mixed use because they want to be near the town so much, the town center as the town green. They want to be near the activity there because people life, I think people naturally like to gather and be part of what’s going on. So it just happened to be that in the case of Ingles, that the council was given a briefing about this. And it’s not so much that the staff is saying, well, we’re not going to tell the council about this and we’re going to tell them about this. It’s just there’s so many that they try to be prudent about, okay, we think this one is serious enough to loop you in on some conversations. And so basically the update was Ingles lease apparently is coming up the next year or so. The owner kind of looked at the situation, said, all right, well, we obviously don’t want to lose Ingles. But Ingles was telling them is we’d like a smaller footprint. Apparently that’s the thing now in new grocery stores is a smaller footprint, more like a sprouts size. So they were looking to not so much leave, but shrink their footprint. So I think the owner looked at this as an opportunity. We’re looking to better monetize this property. We see what’s going on at the forum with the redevelopment. We see the town center. They probably hear about some of the other things behind the scenes that are potentially on the horizon. And they wanted to approach this. What they did, they approached the city and said a lot of times the way this will work is they’ll say, we’ve got this kind of rough idea of what we might want to do. Do you think that the council would be open to that? Obviously the staff has no idea the council is going to vote on anything, but normally have a good pulse of life. I might have a certain view of how I want things to be in five years and some of my colleagues different view and good staff is going to going to know that. And so that helps to be able to tell a potential developer, hey, we don’t know exactly what will happen, but this is kind of the sense we have and it helps them determine whether to move forward with a proposal anyway, kind of the pitch, if you will, that they put out. There was, again, another mixed use development which would include a housing component. But one of the things that made this different than some of the other ones we’ve seen is it included a senior living component. And at least it’s just my opinion, but we are in really short supply of that. I know we’ve got Waterside, which is coming online, but I hear a lot of people say it’s more than I want to pay and I’d rather live near things I could walk to. What a lot of people I know we spend a lot of time trying to attract young professionals. But if you follow demographics, the United States had a below replacement birth rate for almost 50 years. It’s kind of been masked by immigration, but you’re seeing this happen all across the world. So the point, point of my story is that in absolute numbers, there’s less 18 year olds today than there were ten years ago, 20 years ago. But the number of people that are 65 and older continues to go up. So we really need to give that some attention as well. We want places for those folks to stay versus having to leave Peachtree Corners. So when I heard that, I was very interested in that proposal because I think we’ve got a big housing shortage in that area. And I think we’ve got a big housing shortage for people, younger people who want to own versus just rent. Most people, if they’re 28, they’re not going to move into a $500,000 house. That’s just difficult.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:29

I think you had said active living community.

Alex Wright 0:20:33

Yeah. So this isn’t like at least my interpretation of it wasn’t assisted living or memory care. Like what you’re talking about active people, maybe they’re 55 and they want to move out of their 5000 square foot home into something smaller, which I know Waterside has got that as well. But they’ve got more some other stages as well. I don’t think this included that is significant housing piece that was the grocery store would stay but shrink the retail. So all the retail, the grocery store, it would move up closer to 141 and then the housing and maybe some other things could go further back. So you ultimately would take some of that cement that’s unused right now and put it to good use. When I say good use, they’re going to be able to monetize it. So it’s a win for them.

Rico Figliolini 0:21:29

I think they had a rendering you shared in your newsletter.

Alex Wright 0:21:32

Yes, there was actually several renderings. That one was just one of probably like four or five. We saw different kind of combinations of things.

Rico Figliolini 0:21:42

Okay.

Alex Wright 0:21:43

The other ones were a little more like drawings, more so this one looked more appealing to the eye, I guess to illustrate what is possible.

Rico Figliolini 0:21:52

I was looking to see if I could put that up. What I’ll do is I’ll include that in our notes, show notes, so people can see that what that picture looks like. And actually we have a writer that’s doing some work on this. I think she interviewed you already. Or we’ll be reaching out to you.

Alex Wright 0:22:08

Yeah, I talked to her earlier, either earlier this week or late last week we had spoken. Right.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:14

So we’ll have a bit of an article on that with the picture. Certainly I would think I would hope also with something life that that maybe there’s a possibility at looking actually even looking at the rendering right now is CVS and Dunkin Donuts. Those are not out parcels or are they to that process?

Alex Wright 0:22:34

Those two parcels are not owned by the guy who owns the company that owns the shopping center.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:40

Got you. Okay. So those are ad parcels along with the former McDonald’s property that’s on the other side.

Alex Wright 0:22:46

That’s correct. And also the daycare center is also separate.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:52

So it’s just everything other than that the parking lot and then that strip around Ingles and all the shops along that park. Correct. Is what we’re talking about. Okay. Hoping there might be equity type housing. There life condos, but versus granted it’s active living apartments, but versus another set.

Alex Wright 0:23:15

Of apartments, I got the impression that you never know what someone’s going to propose but that they understood that, hey, there’s been a lot of apartments approved recently that we’re looking for some balance. So I think that was communicated as well, that we prefer at this point an equity product. I’m not retirement age, but if I was, if I was going to downsize maybe I’m an apartment briefly, but probably want to own something or at least have that opportunity. Because I talked to the city manager sometime about this, where if you’re trying to create activity, whether it be at the forum or the town center, I mean, who better to have than an active, retired person who’s got plenty of time on their hands and probably a lot of disposable income to give that kind of all day activity that places want to have where they’re from nine in the morning till ten at night. There’s people moving around. I think the trick with the ingles is how do you transport people around where they’re not having to constantly get in their car? You know, that’s something, I mean, listen.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:29

Lawrenceville is city of Lawrenceville is doing something downtown that they’re looking to be able to provide, like a walkable supermarket in the downtown area versus having to drive to a huge place where there’s a Walmart or a publix. Just having a local neighborhood grocer like you said, life the size of Sprouts or something much smaller.

Alex Wright 0:24:50

Well, those, the people that live in the town homes over at the Town Center, if you think about they can walk to a grocery store. I think there’s a dentist at form. They’re ready to walk across those doctor’s office. They could just about walk to anything they wanted to. So there’s some of that vibe already going on that’s very convenient to just you don’t have to hop in your car, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:25:14

So getting onto that more, of course there’s the flip sides of these things, right? The more density, people don’t want more density, more traffic. There’s already a bunch of traffic going up John’s Creek, never mind trying to get into Peachtree Corners. Life but the next development is what some people call Charlie Roberts property, which is, I think you called it the dirt hole behind Chase. That’s that empty lot that everyone sees if they’ve ever been to Chase or look at HWD Steakhouse that’s looking to hire, by the way, if anyone’s interested. And that’s right near Town Center. I mean, that’s all in the ground. And I think that is definitely zoned for apartments at this point because it’s part of that multi use track now. And they could go up seven stories, I think, or six stories or something like that. So tell us what’s going on there because that sounds like there’s a movement.

Alex Wright 0:26:07

At least going sounds life that property, mr. Roberts has owned it for I guess, 20 plus years and probably about 2016 he approached the city about getting it zoned from, I think it was commercial. He wanted to get it changed to apartments anyway. That was a big discussion, and the compromise was you can have some apartments, but it’s got to be connected to kind of like a boutique hotel. It was all going to be kind of the same building. And the zoning, he had four years to basically start coming out of the ground, and if he didn’t, the zoning would revert back to commercial. And so I think within like a year or so, he had gotten a hotel brand to go in.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:56

Indigo. I think it was the indigo.

Alex Wright 0:26:59

And shortly thereafter, the world flipped upside down with COVID and no one’s staying in hotels. And that blew his plan up, no fault of his. And by the time the four years came, he wasn’t able to pull that off. So it reverted back to commercial. And I don’t know all the details behind the scenes, but some time goes by, north American comes into the picture as part of their Peachtree Corners Life downtown idea. They also looked at that property as part of that larger development of how do we create activity feet on the ground. So it got rezoned from commercial to apartments. Now, Mr. Roberts company is the one that got the rezoning. Even though that night at the meeting north American if you didn’t really know what was going on, you would have thought that they were the one getting the rezoning, which kind of made sense because their plan was as soon as it got rezoned, they would buy it and it would be part of their plan.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:00

So that rezoning was never done on condition of the purchase. That was rezoned, period.

Alex Wright 0:28:06

Right. There was no time limit. There was no conditions anyway. So get the Rezoning plans to sell it to North American, and then interest rates start to go up on everybody, and it starts to make the financing problematic is my understanding, which I think that’s case for all of us, our own personal finances or stuff’s costing more now, whether it be inflation or interest rates. Anyway, so North American, they basically didn’t have the money lined up or the numbers didn’t make sense at this point because of those two things. And so that deal fell through. So then I suspect at least what we were hearing kind of behind the scenes was Mr. Roberts was floating it around to other potential buyers and kind of heard through the Great Vine recently that he had found a buyer. I don’t have the name in front of me.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:57

I think it’s Tur. Villager Papas.

Alex Wright 0:29:01

Yeah, I’m not familiar with the company, but I heard from various sources that deal would close at the end of July. And if you kind of been paying attention over the last few months that I call it the Dirt hole, it went from having huge mounds of rocks and debris in it to totally cleaned off, ready to build. So obviously there was stuff going. On behind the scenes. And now when it closes, I suspect that will move pretty quick because the zoning is already there. All they have to do now is get building permits from the city.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:37

Really? Okay.

Alex Wright 0:29:38

Probably I don’t know how long that takes, but suspect that if I bought a piece of property, I’d want to get it to use as quickly as possible. They get the buildings built the quicker the money comes in.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:50

So I think if anyone wants to know what type of properties they do if you go if you search Sola, S-O-L-I-S Suwani, you’ll see the type of apartments they do. They’re all over the southeast. The biggest things is they have probably about 15 communities either planned or in place in Georgia. Swani, Sugar Hill, Decatur, kennesaw, Dumwoody, Dunwood, Gainesville. Bunch of places, I think. Sugar Hill 294 class A apartment with 12,000ft of retail and restaurants. I don’t know if they’re looking to do if that ever came up in that conversation either, but that’s in Sugar Hills Town Center. So they’re doing stuff in these places. All right, so then we’ll find out, I guess towards the end of the month, if they close on that.

Alex Wright 0:30:42

Yeah, like I said, that was all just I think these are pretty good sources that have been talking about this.

Rico Figliolini 0:30:49

And I think that was zoned. Not only was that enveloped or taken into the multi use track of what Town Center is right. I think it was included into that. And they’re zones for similar unit count, probably 200. And if I remember right, 200 and 7280 apartments.

Alex Wright 0:31:06

Yeah, something in the mid upper 200s.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:08

Right. Okay. Either way, that would have been there whether it was North American properties or a new developer.

Alex Wright 0:31:16

Yeah. Once they got that rezoning back in September, there’s going to be apartments eventually with somebody.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:24

Okay, cool. Let’s talk a little bit about I think the city Marshall system is going to be stood up the end of this month or the beginning of August is what I understand.

Alex Wright 0:31:35

So the new fiscal year began July 1, and that’s really the first year we had money budgeted for this. So there’ll be three officers. My understanding is two have already been interviewing. They’ve identified two. I don’t know if they’ve officially been hired, but they’ve got two that are been offered jobs, I guess you could say, got you. And then the third, which would be, I think the head person, will come on a little bit later this year. So then there’ll be three initially, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:32:11

Three marshalls.

Alex Wright 0:32:13

Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:13

I mean, they still have to work through. I think some of the original some of the preliminary stuff was done, like type of cars, equipment, some stuff. But there’s a lot going to this. Right. Office spaces.

Alex Wright 0:32:26

Yeah. So we’re going to obviously have to expand the footprint of the government. Some of that will be upstairs. City hall at the top level is private company rents from the city, which actually been a great deal for us because it’s basically been almost like a duplex. Right? They’re paying for the mortgage force. Yeah. And then we’re buying another building over near the old City Hall that’ll give us some additional capacity.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:55

That one’s across from Curiosity Lab. Right. That’s wright on the street side, I guess.

Alex Wright 0:33:01

That’s correct. And then on that whole kind of complex, if you will, those two buildings, a lot of flexibility.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:08

So there’ll be more on that as we get more details to segue into why, to some degree, this wasn’t necessarily why, but conversations I had with city manager information from before makes sense for us to have a city marshal system because they can do things that Gweneck County Police either weren’t able to or really not shouldn’t be tasked to. Like code enforcement maybe, and stuff like that. And to be able to, the city can sort of put their police force where they feel most necessary.

Alex Wright 0:33:42

Wright yeah, that’s all very accurate. The Gwinnett County Police, I think they’re budgeted for 930 officers, and I want to say they’re staffed right now in the upper six hundred s. And I don’t think that’s unique to Gwinnett County. There’s an issue across the nation with we could spend all day speculating on the why of that. But anyway, they’re not able to be fully staffed right now. So if you’re down, say, 30%, you just going to prioritize where you’re sending folks. Sure, we have an intergovernmental agreement with Gwinnett County. They provide our police services, but we don’t have any control over what they do. We can ask, hey, can you do this, can you do that? But they ultimately have to make decisions beyond what’s best for Peachtree Corners life because the west precinct is pretty large area. So it’s been a combination of the things you mentioned. One they’re just understaffed, and then they also have been directed by the legal department of Gwinnett County that if there are any ordinances in a city that are city specific, that they are not to enforce those. And an example of this, several years ago in a neighborhood here in Peachtree Corners, there was apparently a pretty big party going on really loud, and people nearby called when that county showed up and there was, I guess a city specific ordinance regarding I think it was the noise. I don’t know all the details. And basically the police officer said, this is a code enforcement issue I’m not allowed to involve. And so he left and then the party continued unabated. There was a lot of people upset about that. That’s just to illustrate an example of where think about it, if you’re having that party and you know the police aren’t going to do anything, some people it could easily spin out of control. So it’s not something you want to have happen. Again, that’s just anecdotal but it illustrates where those are two issues we’ve got. And I think a third part. We’ve had some things over the last couple of years, some of these intersection takeovers where people would get frustrated and in some instances, the police did a great job. They got there and arrested a ton of people. And then there’s some other instances where because of other commitments in the west precinct, they didn’t show up for quite a while because they just didn’t have the resources, the stuff to go to the residents and say, hey, there’s nothing we can do about it. They expect more. So I think some of what we’re doing is us trying to, in a measured way, respond to, okay, we are doing something, we’re creating resources that we can control. With these three marshals been at a stop at the intersection takeover? No. However, we’re showing that we get it, that people are frustrated. And I just got our crime from Gwinnett County just today, and it only goes through May. So this is an update from my newsletter, but the numbers through May for the first five months type one crimes, which are the more serious kind, up 60% year over year through April is only 39%. So maybe May is anomaly, I don’t know. But that’s not a good trend.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:05

That’s in the city proper and Peachtree Corners. Yes, those types of crimes include felonies, robbery, burglary.

Alex Wright 0:37:18

They could be property crimes as well, you know, breaking into a car or, you know, simple assault. But yeah, they’re definitely the more serious kind, the one that people that’s the stuff you read about on next door where someone’s window got smashed in or it’s the kind that really make people feel unsafe.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:37

Yes. And then obviously we won’t get into it. But then there’s the crimes unreported, like smash and grab, three or four people running into a store, taking what they please.

Alex Wright 0:37:49

Right.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:50

We could go through that and spend more time on it, but that’s okay. Yeah. Hopefully I understand we’ll be plugged into to some degree with Fusis maybe even. And we’re adding cameras, led cameras and stuff. Not Led, I mean LPRs, I think.

Alex Wright 0:38:07

We’Ve got to say 50 of the LPRs. Maybe it’s not that many. We’ve also got 82 cameras at the town center. Like literally almost every inch of that is covered. And I think the city manager said the forum is going to get in on the Fusis program. I have mixed feelings about the cameras because you’ve got the kind of the creeping Big Brother aspect, but then on the other hand, there’s a force multiplier. I don’t know if you saw the thing that was on an E a few days ago about there’s a show called 48 Hours. I don’t normally watch it, but it was about the young man who got murdered at the QT, I guess it was last year. And so this is like a national show. Very interesting because it went into the whole gist of the show is for crimes to be solved, you basically have to get on top of things within 48 hours because then things start to go cold. And so they had all of the characters from what happened with all the police officers, the families, they had video of these people being interviewed at the police headquarters. They showed how they tracked them down with the cameras and it was fascinating. So I would encourage we get done. I’ll shoot you the link, but it’s really interesting. But it showed the power of the cameras. That was the key for them tracking these guys down, using cooperating with other municipalities to track these cars down.

Rico Figliolini 0:39:34

Yeah, remember the I mean, I haven’t seen that. I’ll share that in the show notes as well. But I knew that they were able to track them down into Atlanta through cameras and other things and fuses with part of it. But that would be great to see that back behind the scenes stuff.

Alex Wright 0:39:50

It was very interesting because some of it was recreated, but they had all of the police officers that were involved in it kind of acting, if you will, recreating what went down. It was very well done.

Rico Figliolini 0:40:04

Wow, cool. I think within a decade, you can’t hide anymore. At some point, if you’re in the city causing crime, I mean, it’s going to be tough unless you have a bandana on your face or something, a mask. And even then, I think, from what I understand, from what Fusis is doing even, and the technology out there, that they can pretty much fingerprint a car based on dense colors. So you don’t even have to see the license plate anymore almost to be able to ID a car eventually using AI. And the way they track these things, especially the muscle cars and the stuff that the guys that do the spinning of the wheels of the street takeovers, I mean, they’re not doing it with cheap cars. They’re doing with these big cars, these really bulk down, pimped out cars and stuff. I’m sorry, that’s the Brooklyn and me, it just came out on that. But okay, cool. So, I mean, there’s just a lot going on and you hit upon the acquisition of the property in Tech Park for the city that’s going to happen and it’s just other things going on. We still have zero millage rate. Yes, quite a bit of money, unspent money in the bank. Is it $59 million or something?

Alex Wright 0:41:22

That’s correct. Now, to be clear, a lot of that money, it’s not just we can spend on anything there. Some of it is earmarked. When I say earmarked, it’s money specifically has to be spent, say on stormwater or on lost money. It’s got requirements. We’ve created some specific savings funds for different things. So it’s not just all laying around. We can go crazy and it’s unallocated. But we are in a very strong financial position. One of the ratios that I like to mention that apparently in city finances is one of the things they measure is they look at, they call the general fund, which would be things other than Sploss and stormwater and say, well how much money do you have saved versus what they call operating budget. So if our operating budget is let’s say $20 million, well if we had $20 million say, that means basically twelve months of savings. If you think about it in your own personal life, sure. The gold standard in municipal finances is roughly three months. So we on a regular basis are at and beyond twelve months of that. So that’s a good measuring stick that you can kind of compare against cities across the nation. So to think that we’re able to do that with a zero millage rate and I would argue probably the main reason is because we’ve got so many businesses here. If you look at your business to kind of residential balance, we’re about 60 40. If you went up to say, Johns Creek, it’s more like 80 20, which is the reason their property taxes, they’ve got one and we don’t. So we’re a very unique municipality in that regard. So that’s one of the reasons that is so important. The council is so focused on, hey, how do we help revitalize tech part because that’s the golden goose, if you will, that keeps us able to have a zero military. And that’s ultimately where your average person is going to pay attention to what’s going on is when suddenly say, hey, we’re going to start taking money from you. They’ll perk over and say, hey, what the heck is going on? You don’t want to do that.

Rico Figliolini 0:43:41

Spoken to a few people about like just because it’s Technology Park and its offices doesn’t mean it can’t be revamped into something a bit different. I’d love to see this college campuses that have offshoot. GSU has a satellite campus in Dunwoody, I think. And there’s no reason why Georgia Tech for example, can’t have a satellite campus here in Peachtree Corners taken over several buildings. I mean there’s things like that that can happen if it’s attractive enough for certain places, right?

Alex Wright 0:44:14

Yeah, no absolutely. I know the mayor has been a big proponent of trying to get the Gwinnett College or Gwynette Tech I can’t remember to open up a campus Peachtree Corners life that I don’t know the stats of that, but literally from day one, he has been an advocate for getting a local college presence here, which I think would be a great idea.

Rico Figliolini 0:44:33

Yeah, especially if it’s a technology based type of school. So yeah, I can see that. That would be great. The only other thing I would love to see is an art theater center, a complex of some sort.

Alex Wright 0:44:47

Be surprised if that I think that’s probably going to happen. I don’t know the timing but I’m just speculating here that. I would bet you in five years that the city’s got some type of facility. Again, it’d probably be like a private public partnership, something like that, if not sooner, is kind of my speculation.

Rico Figliolini 0:45:07

Good to say. Good to hear. All right, so before we end, I know it’s sold out, I think, so there’s no more places for it. But the Decathlon, the third annual Decathlon that you’re really invested and involved in and actually started was the founder of it, if you will. Can you tell us that’s coming up in October? October 21.

Alex Wright 0:45:30

That’s correct. October 21. So it’s held over at the fitness trail out the town green. And if you’ve never there’s a new playground there. If you ever kind of venture into the woods beyond the playground, that’s where all the fitness trail is. And kind of the origins of that. Not to go into too much detail, but I’m a member of the Y, and they used to have kind of a similar concept at the Y to raise money, and it was meant different things inside the Y. But basically the way it works is you would have ten events at the decathlon, and you had five minutes at each obstacle, if you will, and the quicker you finished it, someone will record your time, and then the rest of the five minutes was your rest, if you will. So it’s almost like capitalism. The harder you go, the more time off you got. So anyway, they would add up all the times, composite. Whoever had the lowest time was the winter. So we took that idea out to the fitness trail, and it’s very much a niche kind of thing, because some of the obstacles, like climbing ropes, most people can’t do that. It’s often kind of difficult to explain to people what it is. But I’m pretty excited because we sold out, like, in a month. And the reason there’s only a certain number of slots, because the capacity to handle a lot of folks is just kind of limited. But the word is spreading to kind of cross the north metro area. We’ve got a waitlist. And my biggest concern always is rain, because nothing I can do about that. The week leading up on just kind of a nervous rate, like, please don’t rain. But yeah, they got some really impressive people that come out and do it. It makes you realize how old you are when you see some of these ladies. I’m pretty excited about it. Definitely have a passion for it. I love going out to the fitness trail. I’ll just be walking through there and you’ll see people of all ages trying to do different things. And if you think about kind of our state of physical fitness, if you will, like in the country where my own kids, they’re on video games or whatever, where you see people out doing something, I love to see that. Especially like the younger kids, even if they can’t necessarily climb a rope, they’re intrigued through stuff, whether the playground, whatever. It’s great seeing that.

Rico Figliolini 0:48:01

Just get out there and do something, right.

Alex Wright 0:48:04

Do something.

Rico Figliolini 0:48:05

So 72 available slots, all gone. There’s a waiting list now, and we’ll have the Hype video, if you will, on our show notes. This way people can see what it’s all about rather than trying to envision it. So it’s a great video. I think Titan Pictures put that one together.

Alex Wright 0:48:22

Yeah, jim Stone did some videos from last year’s, and most of the people in there are local residents that you might recognize. That’s the other thing that’s kind of neat about it is very much a local kind of a community building activity.

Rico Figliolini 0:48:37

Very cool to see it. We’ve come to the end of our time together. This a little longer than we had planned, so I appreciate you hanging in there with me, Alex, and talking through this. Yeah, no, I think hopefully everyone listening to this or reading the synopsis of this, because we’ll be doing a short piece on this as well. Will know quite a bit more about what’s going on in the city. So appreciate you being with me, Alex. Thank you.

Alex Wright 0:49:03

Yeah, thank you.

Rico Figliolini 0:49:04

Stay with me for a second as I just close out. I just want to say thank you to everyone. If you’re listening to this on Audio Life, Apple podcast or something, like or review us, give us a star rating because this way people can find us. If you’re listening to this on YouTube or our Facebook page, feel free to share it with people or tag people in the comments that may want to find out a little bit more about what’s going on in the city of Peachtree Corners. Again, I want to thank our sponsors, EV Remodeling Inc. You can find them at evremodelinginc.com. And Clearwave Fiber. You can find them also on our link in our profiles as well. Thanks again and hope to see you soon.

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