Transforming Peachtree Corners: 2022 Development Roundup

12 Areas that are Evolving this year

From high-profile mega-projects to small gas stations and churches, development is booming around Peachtree Corners. A dozen projects around town are coming to fruition in 2022, according to city records. Some have been in the works for years, while others were recently approved for a construction start and others are already underway. Some will change the entire city; others may just affect your local corner.

Here, in no particular order, is a roundup of what is rising in the new year.

1. Cornerstone Christian Academy

4480 Peachtree Corners Circle

Cornerstone Christian Academy began in 2001 as a church school for Peachtree Corners Baptist Church. Now it’s growing and seeking more room for recreational and outdoor space. This roughly 11-acre project replaces an office building with expanded sports fields, a gazebo and a campus mall, part of which students began using in October. Still in the planning stages is a gymnasium.

2. Alliance Residential mixed-use project

5672-5720 Peachtree Parkway

This major project will remake two office building complexes dating to the 1980s into a mixed-use site including 295 multi-family units and 26 townhomes aimed at workers in Technology Park and the Curiosity Lab. Retail space is part of the mix, and one of six existing office buildings will remain. A total of 1.75 acres will be preserved as open space.

3. Townhome complex

3770 Holcomb Bridge Road

This project will turn a 1.6-acre wooded lot crossed by a stream into a complex of six single-family townhomes. The City Council last year approved the project, allowing it to encroach into a stream buffer, under several conditions, including that all townhome garages be wired for electric vehicles. The plan calls for saving some of the trees.

4. Grace Korean Church

3274 Medlock Bridge Road

The 200-member church gained City Council approval last fall to move into an existing office building in the Medlock Bridge Business Center. It’s part of what appears to be a boom in church founding and expansion in the city and Gwinnett County.

5. The Spoke at Peachtree Corners

450 Technology Parkway

This controversial project is renovating a Homewood Suites Hotel, dating to 1989, into a 92-unit apartment building. It’s the first such project allowed by a new city ordinance enacted in response to the hospitality industry continuing to reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, among other factors. The City Council approved the project last fall, but it was a divided vote amid some local opposition based on concerns that apartments would decline in quality and attract crime.

6. AHS Residential mixed-use project

20 and 22 Technology Parkway South

This major project will remake an over 10-acre office building complex into apartments and retail and office space. The mix also includes more than 2.5 acres of open space and a multiuse trail. An existing five-story office building will be retained and adapted to residential and commercial uses, plus a 335-space parking deck. The total of 382 multifamily units in the project includes two new apartment buildings of seven and eight stories.

7. City Gate Church

3100 Medlock Bridge Road

Run by Kairos Transformation Ministries, this church celebrated its inaugural service Jan. 18 in an existing office complex.

8. Chabad Enrichment Center of Gwinnett

5830 Spalding Drive

Currently based in rented space on Smithpointe Drive, this Jewish center is finally fulfilling a decade-old dream of building its own facility on Spalding Drive. Rabbi Yossi Lerman says there are only two synagogues in Gwinnett, so this will meet a need. The project ran into opposition in 2020 after Chabad bought an adjacent residential property on Crooked Creek Drive and aimed to add it to the overall project. Lerman says that property is no longer in the mix and a rabbi is now living in the single-family home. Land-clearing for the center has begun and Lerman says the goal is to have it finished and open in 2023.

9. Gas station and retail space

5211 Buford Highway

This gas station at the intersection with Herrington Drive will include a convenience store and two other retail spaces. An attorney for the developer did not respond to questions about who the tenants might be. The city approved the project in late 2020 with several conditions, including a limit on gas station hours to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

10. Gas station

4057 Holcomb Bridge Road

This project will convert a shuttered Burger King into a gas station with a convenience store inside the old restaurant building.

11. Intuitive Surgical renovations

3795 Data Drive

The renovations to the regional headquarters of the surgical robot manufacturer are just part of a massive campus expansion that will make Intuitive the city’s largest employer by far. Demolition of other buildings on Data Drive is already underway for the $540 million expansion, which is expected to bring 1,200 net new jobs to the city sometime between 2024 and 2031.

12. Waterside

4411 East Jones Bridge Road

One of the city’s biggest projects, Waterside is a remake of a 115-acre former corporate headquarters along the Chattahoochee River into an aging-in-place community largely (but not exclusively) targeted at those 55 and older. Home to the payment software company Fiserv until 2014, the campus is now being redeveloped by the Providence Group into a luxurious gated community. The mix is to include at least 200, and up to 500, stacked flats and independent living units; at least 75 units of assisted living and memory care units; at least 53 units of detached cottage homes; at least 22 units of duplex cottage homes; at least 65 townhomes; and at least six townhome lofts. Of those, 50 townhomes have been built and others are under construction, according to the city.