Redevelopment, Solis Apartments, Updates on the City Marshal and Siemens Partnership [Podcast]

From potential redevelopment plans for the Ingle Shopping Center to cutting-edge collaborations with Siemens, this episode uncovers how Peachtree Corners is positioning itself as a hub of innovation and progress. Discover how the city is attracting international businesses, utilizing additional real estate, and embracing the latest advancements in public safety technology. Join us as we explore the thriving landscape of Peachtree Corners on this episode Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager.

“It’s important to remember that the City Marshal Department is a supplement to the Gwinnett County Police Department. We’re going to be in areas that Gwinnett PD isn’t really very active in… And because of our partnerships with Curiosity Lab and the infrastructure we have in place, they’re very interested in using our marshals or collecting data our marshals will generate on some of the innovative ways to use it as they write regulations around the use of drones for public safety.”

BRIAN JOHNSON

Timestamp:

[0:00:00] – Introduction and Sponsorship Acknowledgment
[0:02:00] – Discussion about the Ingle Shopping Center Redevelopment
[0:11:54] – Discussion about the Roberts Property Redevelopment and Solis Apartments
[0:19:34] – Updates on the City Marshal Department
[0:28:20] – Partnership with Siemens and Economic Development
[0:32:58] – Closing

Podcast Transcript

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

Hi everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, and today we have Prime Lunchtime with City Manager Brian Johnson. Hey Brian, thanks for joining me.

Brian Johnson 0:00:10

Thanks for having me.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:11

For sure. Before we get into the show, we’re going to be talking, just to wet your taste buds a little bit, everyone. We’ll be talking a little bit about the shopping center, the Roberts property behind Chase Bank, what’s going on there, as well as the progress on the City Marshalls. But before we get to that, I just want to say thank you to two of our lead sponsors. One is EV Remodeling Inc. They’re a local company owned by Eli. Eli has done a great job with home remodeling. Anything from $10,000 to $100,000 in work from your backyards to whole house build outs. So check them out. They’re at EVRemodelinginc.com, does great work there. Second one, the second lead sponsor is Clearwave Fiber who’s come on board. They do a lot of the business internet work here in the City of Peachtree Corners. They have over a thousand plus customers, both business and residential. And you can check them out by going through our links, go to our website, you’ll see their ad there and click right through to them. And that’s Clearwave Fiber. So thank you to those guys for supporting us in what we do here. Now let’s get on to doing this every month. Guess part of we’re going to talk about with Ingles is that we’ve talked a little bit about this on another podcast. And we have an article out that came out this morning as we’re taping this. And we talked a little bit about the Ingle Shopping Center possible redevelopment, and it’s really coming from the owners of the property. So tell us a little bit exactly how this is being talked about because I know this has come up several times over the past few years.

Brian Johnson 0:02:00

Well, economic development projects or the pursuit of economic activity are always hard to talk about because they’re moving targets. There’s lots of considerations going on. You’ve got land acquisition and negotiations and different developers or owners kicking tires, seeing what. So it’s always difficult because at any point in time, short of having an inked deal, these things could fall apart. So I only say that to say that it happens. And sometimes all it takes is a word or phrase and done. Not quite as accurate. All of a sudden people, the community thinks that it’s going one direction. You’re like, hold on. So this is no different in that the work that’s being done, the development that’s happened at the Town Center, the redevelopment of the Forum under North American properties ownership has gotten a lot of people excited about possibilities of growth and capitalizing on increased activity that those two sites are generating. And a lot of the property owners that have current existing commercial property adjacent to or near the Town Center and Forum have approached us recently to discuss possibilities. Hey, how might we change or redevelop our property in a way that’s beneficial to the Town Center, and we can benefit from the Town Center and Forum’s activity. And so the Ingle Shopping Center parcel development and the owners of it are no different. They have discussed with us possibilities. And when this happens, sometimes the city, given that we have in house capabilities of doing this, we know the zoning better than anybody else.

Brian Johnson 0:04:13

We know setback density requirements, all that stuff. We can sometimes come up with renderings and conceptual site plan possibilities that it’s easier for us to do than a consultant working for the property owner. And so, in the case of Ingles, in our discussions with the owner of possibilities, we in house generated just a few ideas, not ones that were generated at the request of that development or the owner, but the owner was very open to yeah. If you could show us how it might lay out differently, we could consider it. And obviously, since Ingalls is the anchor tenant there, we all know it as that, and that’s a significant corporate tenant of the.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:09

To. So then people know because they may not know CVS is an out parcel, not part of that property, if you will. So is the Duncan Baskin Robbins store that’s separate also, I believe, right? No, that one’s part of so the.

Brian Johnson 0:05:28

CVS is an out parcel.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:30

Correct. Okay. And the old McDonald’s, is that also separate?

Brian Johnson 0:05:35

Well, it is separate. In our renderings, we just made an assumption based on the owner saying they have a relationship with McDonald’s corporate office because it’s owned by McDonald’s corporate. It’s not owned by a you know, again, but that’s why in economic know, for you to master plan something sometimes to make assumptions of certain things. And so the assumption was that that would be, if this happened, would be acquired and would be added to the block of property that’s just there. And so some of the renderings did have a newer, somewhat smaller footprint for Ingles. It would be like, hey, Ingalls, there would be a smaller footprint built closer to 141 for Ingles to move from their current footprint into a smaller version in which there are some locations that Ingalls has a smaller footprint but has not been discussed with them. They haven’t requested they are not the one requesting any kind of a footprint. You know, you just never know. It’s not uncommon. We’ve done this with some of the other ones as well. But this is what happens. And this is oftentimes, to a degree, how North American properties redevelopment activities at the Forum happened is we generated the city with the previous owner before North American got it. We generated some suggestions in the forms of site plan renderings that got the wheels turning. Ultimately. It was one where the previous owner said that’s great, we’re going to sell it.

Brian Johnson 0:07:21

But when we sell it, we’re going to share the fact that the city is open to some change based on the rendering shared. So these are all very fluid situations which unfortunately, oftentimes more than not, they don’t serialize but miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So we’re open to trying. So that’s kind of where we are with that, which is nothing may ever happen or there could be a significant upgrade.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:54

And the owner is not a REIT. The owner is a local business group.

Brian Johnson 0:07:58

No, the owner is a Canadian company.

Rico Figliolini 0:08:00

It’s a know, you know, we did talk about it on a podcast and an article about possibly coming from Ingalls, but this was really from the owners of the development of the property there. Now it’s the mean, I think it was about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. They also talked about maybe putting gas pumps at one point similar to what Kroger’s has over there. So interesting. But even if anything were to mean, obviously before even ground would break, could probably take two years, I bet, because of rezoning and stuff like that.

Brian Johnson 0:08:42

Yeah, probably not. Well, for them to go vertical with buildings right now, there literally is nothing. So it would have to start from scratch. You’d end up having to do site plan, come up with use, go rezoning, and then that’s when you get the design professionals of architects and engineers that are going to need many months, probably a year to actually generate the construction documents. Then you got to go to construction. And even if you move the angles to a building that’s more forward facing on 141, you would have to construct the new building. And then after they move into the new space, then go back and demolish the existing space to put the new use there. Which is why the Forum is fully redeveloped as probably a five year process because you’ve got new build and then you’ve got some demolition and then you’re fitting pieces into existing properties. Redevelopment is always a lot more challenging and time consuming than new builds.

Rico Figliolini 0:09:51

Well, and you have that whole big right behind Inglesh. You have that whole big not empty, but you have the warehouse park behind Ingles that takes the trucks in that can turn around and stuff. That’s a whole big driveway, if you will, back there. I don’t know if anyone’s really driven back there. It’s huge back there. So even to move that building forward, even on a smaller footprint, you still have to accommodate trucks coming in and stuff. I don’t even know, you know, where the setback is, a valley part near the parkway.

Brian Johnson 0:10:21

I don’t know if that’s a big ditch along 141.

Rico Figliolini 0:10:25

Yeah, that probably would have to bet you that could get filled in or something. I bet you that’s part of that discussion, I would think.

Brian Johnson 0:10:32

Well, it is. We’ve actually looked at that before because it’s horrible, but it is not easy. If it was easy, we would have done it. It is over a million dollars just to fill it in because of the utility work that you’ve got power lines, power poles, you’ve got drainage under it, and being used as a detention facility, a holding facility for extra water when it rains hard. So we’ve looked at it, but yes, redevelopment of the whole thing might include that just to get more real estate, developable real estate. Sure, yeah, big thing may or may not happen. But right now this is pretty common when there’s an interested owner who’s like, look, I’m in this to make money. Like everybody is on these things. And I’m willing to consider what redevelopment changes I might be able to do to ultimately maybe be a better value add to the Town Center Forum and then they can derive more. Maybe they have a use that makes people want to walk over to that location, whereas right now it’s more of a drive to destination.

Rico Figliolini 0:11:54

Yeah, interesting, because even some of the renderings that the city drew up and even their rendering that we’ve put out on our website that we’ve seen that was out there, it would be a multi use. So there’s multiple could be multiple stakeholders in it because one of the things was inactive living maybe seven story tower, six story, whatever would be the center of it, and then retail around it, possibly offices. So it might be two, three floors addition to that. So more use out of that property going vertical like you’ve mentioned before. Yeah, for sure.

Brian Johnson 0:12:33

Definitely closer to 141.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:35

Right. Because there’s all that space. So going from something like that, which is speculation, possible redevelopment going to something consuming. Yes, not just that, but just everything that goes into it. Public hearings, I guess, and all that stuff. Right. So let’s go to somewhere that is pretty much set already to a degree, because it was part of the North American property deal with the Forum and Town Center. So the property that’s commonly known to some people as Roberts property, charlie Roberts that owns the land that’s behind Chase Bank and H and W Steakhouse, that property was rezoned, I think absorbed into the multi use plan that’s there. Right. And then allowed to be departments, I forget how many units, 260 plus maybe somewhere like that. So that was approved, that was all okay. The deal didn’t work through for some reason, whatever that reason is, with North.

Brian Johnson 0:13:38

American Properties and Charlie Johnson interest rates and borrowing money. But yes, that side of the road was an out parcel to North Americans Forum redevelopment.

Rico Figliolini 0:13:52

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:13:52

And so they changed or that deal fell through.

Rico Figliolini 0:13:58

And so now there’s a new buyer. And I heard that it was going to close. And you just confirmed before we got on that it closed. So who’s the new buyer? Tell us. A little bit because there will be apartments there. I mean, that’s what it’s zoned for. So it’s not like it’s a question anymore.

Brian Johnson 0:14:15

That’s correct. And they’re going to be building what is materially. The same thing that was the same renderings that were presented to council. There’s some subtle tweaks to the exterior, but generally that product, and it’s a residential developer named Or Pappas. And so that’s who closed on the property. And so they are going to construct those units as presented to council during the entire North American property application.

Rico Figliolini 0:14:52

Now, most people don’t know that business, but they own is it Solas? Solis.

Brian Johnson 0:15:00

Yes. Correct, Solis.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:02

And that’s what type of apartment is it? Solace Apartments, I guess. I know there’s one in Sugar Hill that’s an active apartment community.

Brian Johnson 0:15:12

It says they’ve got property on Swanee Town Center.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:16

Swanee Town center, right?

Brian Johnson 0:15:18

They’ve got property up Brian Johnson Creek that they’ve developed. So this is what they do. They’re a quality developer. We were pleased on who it was sold to.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:29

Yeah, I’ve seen some of the Solace properties are very nice properties, very sort of luxury driven a bit.

Brian Johnson 0:15:35

Yes, it’s a higher end building. And this is structured parking, as you know, pedestal parking, where your parking deck is underneath the units. And yeah, so again, we were pleased that who was sold to and they’ve met with us. And their intent is to start site work late this year.

Rico Figliolini 0:16:00

Oh, really? Okay. So they’re going to start doing work. And so the property that’s by north of the wine store, corner Wine and Spirit, that’s a different property. But they’ve been out of the ground. They’re already selling at this point, I think it’s been about, what, a year maybe, that’s been built. Yeah. Broadstone at Peachtree corners. So they have a beautiful website and they’ve been already doing pre sales on it. And to some degree it has almost the same look, I think, as Solace Properties does to a degree. But I remember the renderings, I guess that were put out for that. So I’m going to probably put that in the show notes for those that are listening because I think there were some renderings on there.

Brian Johnson 0:16:47

You can pull the application for North American property, the rezoning application and the renderings for that side of the road are going to be generally, I mean, again, the toilet where I do know that they’re lightening up the colors a little bit dark. And I think that there, again, might be very subtle tweaks, but there are no material changes. So I think that would be fair to put that out because it has to be in material compliant or general compliance with that rendering and also with.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:23

The conditions on it. If I remember correctly, there was individually wired units. There was a bunch of things in there like that.

Brian Johnson 0:17:30

That’s correct. EV charging stations. They also have to connection across the creek.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:37

That’s right.

Brian Johnson 0:17:38

Okay, walk directly across the creek from the property and not have to go out to the sidewalk on 141 and walk up.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:47

So that could be out of the ground really in a year and a half to two years.

Brian Johnson 0:17:51

Yeah. Look, right now they’re starting the architectural actual construction document design of the building because they don’t need to go back to the conceptual stuff.

Rico Figliolini 0:18:04

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:18:04

So, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if nine to twelve months, they’re going vertical, which is pretty quick from not having gone through rezoning or whatever. So, I mean, site work in November or December is fast. Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:18:24

Cool. So, yeah, people should be aware of that. That 260 plus units and doesn’t need any rezoning or anything. But this company is a good company from the properties that people can see around, like in Sawani or Sugar Hill in these places. Will that have retail also I forget now if that had any retail space on there. So it’s strictly apartments. Cool. Now I passed by the Forum every once in a while. I’ll go through there at least once a week and stuff. They’re already vertical with two story framework, metal framework for what we call the jewel boxes that they’re going to have there. And they’ve already announced that they’re going to have a food hall by Palatan Row, I believe, which should be great. I’ve seen some of the stuff they’ve had at Colony Square. It’s all good. Chef driven brewery, also centered around a brewery area within that. So they’re moving along, but we don’t see anything else coming there besides that north end piece right now through until next year, I guess.

Rico Figliolini 0:19:34

Have they suggested to you that they’re going to break down on anything else? The beginning of right, sure, but other.

Brian Johnson 0:19:42

Than that, the next thing would be sometime late summer. Well, we’re kind of late summer, fall sometime they’re going to probably break ground on the parking deck, which is that behind Belts, behind Belk. And that will be the next project, because they can’t remove any more of the middle parking stalls until the new parking deck is built, because then they would be below the parking threshold that they need to properly service the property. So the next thing would be the parking deck, which would run into say, summer of next year. And at that point then they could transition back into removing the middle parking stalls and continuing down towards the small event area that they’ll build right in front of Belk.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:37

Okay. All right, cool. Sounds like they’re on track to do everything that they said they would be doing. All right, so why don’t we also segue a little bit into well, it’s not segue, really, but the city marshal system is moving along. We’ve talked about it several times over several podcasts and of course we want to set expectations because you just don’t stand up a city marshal without regulations, without equipment, without office space, without officers without a chief of police, if you will. So there’s a lot still going on. I had thought, even myself, I had thought maybe the end of July that we would see marshals on the street, but that’s not really the case. Things take time. So tell us a little bit where the city is at right now with us.

Brian Johnson 0:21:24

And I appreciate you bringing that up, because for those who may have seen read, watch city council meeting, we have to go through a series of steps within what state law requires as a city for us to stand up a public safety component unit of the city. And so we had to adopt an ordinance and creating the department it’s created. And we have two of the three positions that we have funded this year have been filled. But for those who have seen that, like you said, to manage expectations, I don’t want there to be anybody who thinks or is expecting to see them out. Really just all over the community doing all sorts of things right away. It’s important to remember two things. One City Marshal Department is a supplement to Gwinnett County Police Department. It is not to replace I mean, we as residents of Petrie Corners are paying for Gwinnett County police because Gwinnett County is allowed to charge the police millage rate inside our city limits to fund the police department of the police officers out of west precinct that provide police coverage. We are not changing that. And we have every intention at the city to continue to expect to get services because we’re paying for them. But as you and I have talked about Rico, there’s gaps, and that’s where the marshals are now. So that’s one thing is reminding everybody that the other one know we have to stand up and go through all the policy intergovernmental processes that any brand new law enforcement agency would have to go through. Because these marshals are post certified sworn marshals, which means an example would be they have the authority to take away somebody’s civil liberties. If you commit a prime and they detain you. Well, to do that, you’ve got to have a policy on use of force.

Brian Johnson 0:23:43

What’s the escalation of force and when can you use it and when can you not? Just one example of many policies that have to be adopted. Body cam. Are we going to require it or what’s the policy on when it’s turned on and off? How long are we going to store the data, things like that. Are they going to have a role in or what’s their role in interacting with the community? Are they going to be our primary points of contact with HOAs, things like that. We’ve got to get them fitted for uniforms, order the equipment, the vehicles, get the vehicles wrapped. I could go on and on.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:28

And so there’s a list of things, I mean, even access to. There’s all the cameras we have around the city. Do you give them access to that? How is this going to work?

Brian Johnson 0:24:41

So it is a process, but even at the end of the process, again, I can’t beat that dead horse enough. This is to supplement. This is to be a force multiplier to Gwinnett PD. Gwynette PD is still our primary police department. The marshals are not going to be responding to 911 calls.

Rico Figliolini 0:25:02

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:25:02

That’s still Gwynette PD, those kind of things. But we’ve got intergovernmental agreements that we’re going to have to enter into with or amend existing ones like Gwynette PD or the sheriff’s office and things like, you know, we’re getting there. We’re getting there to where these assets can really know, kind know, vectored to areas that know, spring up and could use a little bit of extra assistance to what? FPD. But we’re not there yet. And so we’ve got to do this very carefully because this kind of stuff is you can get into trouble if you don’t do it. Right. Expectation management, as you said.

Rico Figliolini 0:25:47

Right. So setting those expectations, when do you think they have any estimate of when the first cars may be out on the street? Will it be the end of the year?

Brian Johnson 0:25:57

Yeah, I would say by the end of the calendar year. You’re going to start seeing the cars out in a little bit more. Six months from now is probably a good time. We’ll have the chief marshals position filled by then. That job announcement is going to go out probably tomorrow.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:16

Okay.

Brian Johnson 0:26:20

I think by the end of this calendar year is fair. There may be a little few areas that they’re not quite involved in for another period of time into next year. Because mind you, as a supplement, they’re going to be in areas that Gwynette PD isn’t really very active in. For instance, use of drones in problem areas when FPD has too many constraints that have the resources to be able to do it. Ours will. Interesting, our marshals will be using drones as a supplement when there are situations where it makes sense. And in addition to that is as a location for there to be some innovative use of drones in the public safety space. Because of our partnerships with Curiosity Lab and the infrastructure have in place, including the our recent meetings with their regulatory team in DC. They’re very interested in using our marshals or collecting data our marshals will generate on some of the innovative ways to use it as they write regulations around the use of drones for public. So we might be helping write policy here just because we’re going to be more flexible and department as big as Gwinnett is, they just don’t have the same opportunities that we will with us being smaller.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:01

Well, for sure. And having Curiosity Lab here and the ability to partner with different companies to do cutting edge work in public safety is just enormous. Very exciting to be able to get down that and to be able to provide that sense of safety and security to a community and to be able to see how far we could go with that cutting edge technology. So the other thing that there’s always a lot of things going on here. One of the largest, I guess the largest current largest employer, Siemens, has finally come into partnership with the city eastward corners. We’ve talked about that a bit before. So tell us a little bit about what that means to have, at least at this point, the largest employer, Intuitive Robotics, will be once they’ve completed. But Siemens being now being a partner, what does that mean? What does that do for the city?

Brian Johnson 0:28:59

Well, when you have an employer that’s approaching 1000 employees within your city that is a major player in the technology space, whether it’s facility technology, electric and Emobility technology, they’re all over. They’ve got a lot of fingers in tech and they’re North American headquarters for, well, people don’t know they’re a German based company, german headquartered company, International. But their North American headquarters for their facility technology, their smart facility technology, is here in Peachtree Corners and their worldwide headquarters for electric mobility is here in Peachtree Corners.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:47

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:29:48

And it’s always been a little bit, I guess you could say, embarrassing that our largest employer was not a partner with us, the Curiosity Lab. And it’s a matter of navigating the labyrinth of international companies and where decisions are made and things like that. But we finally ended up getting opportunities to see the value each could provide the other. And so now they have some of their new innovative EV charging stations both here in the city for use by customers. But also they’re going to have a significant play in the EV multimodal expansion that we have here at park, that we’re finally coming to a point where we can start construction. That was the half a million dollar grant that former US. Representative Carolyn Bordeaux got for us to build this multimodal center. And so it’s going to have all things EV coming together at one location. And Siemens will have a significant play in the development of that site for them to test and enhance some of their technology. So we’re mean, in the course of what, two months. It’s our second German based international company that we have a partnership with after Audi. So yeah, good.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:17

I mean, anyone that follows the city or Curiosity Lab on LinkedIn can see all these posts about companies coming here, even us going to countries like Israel and other countries that we’ve been to. So a lot of international businesses are just seeming to find the little city of Peachtree Corners, which isn’t so little anymore, really. Right?

Brian Johnson 0:31:42

Well, we’re certainly punching above our weight class, but yeah, we’re a soft landing pad for international companies. And guess what? Some of those, when they land here, we actually convince them to stay here.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:57

And there’s your economic development so it’s paying off and I think the city is also continuing to look at other avenues. I mean obviously this is smart technology, this is good high end stuff but we’re also doing smaller things that is going to know an economic impact but also good things for the community. Like just recently the Atlanta Sci-fi Film Festival decided with the city as a sponsor to be able to come out here and instead of doing it in the city of Atlanta, the Atlanta Sci-fi Film Festival is going to be hosted here in, you know, nice decent festival and very different from what we normally might see here. So it’s good to see that type of stuff happening and I’m sure there’s other things along the way that we haven’t even know about yet so can’t wait to see. But I do appreciate you coming through with all this information Brian and helping.

Brian Johnson 0:32:53

Always a pleasure Rico, thanks for helping keep our citizens informed.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:58

Yes. Appreciate you being here. Thanks Brian and everyone else that’s listening. Appreciate you joining us. If you have any comments or you want to hear other subjects that we should be talking about let us know. At some point. I’d love to be able to do this a bit more live. This is a simulcast live feed. You may be seeing this on or you may be seeing this on demand but at some point we may be doing a live feed question and answers or submitted questions ahead of time or maybe live. As we’re doing this, I’m still trying to figure out the logistics on that and how we’re going to do it. Twitter or X, who knows where it might be that we might do this. Maybe it’s Instagram Live. Maybe it’s Facebook Live. We’ll take comments and Brian is more than willing to answer those or if he can’t let us know. So we’re looking forward to doing some of that. So thanks again for being with us and catch us in the magazine that’s going to be coming out shortly. Peachtree Corners magazine will hit in about a week actually next Tuesday it’s hitting the post office so you’ll see the latest issue coming out. Thanks everyone.