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.

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.

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

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.

Host Rico Figliolini dives deep into the progress and future plans of Peachtree Corners, a city focused on providing its residents with an exceptional quality of life. Joined by City Manager Brian Johnson, they discuss the city’s recent recognition as the best place for families to live in Georgia, the establishment of a City Marshal system, the development of policies and procedures, and the expansion of the trail system. With a commitment to progress, collaboration with the private sector, and a dedication to fostering connectivity and recreational opportunities, Peachtree Corners is truly a city on the rise. Tune in to this podcast to learn more about the exciting developments and plans for this vibrant city.

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:03:46] – Fortune Magazine Ranking Peachtree Corners
[00:10:20] – City Development Plans and Projects
[00:14:22] – The City Marshal System
[00:24:16] – Park Development and Pickleball
[00:28:22] – Trail System and Dog Park
[00:39:41] – Closing

Podcast Transcript:

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

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

Brian Johnson 0:00:09

How are you?

Rico Figliolini 0:00:10

Good. I hope you’re doing well going into the 4th of July weekend. Before we get started, though, let me just say thank you to my corporate sponsors that support us and the things that we do both in print and on digital. So Eli from EV Remodeling here based in Peachtree Corners and who lives in Peachtree Corners, supports us every day and the things that we do and the journalism that we put out on our magazines as well as now digital work. EV Remodeling, great place to if you’re looking to remodel either a small kitchen or a whole house remodel, they’re the ones to look at. You should go to Evremodelinginc.com, check out the site. They do great work. So don’t let that put you off, because the great work, some people look at it and say, I don’t know if I can afford that, but trust me, he does a great job and he’s at a reasonable place to be. So check him out. Our second lead sponsor is Clearwave Fiber. Clearwave does business, internet as well as home. They just came on about a month ago. And they’re good corporate sponsor of ours supporting the things that we do. And they’ve been a sponsor of, for example, the Criterion Road Race that just recently happened here in Peachtree Corners, and they’re a good supporter of the community. You should check them out. There’ll be a link in our profile. So go there and find out more about them and what they can do for you and your business or for your home. Check them out. So now Brian just learning so much that’s going on, there’s so much in the news. I just want to put it out there about one thing for sure in that everyone’s been like, because it’s been 24/7 coverage, that Ocean Gate expedition that’s been out there, that imploded, that’s been covered for everywhere from TikTok to CNN on a 24 hours basis. I did not know that one of the five guys on board that vessel was Paul-Henri, if I’m pronouncing this correct, Nargeolet. A longtime expert on Titanic and a member of the Em group that’s based out of Peachtree Corners. And that group actually puts these exhibitions I’ve been to, like the Titanic exhibition and the Bodies exhibition. They put those on. If anyone has seen those, they’re based right here in Peachtree Corners. Just amazing how much stuff is here that we don’t know.

Brian Johnson 0:02:26

It is kind of cool to sometimes uncover hidden gems in a city that you oftentimes, especially if you’ve been here for a while, be like, yeah, I know Peachtree Corners. I pretty much know all of the significant corporate tenants or entertainment opportunities or recreational locations, and every now and then something comes up and you’re like, wow.

Rico Figliolini 0:02:51

And sad too. In this particular case, for sure, someone’s been lost like that. But to know that a company like that actually is based out of our city of 45,000 people is really interesting.

Brian Johnson 0:03:04

The only company that has rights to Titanic artifacts for them to actually recover artifacts from the site. So, yeah, significant role they have.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:16

Yeah, and they just pulled up some of the wreckage actually just this past 24, 48 hours, I think.

Brian Johnson 0:03:22

Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:25

So I thought I’d bring that up. But the other thing is, I just saw this pop up on Google Alerts to me about, I guess it was about a week ago, and that was Fortune magazine. Through all they do, decided that Peacefree Corners is the best place for families to live in the state of Georgia. I think we’re in the top 50.

Brian Johnson 0:03:46

Of their picks, 19 in the country.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:48

19. I don’t even know if they reached out to the city at all to do any or if they did their own research. And that’s how they found us.

Brian Johnson 0:03:59

We were as surprised when it came out as anybody, so they did not communicate with us. If you read the article, they go into depth as to the data metrics and sources of data that they pulled from. And it’s important because sometimes you see a lot of these lists, and you could probably argue that in some cases there may be a little bit of subjectivity in some cases, but generally these lists, especially since this wasn’t a list where we were notified, we didn’t provide any information, there wasn’t a voting process. We literally had no idea. They tried to drive it based on data from everything from the Census Bureau to Johns Hopkins database on Thing. I mean, there was a long list of data sources, governmental or otherwise. But at the end of the day, there were a few communities that you might see in some of these lists that were eliminated. Because they did. Eliminate communities that had a median home income that was so high that it was considered not a good place for a family to go because it wasn’t cost prohibitive. And then there were a few communities and this is nationally, not just in Georgia, but a few communities removed that did not have a level of diversity that was outside of a band. So if you had some communities that were so homogeneous, one area, not just two, all white or all black or all Brian, any community that had too much homogeneous population numbers, they wanted ones that were, again, for families of all kinds.

Rico Figliolini 0:06:02

Right?

Brian Johnson 0:06:02

And then at that point, beyond those communities removed, their metric were around with families, you have lots of needs. You have housing needs. So are there diversity of housing options and pricing levels and size, which we obviously made, diversity of entertainment and recreational opportunities, but the quality and diversity of offerings for schools because families have kids. And you may want private school, you may want public, you may want whatever diversity of jobs, whether service based manufacturing, industry, commercial, blue collar, white collar, whatever. They want diversity of jobs and quality of jobs and then quality of health care because there’s obviously families from having younger kids to need it to also they talked about the fact that many families have parents of adult children that are needed to come back to live with them or you move them close to you because you’ve got a little.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:18

Bit of that going on. Sure.

Brian Johnson 0:07:21

So that was a metric that was considered, and even technology and the ability to have high speed internet access as you’ve got more work from home or virtual classroom or whatever. So all of those were taken into consideration, and they said that, look, when it comes to all of that, we’re a great place to live because we don’t control all of it. Sometimes we only have influence, some influence of varying degrees. We don’t control the school systems. We do have certain roads in the city that are state routes, and they’re managed by the state. We don’t control all the parks in the city and all the youth sports programs, but we certainly do things to help support them. And as a result, we’ve got a diversity of all of those things, from people to jobs to housing, health care. And they on the phone decided that we’re the best in Georgia and the 19th best in the country.

Rico Figliolini 0:08:35

I mean, Fortune magazine is a well read not publication even at this point, but well read news site. I mean, it’s been around for a long time, but for sure I think anyone that objectively looks at this city and all the things that’s being done and planned for and the way it’s being done we have no military on property, so people talk about, well, how can we afford to do certain things? Well, there’s sploss, there’s government grants. I mean, just alone, you mentioned earlier before we started the show, about a $1.2 million grant that’s being used. I think that was federal funds that’s coming in for environmental study and design for the Crooked Creek aspect of our trail system. So, I mean, the city is working in a very smart way. You, your team, the mayor, and the city council have really led the things that are being done here really well and intelligently coming into the right place. I was just to share with some of the listeners, obviously, the feasibility study that’s being done right now for the Pickable possible pickable, court center, private public partnership. You all are doing outreach. I was at one of those meetings one morning with the special group that’s charged with doing the feasibility study. I was impressed by the information they brought about, about the discussion. Even the mayor was there. Two city council people, a couple of residents, myself, a couple of other people, that are actually involved in pickleball the Putnams. So just that one meeting alone to find information out about just that aspect of what’s going on. Yeah, I mean, every city tries to do their stuff, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:10:20

Sugar Hill has a really big, beautiful theater that recently built. I mean, done the great job there. Every city has sort of an iconic thing that they do or path they want to go on. I know the city would love to do an art center art theater at some point. I know the mayor has spoken about.

Brian Johnson 0:10:37

That multi use of some sort. Right?

Rico Figliolini 0:10:41

Yeah. I’m not surprised that Fortune magazine would think that we are a great place for family to live. But it’s still surprising even still because there’s so many cities and towns out there.

Brian Johnson 0:10:52

There are reading the list. There were a lot of cities, I would say most of them I know of. I think Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located, was the number one city. Denver, Colorado, was one of the choices in there. So it was everything from smallish cities to meet size all the way up to the big ones like Denver were on the list. And so, yeah, it makes you feel good, especially when we didn’t have anything to do with it and it happened organically. And it’s kind of like when somebody tells you you’re doing a good job. You didn’t ask to say, am I doing a good job or not? They say it they just out of the blue say, I see how you’re doing. You’re doing a good job. Keep up the good work. Kind of how this was. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We are certainly not perfect. We have areas that we can improve.

Brian Johnson 0:11:49

We strive to do that every single day. Sure. But it is nice every now and then to be like some of the fruits of our labor have paid off at the point where people are recognizing.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:02

I know that you all are always under pressure. People are always thinking, what did you do for me lately? We’ve discussed this before about how people sometimes look at things and they think that they’re the center of the universe at that particular moment, and they want you to stand that and have you attend to their needs at that very particular moment. So, yeah, all those things are, I’m sure, drive some of this as far as feeling good about what you’re doing, knowing that you’ve done some good stuff.

Brian Johnson 0:12:40

And as a city government, our job is to provide services to our customers, which are our citizens here, in the form of making sure that they have a great safe place to conduct themselves, whether it’s live, work, learn and play, to make sure the roads are in good condition. Technology is there if they need it. Again, it’s safe. Commerce can happen in a seamless manner without a lot of bureaucracy. And when things are important, to somebody in the grand scheme of things I sometimes am like really? Do you really expect us to drop what we’re doing for that? But to some people, we try to really remove ourselves from that and say, look, if things are important to people only through the lens in which they look at it and there could be a dead deer on the side of the road and somebody’s all up in arms and somebody’s like, well, Public Works will get to a can. But to the person whose dead deer might be literally in their front yard, they’ve got to drive past it or their kids are going to walk to the bus stop from there. Whatever. It’s a big deal. We try to put that into perspective and make sure that we provide that and then beyond. Our role is to get out of the way and not be a government that’s all up into everybody’s business and taking a lot of money from them and deciding how to spend it. And it appears that that’s a good format for us to be a local government.

Rico Figliolini 0:14:22

So getting a bit into that even because nothing stops. Everything keeps moving along. I know we’ve spoken time and again on these podcasts about City Marshall system, for example, but it is a process and it just doesn’t start like that, even with the votes you guys recently took. Because you have to change a few things, add some ordinances, and set the legal operations of it up before your team can actually hire and set up. So I’m thin from our conversation before, ahead of the show that probably two city marshals will probably start somewhere around July 27 or so. But you do have to set up a bunch of things and we’ve discussed this before, where squad cars, where people live even. So you have to make sure that there’s affordable places for your hires to be able to live at also, I guess. Are you helping in that regard?

Brian Johnson 0:15:17

Yeah. If you think about it, what was on the city council agenda earlier this week is going to be the beginning of probably a continual stream of ordinances or policy adoptions that are going to be going on for the next six months. Because here we are standing a department that’s never existed. Here it is a department that is a very sensitive department in that policies that you have to regulate people who have by virtue of being post certified like all police officers have to be have the authority to do things like take away people’s civil liberties and that is a sacred thing. And so there’s lots of policies that have to be put in place as to how they’re going to conduct themselves, how they’re going to communicate intergovernmental agreements with Gwynette County PD down to what is going to be our use of force policy, high speed pursuit. Are we going to have them concentrate on area A or Area z or all these kind of things. You got equipment purchases, you’ve got all those kind of things. So it is a big it’s a major muscle movement, and we’re going to do it methodically. And they are being employed to fill a gap in between where code enforcement no longer has the authority and where Gwynette County PD, given that it is a county asset, there are certain things that they’re unable to do inside our city limits because we’re a home rule municipality. And so the marshals are going to fill this gap, but they’re not going to be out. They’re not going to be running radar on the roads to get tickets. They’re not going to be doing yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:31

We talked about that.

Brian Johnson 0:17:31

How calls for service. Yeah. They’re not answering 911 calls. I mean, Gwinnett County Police out of west precinct is still our police department. Now that are going to be able to do some things and concentrate on some areas that Gwynette County PD either ant or doesn’t have the resources, given their personnel, staffing challenges they don’t have. And we’re going to be able to fill that gap yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:59

For people to understand. We do have an intergovernmental agreement with Gwinnett County for a certain amount of, I guess, coverage and of police officers in the area during a period of time. I don’t know the details if that’s actually handled that way, but whatever service level we have is not going to change. We’re just augmenting with City marshall to do other things that, like you said, Winnett county can’t do because of resources they choose not to do because of lack of resources like enforcement, code enforcement.

Brian Johnson 0:18:32

Correct. And a good example of where this might come in handy, that it’s important to us and not to say it’s not important with FPD, but it would be something that they may just have said, hey, we just don’t have the manpower to do. It would be the challenge we’re having. When Norcross High School is in session with students, cutting class and walking through the woods into the rear parking lots of some of our businesses that border the back of Norcross High. We’re working on a number of things to resolve it, but having a patrol during certain hours, just the President’s patrol to kind of let the kids know, hey, there’s somebody here Gwynette just doesn’t have the manpower to do because they’re just responding to calls for service through 911 and other things. But it’s important to us. And so this is going to give the city the opportunity that when it’s more of a call, it ground level versus 30,000 foot level of importance. We’re going to be able to say, hey, I want one of you to be patrolling between, say, 930 and noon for a few mornings, because that tends to be when the kids are cutting class and they can do it because that’s an asset we control. If they do catch some kids doing something, they are going to have the authority to detain them, to turn them over to their parents or the school, or if it’s worse than just trespassing, even over to and they’re over 18 years old. It could be turning them over to Gwynette PD because they were caught in the commission of a Felonious crime. But an asset we will now have. That Gwynette just is like, look, we’re not saying it’s not important, but we have calls for service that are more important. And so those are the kind of things that we can do.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:27

Cool that’s out of existing operating funds and stuff like that. So that adding. There’s no talk of a millage rate to cover that. Move on. Let’s move on quickly to the feasibility study that’s going to be almost finished, I guess in the few weeks on that pickleball feasibility study. And then how long before they actually give a report back to the city?

Brian Johnson 0:20:51

Oh, probably actually only in a few more weeks. And they’re really going to provide, call it a scope of a pickleball facility that would fit three different categories. Essentially. One would be what size facility would it take for us to create a pickleball facility that was essentially only oriented to meeting the needs of ongoing league play? USTA or what is it, pickleball association of America, whatever kind of league play, just the ongoing stuff. That’s the kind of the lower level. Then the middle level would be what size facility would we need to be facilitating the construction of for us to be in the running for regional weekend tournaments that would be like ones big enough for the Southeast, not necessarily the national ones because that one so that’s the middle one. And then the top tier, which would probably only happen if we partner with say, a lifetime or a fields club or both and have them transition tennis courts into pickleball and we would make a submittal to the national association for a national tournament. But that would be what size do we need to do to compete at that level. And that’s the level where you’re competing against facilities in places like Florida and Arizona, even Southern California that are really getting into some big scale, 50 courts. That’s going to probably take partnership, but at least we’ll know. So we’re going to know the three levels of facility size. It would be for us to get a pickleball facility with a private partner and maybe use it as an economic development tool, whether it’s to enhance an area. Of the city that’s got a lot of activity or it’s a redevelopment opportunity to go and put it in an area of the city that could see a little bit of a shot of adrenaline in the arm. So this will give us what that is and then we’ll take that scope and we’ll start looking at specific areas, start maybe talking to potential private partners who may want to be involved in the construction and operation of this.

Brian Johnson 0:23:32

Our intent is not to be the sole funding source to construct it, nor do I want to be involved in operating a facility.

Rico Figliolini 0:23:43

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:23:43

Plenty of time happens. Cities and counties run them all the prime, but it just gets into creep of size, of government. I would prefer to like, we’ve done other services.

Rico Figliolini 0:23:58

It’s not like we have a parks department or wanting to create one. Like, Duluth has a parks department. That’s a whole different animal being budgeting that and taking care of your own park system. And we don’t need to do that. Right. Because Gwynette county has some beautiful parks right here in peace tree corners, and they take care of it.

Brian Johnson 0:24:16

Correct. The decision was made. Rightly. So back in the day that we happen to have Gwynette county happened to have constructed and operated a lot of parks in our area before we became a city. And even though after we became a city and you drew a circle around our city limits, those parks were now inside our city limits.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:38

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:24:39

County was doing just fine operating it. People still get to use it. It’s not like you all of a sudden couldn’t do it. So Pinkneyville park and Jones mill or excuse me, jones bridge park and Simpson wood and places like that, holcomb bridge park. And why would we need to do stand up our own additional ones when we already have absolutely. The stance that we’re taking here, too.

Rico Figliolini 0:25:05

Which is good, I think, based on what the consultants were saying originally, I think they were saying, like, something like this, once it’s decided, could take anywhere from 18 months to three years to develop. But they also agreed that based, I think, on a couple of city council people there also agreed that that’s way too long and that probably it could be done in a lot less time. We’re talking about maybe within a year. Even so, it’s good because you don’t want to be planning something three years out and then all of a sudden something else shows up during those three years. But good to see some city council people are willing to move faster.

Brian Johnson 0:25:44

They recognize there’s a little bit of an arms race going on with a ball and which one can get to the finish line first with something that’s drawing activity. And that would probably not necessarily definitively, but probably result in others backing off. Like if Dunwoody built a big facility just outside of our city, I doubt we’re going to want to do that because we’re like we’re fighting for the same crowd. It’s not going to be as utilized. There’s a little bit of a race to see if we can get to a certain level first. Yeah, I believe that we could potentially move a lot quicker if we find some good private partners in a good location. Do it.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:29

Yeah. I know you guys went on a tour sort of the city to different locations to see what could be used. Even at that same meeting, the mayor, because we can multitask, we can’t chew gum and walk at the same time. He also said that just because we’re doing this doesn’t mean that an art center or multi use center like that can also be in the plans. Of course, stuff like that take longer. I mean, just thinking about what Sugar Hill did with their theater, which I think holds about 400 people, they have balconies, they have a 20 x 40 foot stage with workshops there to build their sets. I mean, people don’t even think about those things. They think, why can’t we just put up a theater? There’s a lot that goes into that.

Brian Johnson 0:27:14

Well, we could, but to do so results in things like that kind of stuff takes money. And some governments have high millage rates and the government takes a lot of money from the citizens. Now it turns around and it puts it back into the community. But what that does do is that then means that that government is making some decisions with some money that could have been left into all of its citizens. So we could certainly do that, millage rates, but instead we would prefer to be facilitator. Maybe there’s some resources from the city that go into it, hopefully just one time to get things inject some lubricant in the process. But the more we can outsource and let the private sector run and not us, the longer we can go without a millage rate.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:13

Yes.

Brian Johnson 0:28:14

Or even one day if we ever had one, it remains low and it’s not really high. And so that’s our goal. Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:22

Makes sense. I think that’s what the citizens want. Absolutely. That’s the other thing we can talk about is that the trail system, which when fully developed, we talked about this being it’s going to end up being like 24 miles running through the city when it’s fully done in this project. Some of the revitalization redevelopment work being done on the south side, if you will, on Holcomb Bridge Road and stuff. I know that there’s been some property acquisitions happening to be able to end up putting trailheads to expand the trail system through Crooked Creek and parts of Petrie Corner Circle down out of Peach Tree corner Circles, maybe. Is that what we want to call it?

Brian Johnson 0:29:09

Yeah. So the section of Petrie Corner Circle in between Holcomb Bridge and Petrie Industrial Boulevard, which, by the way, I don’t know if you saw in the city council meeting last night. Council authorized me, at a request of the state, the section of what we call PIB from our city limits with Doraville all the way up to the split that is going to be renamed just Peachtree Boulevard. Just like Doraville and Shambley did south of us.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:44

Okay.

Brian Johnson 0:29:45

Years ago, Doraville said, look, PIB is not the industrial doesn’t have the industrial component to it like it did. We don’t like having that. And so they went through the process of just dropping the industrial. So all of that section of 141 that’s in Shambley, all of it is in Dorville, all the way up to our city limits is just Peachtree Boulevard. Well, the state is finally going to is in the process of making the signs that you see that are above 141, as you’re getting right before the split, that if you see it, you can barely read the letters now at night, heading north into the city. For five years, six years now, our public Works department director has been pushing to say it needs a change. And George Dot was like, we’re going to put it in a list of other cities and we’re going to do it all at once. And there were other reasons. But anyway, they’re finally ready to make them and they reached out. One of the state transportation board members reached out to us and said, hey, they’re making it. Do you guys want to go ahead and have that section change to just Peachy Boulevard? And so Council was like, sure. So mind you, that’ll be to the point where you have the split. And of course when you get the split, if you stay to the left, which is what 141 does, the state route stays to the left. That then becomes Peacetree Parkway.

Brian Johnson 0:31:16

And so State Route 141 will no longer have any industrial name to it. If you stay to the right, that then gets into County Maintained Road inside either US either Norcross or Berkeley Lake. And it goes back and forth as you head north. That’s a different process. There are more businesses on that section. Other governmental entities are involved. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but that would be more discussion. But at least in this case, while you’re on State Route 141, at some point before too long, there will not be an industrial as part of that name.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:58

So they’ll actually replace the signs at some point. So then you can read it.

Brian Johnson 0:32:02

That’s correct. So that sign, when it’s replaced, so you can read it Petri Industrial Boulevard anymore, it’ll just be Petri Boulevard.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:10

That’s terrific because every time I pass that sign, I’m like, we’ve redone our signs and everything. It looks so bad.

Brian Johnson 0:32:17

It does.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:18

Where are you heading into that? They have not changed that sign.

Brian Johnson 0:32:22

I mean, five, six years, we’ve had that periodically. But anyway, on the trailhead there’s a section of Peace Corner Circle that our trail system is going to go across. And so in addition to acquiring property that we’ll be able to construct it, we want people to be able to get on the trail at locations that you can just drive to it. It has a parking lot. You get out and then you walk on it. We’re going to create some trailhead areas like that. That will probably have bathrooms, parking area, playgrounds, and it can additional amenity for those apartment residents that live in the area.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:04

So I was wondering about that. So we’ll have playground set up over there as well.

Brian Johnson 0:33:09

Yeah, maybe covered picnic table, pavilions tables, things, a real recreational amenity.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:16

Okay, so not just a trailhead really. There’s more than so how much is being acquired then? Like I would imagine there has to be at least an acre or two, a couple of acres on either side.

Brian Johnson 0:33:29

Oh yeah, and more than that. Now both of the sections are in wetlands areas, so they are at higher risk for flooding at certain times. But all we’re putting in is bathrooms and playground stuff or whatever, which is not the end of the world. Nobody’s residing there and so we’re going to put it to use. They’re really undevelopable. But our acquisition, we didn’t go in and squeeze the property that we needed. We just went to the owner of the entire parcel that’s kind of in the wetlands and said, look, we’ll just buy the whole parcel. We’re going to leave a lot of the trees up, buffering adjacent property owners. So it’s more than just a couple of acres, but we only need a couple of acres to do what we’re doing. So yeah, one day it’ll be a good way for people in the area to get on the trail and it’ll be a good place for people to take their kids for playground or have a picnic or whatever.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:33

Most of these trails, I mean, they’re all multi use. I’m thinking like not the Rocket not the Rocket trail up in Swani area, but you could literally ride your bike then I’d imagine 24 miles route once it’s all completed and just right through the city, you could do like 48 miles bike ride through the city going twice.

Brian Johnson 0:34:53

It’s like the Silver Comet trail.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:56

That’s what it was.

Brian Johnson 0:34:59

A couple of our sections will connect to other communities that are doing the same thing. We are planning on connecting to a trail section where we border Sandy Springs right there on Balding.

Rico Figliolini 0:35:10

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:35:11

And so you’ll be able to take our trail to a section that you could jump on a neighboring municipality’s multi use trail system as well. Yeah, I mean, hopefully one day that you don’t have to just stay in peace street corners. But yes, theoretically you could just do a 24 miles lap on your bike.

Rico Figliolini 0:35:30

Yeah, I could see some cycling groups doing that. The other thing that’s coming about is that you guys I think, did the first read or you did the approval on the dog park coming to town center. Big, big dog, small dog. I think you said around September maybe we talked about it.

Brian Johnson 0:35:48

Council wasn’t a first. It didn’t require two reads. It was just council authorizing the money that the dog park is going to cost to be appropriated and for me to execute the contract. Okay, so it’s been executed. The contractor that’s going to build it has been given a notice to proceed. I think they’re going to start in about two weeks. It will not affect the town green because it’s on the backside of Cinnabistro there. So it will start in about two weeks. It’ll be done in about September time frame. And yes, it’s a pretty big facility. It has big dog section, a small dog section. And we are going to construct a small building that can be used to serve something, whether it’s drinks or food or both, into people within the dog park. So in other words and there’s a couple of locations locally. Buckhead has one where it’s a dog park. And then once you’re in the dog park, you can go up to a bar and get drinks and not have to leave the facility.

Brian Johnson 0:37:01

You actually go to a window that is oriented to inside the dog park. And so we may end up bidding it out and letting a company come in and operate it at certain times to where if you’re there and you want to just chill for a little bit and you want to go and get a process, you can and not have to leave your dog in dog park.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:22

It’s almost like a concession stand.

Brian Johnson 0:37:24

Yeah, I mean, a little bit.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:26

You’ll have a patio with some seating.

Brian Johnson 0:37:28

Areas that are oh, yeah, definitely covered. Lots of seating. Some of it artificially shaded. We’re not removing we’re not clear cutting the area. Each section has both a special turf area and a section that’s being left open to just mulched area.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:49

Okay.

Brian Johnson 0:37:51

It’ll be used a lot, but it does increase maintenance because we’re going to have to have our crews hose it off periodically. Probably after people who don’t do the right thing by picking up after their dogs in the dog park.

Rico Figliolini 0:38:07

Yes. God knows there are people like that. They never no responsibility. God knows. The restrooms as well, or no, not.

Brian Johnson 0:38:16

In additional to the ones that are already out there. No.

Rico Figliolini 0:38:21

All right. And that’s coming in September. So that’s starting like July 14 or so somewhere around there. All right, cool. So we’ve covered quite a bit. Looking forward to more things happening. I know there’s more things out there happening. So city never sleeps.

Brian Johnson 0:38:36

Almost chance we’ll get left behind if we do.

Rico Figliolini 0:38:39

Yes. Apparently there are always things happening. Even with curiosity. Lab. There’s always an article we’re writing about. I mean, we just had one recently about Audi partnering with the city. And Curiosity Lab that’s in our newest issue of Southwest Gwynette magazine that’s coming out this week, actually hit the post office today. So it’s being dropped later this week, today being June 29. For those that might be listening to this a bit later. Yeah, there’s stuff like that. We’re doing another story, I think, covering Dell startup taking place actually here in history corners, so we’ll be covering that story. So there’s always something that’s going on, whether it’s Atlanta Tech Park or Curiosity Lab, that whole big thing. So it’s never a dull moment here. And it’s no wonder Fortune magazine thought we’d be the best place for your family to come and live. So this good stuff.

Brian Johnson 0:39:39

It is.

Rico Figliolini 0:39:41

Brian, thank you for being with me today and sharing all the good information that you have. Always appreciate.

Brian Johnson 0:39:47

Thanks for having me.

Rico Figliolini 0:39:48

No, I love doing this. Great. And if anyone has comments or think that we should be discussing other things or have suggested topics either for these podcasts or for the magazine or anything, leave your comments. If this is on Facebook or YouTube, leave it there or email me. You could do that at editor@livinginpeachtreecorners.com and that’ll get to me.

Brian Johnson 0:40:16

If you ever get any of those, I’d be happy to have previously submitted topics that somebody was like, you know, I’d really like you guys to talk about X. I got no problem with that whatsoever. You and I, we’re just in the interest of time, are skipping lots of other things we could talk about. So I’m always open to things that a listener wants to hear us talk about.

Rico Figliolini 0:40:41

Good, because I’m actually developing, besides developing a third magazine that will be surrounding that’s going to be called Atlanta Pickleball Magazine, that’s covering the North Side, going north of Buckhead into the suburbs. But I’m thinking about doing some sort of live stream that’s a real live stream, either on Twitter or on TikTok or something else where we can talk and people can actually comment and ask questions as we’re having a conversation.

Brian Johnson 0:41:15

No problem. If somebody live submits a question, I’ve done that many times. You’re able to get that. No problem whatsoever. I mean, I’ve done my last city, there were callers that called in.

Rico Figliolini 0:41:30

Yes, I’m sure.

Brian Johnson 0:41:31

It’s not even like you have to send it via a written form. They just call in and we’re talking to them directly.

Rico Figliolini 0:41:38

I think that would be kind of cool to do that. I’m looking at whether it’s on Twitter or TikTok or one of the other platforms, that we could do this on a live feed where we can have a back and forth and have live comments coming in that we can answer or ignore because you never know what comes on those comments. But yeah, if you’re all for that, absolutely. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate you joining us. Remember, leave your comments and like us. If you’re listening to this on an Audible or one of these podcasts, whether it’s on Spotify or Apple, leave your review because that’s how people find this as well. Thank you, everyone.