Podcast
City Manager: City Marshal Regs and Policies, Pickleball Feasibility Study, Weather Preparations and More
Published
1 year agoon
What’s the function of a City Council Work Session that is open to the public? The upcoming meeting will see a discussion of proposed City Marshal regulations and policies and the presentation of the Pickleball Feasibility study. We also discussed with the city manager the construction of an innovative EV charging station and the ongoing city commitment to sustainability, public safety, and community well-being. Plus, the latest updates on infrastructure improvements, the ongoing programs to address stormwater issues and power outages, and housing initiatives.
Timestamp:
[00:00:00] – Introduction
[00:02:15] – Explanation of Work Session and Its Purpose
[00:04:18] – Parking Deck Design
[00:09:18] – City Marshal Regulations and Policies
[00:15:02] – Discussion on Pickleball Facility Feasibility Study
[00:20:10] – Preparing for Hurricane Season and Power Outages
[00:31:48] – Protecting Power Lines and Using Underground Lines
[00:34:47] – Solis Development and Its Start Date
[00:35:50] – Broadstone Development and Its Progress
[00:37:00] – Other Ongoing Construction Projects and Improvements
[00:39:48] – Trailheads and Affordable Housing
[00:43:16] – Peachtree Corners Festival and the Electrify Expo
[00:44:44] – Park Improvements and Housing Initiatives
[00:46:15] – Closing
“Where we run into a problem is when trees are into live power lines, we can’t cut those trees and remove them by blocking roads until the power company shuts off the power. So it all depends on how many crews they have out and how many trees that are still laying in live power lines is how fast we can clear the road and how fast you get power. The best way to alleviate this, they remove those limbs hanging over a power line… But it’s also controversial.”
BRian johnson
Podcast Transcript
Rico Figliolini 0:00:00
Hey everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. I thank you for coming and joining us for Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager. Hey, Brian. How are you?
Brian Johnson 0:00:10
Good. How are you?
Rico Figliolini 0:00:11
Good seeing you again. It’s been a while. I know we’ve been sort of a week past our normal stuff, so I appreciate you making time for me. I do want to share with everyone our sponsors and thank them. So we have EV Remodeling, Inc. A company that does a lot of design and build and a lot of renovation work here in the City of Peachtree Corners and in the metro area. Eli. The owner lives here in Peachtree Corners. Great family. They do great work. You should check them out. We do appreciate the support of our podcasts and our advertising in our magazines. So go to Evremodelinginc.com and find out a little bit more about them as well. Our other lead sponsors, Clearwave Fiber, they do a lot of Internet. All of it is internet for business and residential. They do a lot of work in the City of Peachtree Corners. In fact, you’ll find some of the highlighted businesses that are clients of theirs that have taken on their service for their work and their businesses. You’ll find some of those profiles appearing in Peachtree Corners magazine over the next few months to learn a little bit more about how those companies work here in the city. You may not even realize they exist here and also see how Clearwave works for them. So check them out. Clearwave Fiber. If you Google them, Peachtree Corners, you’ll see exactly what they’re doing here. So I want to thank them also for being a sponsor of these podcasts and our magazine. OK, now that I’ve done that and thanked everyone, there’s a lot of stuff that I just want to get into. But the biggest part is the upcoming work session, Brian and people may not realize what that is, so work session is the session that’s held prior to a city council meeting which is held once a month. Both of them are held once a month. And that work session is really to work through the process and seeing proposals and presentations prior to that city council meeting. So this way the city council can probably have their questions during that session answered during that city council meeting.
Brian Johnson 0:02:15
And in addition to prepping council for what’s going to be put in front of them for formal votes, it gives council opportunities to provide input and staff has time to make adjustments from the time between when I present council stuff at the work session and then the two weeks later the city council meeting. So we make tweaks to certain things. No votes are taken at a work session. It’s kind of the sleeves rolled up type of discussion. I also put stuff in front of council that don’t actually require formal action, but I want their guidance on things or I’ll take their temperature on stuff. It’s an informal meeting, but it’s a public meeting and council is there in their capacity as members of the governing body. And they’re getting ready these issues, ready for formal action at the subsequent council meeting.
Rico Figliolini 0:03:14
So there’s no obviously this is a work session, so there’s no public comments here, but anyone’s welcome to come visit and listen into these work sessions.
Brian Johnson 0:03:23
That’s correct. They’re public meeting, there is no public comment. So there’s no interaction with council. There’s no votes taken by council.
Rico Figliolini 0:03:31
Right. And just so then people know, I think originally there were two council meetings, I think a month when the city first started or something like that.
Brian Johnson 0:03:39
No, there was still only one. But they did the work session on the same night as council meeting. They would do it persona. The problem with that is when you go a month between getting council together, it can be problematic when you sometimes need I need interaction with them. And so I split that out. And so now it’s every two weeks they get together. One is the work session and then one is the council meeting. So it makes it to where I get them in a room often enough that I can get the answers I need or get them prepared for the votes I need.
Rico Figliolini 0:04:18
Right. So this is happening September twelveTH, Tuesday, and it may happen a little earlier than normal, it sounds like, because it’s going to be a packed meeting. So that’s what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what’s going to be going on in that meeting a little bit. Let’s start with so for example, the parking deck is going to be brought up. It’s going to be the design of the parking deck is going to be presented. Talk a little bit about correct. I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. And this is the parking deck that will be built behind Belk’s, if I’m correct.
Brian Johnson 0:04:52
Right next to Belk. Yeah. That big open surface parking lot that they have there is where the parking deck will go in. And the parking deck’s purpose is to replace the parking stalls that are being removed on the main boulevard of the Forum for those public spaces and the jewel box stores that are going in, well, they’re taking up parking and we need to replace it. So the design of that parking deck and how it’ll screen itself from the neighboring residents is the last piece of the Forum’s rezoning that they needed to do. And that is council had to approve the design of the parking deck. So that’s one of the items that they’ll see, the renderings of it and they’ll make any comments.
Rico Figliolini 0:05:44
I’ve forgotten how many floors, how many spots will be roughly in that deck.
Brian Johnson 0:05:50
Think it’s going to be three floors, or call it two covered floors. And then the top floor is open to the elements.
Rico Figliolini 0:05:56
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:05:58
It’s 300 and some change spots.
Rico Figliolini 0:06:02
Yeah, that’s what I thought, because anyone that goes through the Forum now obviously can’t go through all the Forum because of near Jason’s Deli. That’s where they’re building that two story or two floors, I guess, jewel boxes back there. And hopefully that should be finished when they said that was going to be finished, but not too far into the future, I’m sure. A few more months. It looks like they’re really on their way to getting that done. And that parking deck, I think, if I remember correctly, one of the options was also talked about sealing the wall park facing Amberfield. So this way there’s no, like it’s a full solid wall on the back there versus open.
Brian Johnson 0:06:41
That is correct. It is a solid wall as it faces the neighboring residence, so there won’t be any light pollution of headlights as cars make turns inside or park. So that’s part of it.
Rico Figliolini 0:06:54
Anything special? Any special features like EV charging station? Anything special that will be done to it?
Brian Johnson 0:07:01
There are going to be EV charging stalls. It’s going to have security cameras. It has special lighting to keep the light pollution down that are built into hooded locations along the walls. So the purpose of it is just to provide a parking deck that looks good from the outside. It ties in architecturally with the rest of the form, so it’s going to look the same as the current architectural features. And it screens the neighboring residents so they don’t have to have their quality of life affected by the operations within the parking deck.
Rico Figliolini 0:07:42
Right. I would imagine there would be immediate access from that parking deck through between the buildings to get to the forum. I guess. I’m not sure how they’re adjusting that.
Brian Johnson 0:07:51
But there is there’ll be two ways to get to the parking deck. One is under the arch right there by the big fountain.
Rico Figliolini 0:07:57
Right.
Brian Johnson 0:07:58
The other would be coming around the backside by Ted’s Montana grill. That would be the other way to get to and from the parking deck. There won’t be any way to get there from the north side of the.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:14
Start. That construction is going to start probably, I guess, somewhere in first quarter.
Brian Johnson 0:08:18
Correct.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:20
Do they know how long it’ll take to finish? Any estimate?
Brian Johnson 0:08:23
Nine months.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:24
Really? Okay. All right.
Brian Johnson 0:08:26
And once it’s done, they can start removing the remainder of the parking stalls in the middle boulevard, heading down towards and finishing up in front of Belk.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:36
Right. According to the plans, it looks like that’s where an entertainment stage would be built and some of the jewel boxes and a concierge area and stuff. Cool. So anyone that wants to come see, there will be plans presented of what this is going to look like, and then it’ll be taken up at the next city council meeting. And that’s where a vote would be. That next city council meeting.
Brian Johnson 0:08:59
Correct. September 26, two weeks later is when council would formally approve that via a vote. But they’ll see the designs in case they have questions and provide input. Yeah, have questions, and there might be some tweaking. They’re like, oh, we don’t like that. We like x. We like y better, or whatever.
Rico Figliolini 0:09:18
Right? All right, cool. So the other big thing that’s going to be happening at that work session will be discussion with city marshal and the regulations they’re going to be in place. Stuff like do you do car chases? What do you use it for? A bunch of things like that. But also the design of the vehicles. The vehicle wrap is going to be presented as well. So tell us a little bit about what type of regulations are going to be discussed and is there anything surprising along the way that you found, or tell us something.
Brian Johnson 0:09:51
So our city marshals are going to be post certified law enforcement officers. So they’re going to have the exact same authority that you would have as somebody who calls themselves a police officer. But when you have that, you’ve got to have policies in place to regulate how they use that authority. That come with being post certified law enforcement officers. So, for instance, use of force, what kind of guidelines are we going to give them to, say, the escalation of force or high speed pursuit, or when are they going to be authorized to chase a vehicle at a high rate of speed, turn on their sirens, things like that? You’ve got other little things like the vehicle use policy. Where can they drive the vehicle, how far? Because we’re letting them do use them as take home vehicles, which is very common the law enforcement community, and how far out do you let them drive? And then even the design of some of their uniforms and the wrap of the vehicles will be discussed so that, you know, this is all getting them in preparation for the November council meeting. And why that’s important is by November, I will have the chief marshal in place. I just concluded my interviews. We advertised for the position, and I just concluded last week my series of interviews of candidates. And I’ll start the negotiation of our first candidate to see about all the typical stuff, money and everything like that, right. We’ll have the chief marshal in place by November, and we’ll have the policies in place by then. We can have the vehicles wrapped by then, and all those things that you need. The intergovernmental agreements with some of the surrounding law enforcement agencies. And there’s a lot of know, like, how do we tie into the radios that Gwinnett County uses? That’s really important because they’re still our primary police department getting access to and set up so that our marshals can look at the entirety of our video surveillance system that we have in the city. We have a significant amount of cameras getting all those things accessed. I will be ready by November. And so the November city council meeting, we’re going to have a formal call it swearing in ceremony, where they’ll be sworn in as marshals, which theoretically is symbolic because they already have the authority. But that’ll be when we’ll invite the media. They’ll be available for interviews, we’ll kind of talk a little bit more about it. That is when they’re ready to start going out into the community and you’ll start seeing them out there doing their thing. Prior to that, I need to again have the policies that sets their left and right limit and we’re not quite there. So council is going to be fed policies over the next three work session and city council meetings in preparation for that November. So some of the ones on the September work session are going to be some of those policies like use of force and high school.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:22
When they vote on that, that would be in November, I’m assuming. Will there be public comment at that point on the regulations? How does that work? If citizens want to review it?
Brian Johnson 0:13:36
Policy would be adopted via ordinance, which has a public hearing component. So when it is presented, the public will certainly be able to make comment on the policy.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:52
And that would happen in November, I guess the public comment as well, or private.
Brian Johnson 0:13:57
Anytime, any of these, each of these policies requires a separate vote. Okay, so like use of force as individual officers, that’s a vote because that’s a standalone policy. Body cameras, when they’re turned on, when they’re supposed to be turned on, how long you store it, all that kind of stuff, that’s another policy and that’s voted on separately. So you’re going to have a series of these policies. It’s not just one amalgamation of all of these together, it’s individual policies that.
Rico Figliolini 0:14:29
So does that happen over time until November or in November?
Brian Johnson 0:14:33
Yeah, there’ll be a few over the next three council meetings.
Rico Figliolini 0:14:39
All right. So people should be aware of that. If they want to attend or put.
Brian Johnson 0:14:43
Up public, just look at, watch the website. The agendas go out no later than noon on Friday before the following Tuesday city council meeting. And if you see one of the policies on there that they’re voting on that’s of interest to you, then you’ll know that that’s the meeting that you should show up to.
Rico Figliolini 0:15:02
Got you. Cool. And the city wrap that design, the uniform design, that’s also all coming out at that work session on September twelveTH. Yes, I guess. All right, cool. These work sessions are great, like you said, because it just allows stuff to be discussed and get information or adjustments done before the actual city council meeting and vote. So that’s good. The city is doing that. The other thing, I guess, is with the hurricane season starting well, real quick, real quick, Rico. Sure.
Brian Johnson 0:15:36
One other thing you may want to talk about before we get off of the work session is the Pickleball study.
Rico Figliolini 0:15:42
Okay. All right. You’re right. That’s actually going to be presented prior to the beginning of the first thing of the work session.
Brian Johnson 0:15:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s part of the work session. We just may start the meeting early. Because that is the one thing that even though it’s a work session, I think council is going to open up the floor to anybody who’s there about the feasibility study. Because we had a lot of stakeholders that we invited to be part of this feasibility study. And we’ve invited them back, and we want them, as it’s fresh on their mind, the mayor is going to let if any of them have any comments that they want to make on it, they’ll do it there, which doesn’t usually happen at a work session, and it’ll only be that particular thing. But they’re going to open up the floor, buddy, make comments.
Rico Figliolini 0:16:33
So they’re going to make a presentation first and they’ll open up the floor. And if I understand correctly, is there anything you could say about that study prior to that meeting?
Brian Johnson 0:16:43
Yeah, what they’re going to do is they’re going to come back and they’re going to tell us how supportive our area, whether it’s inside of our corporate limits or the greater area outside our boundaries. But this part of north metro Atlanta, how much support there is for Pickleball, how big of a facility they think that should be constructed if we want to have a facility that’s hitting the sweet spot, it’s not too big, it’s not too small. And they’ve looked at really three different sizes of facilities and they’ll come back and they’ll tell us which one they think is the one that hits, that makes that tuning fork go off when it comes to use and support for it from the local community. So that’s the conclusion of the study as to which size would be that sweet spot for us to meet demand but not overbuild and not be able to fill it or don’t underbuild. Where is that, what number is that, how many are indoor, how many are outdoor, is there a food and beverage component? All of that is part of the study.
Rico Figliolini 0:17:57
Well, true. So, I mean, obviously a smaller ten quart place would really be more of an altar size, maybe going anywhere from a 24 to a 50 court or 40 court going from a regional to a national. They’re going to discuss, like you said, what that sweet spot is going to be for the city. And the city is going to be talking also about, or at least the proposal will talk about that private public partnership, what that could look like, I guess. Does the city take on the construction of it and then the rest of it is done by private industry? Or is it built with public private cooperation? That’s all going to be part of that discussion. I guess, or presentation.
Brian Johnson 0:18:40
Yeah, we can only go so far on that because one, I’m not going to have a private partner standing next to me saying we’ve already hammered out the details, we certainly can’t talk about location yet because we don’t currently own any property in which this would go.
Rico Figliolini 0:19:00
Will they make recommendations though, in the feasibility study as far as possible areas versus exact location?
Brian Johnson 0:19:08
Probably not, just because what it does is it makes it difficult for us to acquire it if somebody is like, oh, we heard that you’re interested because if a certain area of the city is conveyed to be a good place, you and I both know that you don’t have to know. There’s a lot of people that can then say, oh, they want this area of the city. Well the only place it makes sense is and then they can zero in on and so it just makes it difficult when you do that because when people think the city is the one or a city is the one behind a purchase, they’re like, oh, deep pockets, and then they start holding out for more money. So that’s why we can’t really I don’t want to get we certainly have locations that we have our eye on that we think it would work, but just if we talked about it yet, we could actually hurt ourselves and would have to pay more money than we might have to pay if we don’t.
Rico Figliolini 0:20:10
That also, I think if I remember correctly, that happened with the roundabout at Medlock Bridge when people found out that that’s where the roundabout was going to be before the property had to be purchased or parts of properties had to be purchased. Yeah, that was a bit of a problem at the time, I think. Oh yeah.
Brian Johnson 0:20:28
We had to ultimately condemn two of the slivers of property to get them to sell because their sale price was 300% higher than the appraised value.
Rico Figliolini 0:20:41
No doubt people want to make their money when they can, I guess. All right, cool. So people should be able to come, you should be able to attend and you should attend September twelveTH to find out more about these things. It’s going to be a heavy duty work session, probably a longer one than usual, I’m sure. So let’s also get on to a little bit about like I was saying before, the hurricane season is coming in. Some of these hurricanes are possibly going to be worse than usual. Certainly the category four that hit Florida and went through Florida, missed Peachtree corners. Really, we got some heavy rains, but it wasn’t bad. It had been worse and it skirted southeast of Georgia going up. But when I saw that, I think Bush Road got hit with no power at one point, I think during that or around that time. So a section of Bush Road, that area, those communities were without power for a few hours, I think. Does the city between power outages, possible floodings? We talked about this a little before and I didn’t even know this. I’ll admit that things are built based on a 50 year floodplain, a flood zone. I just assumed it was 100 or more. I didn’t realize it was only a 50 year mark. And people don’t even know. I think if you go to certain parks, you could actually see a 500 year mark of flood, a flood mark in some of the I saw that, I think it was Tilly Mill, one of the big parks. So we’ve been hit with major floods in certain parts of Gwinnett County at one time over the last 200 and 5500 years. Not to say that that would happen again, but how does the city look at weather, power outages? I know people sometimes next door say they say we’re a smart city, why do we keep when the wind blows, the power goes out or something? That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes I feel the same way when it’s not even storming and the power is going out or flickering. So how does the city address those things?
Brian Johnson 0:22:46
Well, let me unpack this and separate two components of what we really face in Peachtree Corners when it comes to severe weather and that’s flooding and power outage. Flooding, the city has much more of a direct role in that. So I’ll start with we’re part of the National Flood Insurance program with the federal government and FEMA, and we are also part of their community rating system, which is basically like ISO for fire, which is you get graded and the better you’re prepared for, say, fire, you get a better ISO rating. And the better ISO rating you get, the lower your homeowner’s insurance is, because insurance companies say, hey, we feel like that community is less apt to have a fire event destroy the property because the fire department and the water supply and everything is good. So we voluntarily enrolled in that program and we have a rating for the first time two years ago, I think we got, and we improved it last year, which helps everybody’s flood insurance, homeowners insurance, decrease the rate. But we have a stormwater management plan within the city and we do things and the stormwater user fee that you pay on your property tax bill every year, which is a fee based on how much impervious surface that you have in the city, which is surface that doesn’t allow water to percolate into the soil. So rooftop, driveway, sidewalk, things like that. What that goes to is the program of us managing the overall drainage infrastructure for the city. And we maintain, inspect and maintain and repair as needed. A lot of underground and even open drainage facilities, detention ponds, underground drainage lines, detention vaults, stream, bank restoration, keeping erosion from and we have creeks in the city, we have lakes in the city. We’ve got all this stuff that we have to manage because everybody’s water has to flow at some point into the public system. And that public system is our responsibility. So the city uses this money to both proactively make upgrades to our public drainage system and to make repairs. The result is we don’t necessarily have a flooding problem like a wholesale one. We do have isolated locations where you can get certain structures that are below grade and water flows kind of through their property, and we address it on a case by case basis, but we’re set up pretty well. One thing people have to remember is a lot of these subdivisions and homes were only designed back in the day to a 50 year flood event. And so that’s essentially like, handle rain that you would get once every 50 years. Well, weather has changed, and now we’re getting into 150 year flood events, and the standards have gone up on new builds. But we have a lot of subdivisions that were built 25 years older. And sometimes you just get a lot of water that hits in a very short period of time. And the drainage pipes can only handle so much water, and then water backs up until it’s like traffic. Rush hour is merely an example of trying to push so many cars down a road that has so many lanes all at once, and water is the same way. And so our flooding tends to be temporary when we have it in areas, and it just has got to let the system flush it out. But that’s the drainage part, the flooding part. Yes, it can happen when you get a lot of rain in a short period of time. Or I guess if we had a long rain, like days and days and days of it, where the water gets so soaked that it does not take any more water, that can also do it. But that is one now transitioning into electricity. As we all know, you lose electricity through a number of ways. Most of the time here, it’s due to falling trees or limbs into power lines. That’s how most of it happens here. Now, rain can actually, we could have an event. In fact, the storm, we had, what, two days ago? Two nights ago, we didn’t really have any high wind, we just had a lot of rain. And we actually had a really big tree fall into the roadway just because the ground got so saturated. It had been leaning just enough, and then just the roots were in ground that had become so that is one now when it comes to high winds, that can certainly wreak havoc. And when that happens, we react by having we had this, what, a month ago? Six weeks ago, we had the big.
Rico Figliolini 0:28:11
40, 50 miles an hour gust of.
Brian Johnson 0:28:13
Wind, not for long trees down here in the city. And our public works crews came in and started cutting trees that were blocking roads. Now, where we run into a problem is when trees are into live power lines, we can’t cut those trees and remove them by blocking roads until the power company shuts off the power. So it all depends on how many crews they have out and how many trees that are still laying in live power lines is how fast we can clear the road and how fast you get power. The best way to alleviate this, there’s the more inexpensive way, and that is Georgia Power goes through sections of the city, and they basically stand under the power lines. And they look up and they look at limbs that are hanging over the power lines and maybe a few trees that they feel are and they remove those. So a limb hanging over a power line falling doesn’t cut power because they’ve cut the limb back. And so that’s one way. And they have done that. We did a lot of that about a year and a half, two years ago in the Long Spalding Drive down at Neely Farm, gun and Road. There was a lot of it. East Jones Bridge. West Jones Bridge. They’re due to do another one of those. It’s also controversial. Sometimes people don’t like that, or sometimes the limbs that have to be removed are going to kill the tree. And so the whole tree has got to go. And some of those trees are actually not they’re on private property, and so some homeowners get upset about it. So that’s not without controversy either. So that’s one way to do it. And that’s the more inexpensive way to help protect the power lines. The best way is to what they call harden. And that is basically to bury and burying power lines is always the best way to protect and harden the system. But it’s very expensive.
Rico Figliolini 0:30:27
Has that been done and where has it been done in?
Brian Johnson 0:30:30
I mean, you know, you have know, Technology Park, all the power lines are buried, but in the neighbor residential neighborhoods, you oftentimes only have it inside the neighborhood. So, for instance, I live in Riverfield, inside a neighborhood, it’s buried. But where we tie in on East Jones Bridge is not. So if East Jones Bridge gets hit by a tree, we’re out of electricity. Now, power company also tries to do loop. They try to loop the electricity. So there’s a redundant or call it a secondary method to get electricity. So if you had a circle and there was a break in one part, you still have the ability to get electricity. The other way, that’s an expansion of the system. They try to do that as well, but it just comes down to money. And where Georgia Power is looking, there are other communities that have risks that are greater than ours. So I can’t speak on their process, but I do know that they use and we’ve loaned them or helped. Supplement their technology by using LiDAR to a form of radar to actually map where limbs were creating a risk to the lines. And so they’ve used technology to identify the more higher risk areas. But that’s the flooding and the electricity part and how it happens and how we address it. We certainly as a municipality are here when trees go down or blocking roads or people are stranded. We have an emergency response plan. We can stand up certain positions within the city. Our marshals will be another resource. When they start going out and work in the community in late November, they’re going to carry things like chainsaws in the trunk of their vehicles and they’ll be able to go out and do things like that. So it’s unfortunate. We all live with it. Weather is not getting any more calm.
Rico Figliolini 0:32:39
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Since 95, I think, perceptibly I’ve seen more harsher weather happening here. Anecdotally anyway, I’ve seen it, it is not going to get better. And they’re even talking about a harsh winter maybe.
Brian Johnson 0:32:57
And then you can get ice on the power lines and they get too heavy and you get power poles that will fall because of that. Or power lines snap. Yeah. Burying it is always the best, but it’s expensive and it requires sometimes more property and people’s yards and front entrances of subdivisions. And I wish it was easy and inexpensive, but it isn’t. And so that’s where we’re at.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:27
I think people just, if they really are in need of electricity, for whatever reason, they should make sure they have a generator, a gas generator or generac, something that’s installed using gas or propane or something like that. If you really need it for some reason, that’s a good way of backing that up. I just want to go through a couple of quick things and then we could do a wrap. A couple of things I’m just curious about right at this point. Charlie Roberts, what we call the Charlie Roberts property, which is the property which is not Charlie Roberts property anymore. It was bought by a different company. I can’t pronounce the name right now. Thank you. And I could have if I had it written in front of me, maybe, but I think they’ve moved a few things. But when are they actually going to do you have any idea when they’re actually going to break ground behind Chase and HW Steakhouse there? I guess.
Brian Johnson 0:34:29
In November they’re going to start site work. The development is called solis. Solis. And they’re going to break ground in November or not break they’re going to start site work, prepping the pad for them to go vertical. But they’re going to start in November.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:47
Okay. And they’re probably going to take six to twelve months, I guess, to build it out.
Brian Johnson 0:34:51
Yeah, it’ll be a twelve month project.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:53
Yeah. So I mean, the other one that’s north of Racetrack and the wine store that Span, they’re already preselling. I don’t know if they finished any units yet. I think they might have some units finished, but they’re pre selling units there now. They’re actually doing tours. I think they actually have a complete unit or two. So they’re moving along, it sounds like.
Brian Johnson 0:35:16
Yeah, that’s broadstone. The apartment units. I do believe there’s a section that’s done, but the townhomes have gone vertical. You can see those ones closest to the liquor store there. And then they’ve got the office, the commercial building that was existing there, it’s being rebuilt. That’s going up right now, too. So I think most what they’re going vertical with has actually gone vertical.
Rico Figliolini 0:35:50
Lots of stuff going on. I think, obviously, intuitive, is further along where they want to be. Some of the building looks like it’s actually the outsides are actually a little closer to finish and they’re probably working on the inside as well. Quick trip demoing. There’s nothing that they have to they’re just going to build right on where they have it. They’re probably going to take up that same building pad, I bet, to be.
Brian Johnson 0:36:16
Okay because otherwise it’s a little bit bigger. But they’re basically building a newer store right on the very same location. But these kind of things, as you know, it’s a competition. Racetrack has their floor plan and their site plan, and QT has got to compete with it. They’ve got to have certain stations and a flow about it. So their store was showing its age. So they just said, we’re going to know it’s not uncommon. We had Chick fil A do the same thing. We had Wendy’s do the same thing, just upgrading their store. So, yeah, QTS is going down to the ground and building a brand new one on the same they do.
Rico Figliolini 0:37:00
You know, if they’re going to assuming they’re also going to take out the origin of the gas tanks underground or are they going to keep what they have there?
Brian Johnson 0:37:08
No, they’re going to keep it there. I don’t know if they may be going to more pumps, like one more additional pump on each of the islands. I don’t know that for sure. But tanks are staying underground.
Rico Figliolini 0:37:24
So they’re in good condition, I’d imagine. I just keep wondering why half the pumps are yellow bagged over there. But I guess that’s a question for them because maybe they’re not getting enough supply or something. The other building that I saw was the BB T building, which right across from CVS, part of the Forum, not part of that property, but an extension of it that they just gated that out and they’re pulling things out of it. It’s going to remain a bank, it sounds like.
Brian Johnson 0:37:55
Yeah, it’s a credit union of some sort. I don’t remember the name. I had not personally heard of this credit union, but I know they’re doing a renovation over there. I think they’re removing some of the drive in stuff. Nobody uses drive in really anymore.
Rico Figliolini 0:38:13
Right. ATM, probably.
Brian Johnson 0:38:15
Right? ATM. Or maybe they’re even removing some of the lanes completely because there’s just not enough because I think they have like four lanes that you could go into drive through.
Rico Figliolini 0:38:25
Yes.
Brian Johnson 0:38:26
So, yeah, there’s some renovation of some sort, but it is staying in the financial it’s another financial institution.
Rico Figliolini 0:38:34
Anything new going on that we should be aware of? Revitalizing wise or redevelopment wise? Anything special that pops out over the last month and a half?
Brian Johnson 0:38:44
I mean, Redevelopment Authority has got two big projects they’re working on on the south side of the city. One is some trailhead locations where you’re talking about being able to drive your car and park it there with bathrooms and playground, picnic areas and it’ll tie into the multi use trail system. And then we’ve got some housing going on down the south side as well that we’re going to help try and facilitate the construction of what is oftentimes called starter home workforce housing. But equity product. These are buildings you purchase, you don’t rent. But to try to do it in a way that it’s affordable, meaning it’s market rate. But we’re going to try to help facilitate keeping it from the owners, from maxing out the amount they can get for it because that tends to price people right out of the market.
Rico Figliolini 0:39:48
There’s no way to keep it to one purchaser, someone that buys it, that lives there, versus someone picking up ten of these properties as an investment.
Brian Johnson 0:39:59
You mean owner occupied?
Rico Figliolini 0:40:01
Correct. Thank you.
Brian Johnson 0:40:03
Well, interestingly enough, we are looking at potentially an ordinance where we are going to limit the commercial purchasing of equity products in which some company buys, say, ten townhomes, and then they turn around and rent the townhomes. And that defeats the purpose of trying to get somebody who is an owner occupied tenant of the building, which we feel increases the odds that they put roots in the community. They own something here, so they’re like, you know what, I may want to stay here a long time. I may want to get civically active and get my kids enrolled versus sometimes not all the time. There’s always exceptions to this. Sometimes renters feel that they’re much more flexible in where they live and so they don’t get as involved in the community because they’re thinking, well, I can leave very quickly and I may not stay here, so I’m not going to get involved like I would if I own. So that’s generally the debate between two products.
Rico Figliolini 0:41:12
There’s more pride, I think, when you own it and more investment also that you take care of it because you do own it. It’s an investment in what you can sell later at a better price maybe.
Brian Johnson 0:41:24
Yeah, I agree with you there’s. Again, always exceptions, but I think if you own something and if it gets damaged, it’s on you to fix it. You tend to take care of things more than if you were a renter.
Rico Figliolini 0:41:36
Yeah, and I think I’ve seen it at least in the city of Atlanta and in some parts outside, like Habitat for Humanity, is that right? Yeah. And some other organizations that actually do these types of they’ll do ten or 15 home structures like that in an area. I mean, has the city thought about working with organizations like that? Because those end up for sure in the hands of people that could use them, that are starter homes like that.
Brian Johnson 0:42:07
Oh, they will be a part of this project. We’ve already oh, yeah, absolutely.
Rico Figliolini 0:42:13
Excellent. Do you know when that’s happening or when the regulation that you talked about, the owner occupied stuff, the limitation on that? Any idea?
Brian Johnson 0:42:23
We’re internally, city attorney, community development director and I are kind of looking at case law and other precedent to see how far we can push that. We’re probably a month or two away of presenting council, something for them to consider.
Rico Figliolini 0:42:41
All right, cool. All right, great. I think we’ve covered a lot of the stuff. Peachtree Corners Festival is coming up in September. I know that the second annual Electrify Expo is that what we’re calling it? Is happening during the I think during the festival last year. The second day, maybe. Yeah. Cool. And Jim Ellis is one of several probably dealerships that bring in their cars to it, and anyone can actually register to bring their own electric cars, vehicles to this event to show off.
Brian Johnson 0:43:16
Yeah, it is an EV car show of any type, and we’ve had everything from just your run of the know, off the line electric vehicle, Tesla, whatever, to very unique retrofitted vehicles, some vintage stuff that’s been, I mean, the Batmobile, just some interesting stuff. So, yeah, if it’s EV and you want to bring it out, or you want to come and see some of the unique EV options that are out there, come to that part of the show, I mean, it’ll be in the same parking lot as the vintage car show that’s associated with okay.
Rico Figliolini 0:43:55
And I think I remembered last year, even Paul Duke Stem had their electric race team there with their car that they built.
Brian Johnson 0:44:03
Correct.
Rico Figliolini 0:44:04
And they’ve been racing around the region actually ever since then, I think, or before. So kind of kind of cool stuff. So if you have an electric vehicle that looks interesting that you put together, definitely go to the city’s website, register, and show up and show off your stuff. So that’s a good thing. Great. I think we’ve hit more than I thought we had. So it’s all good. Appreciate, Brian, that you join me every month to talk about these things. Eventually, at some point, I’d like to actually do this live. You all are watching this. If you’re watching it live, it’s actually a simulcast live stream, which means that we’ve recorded it, but we’re streaming this live on our Facebook pages and YouTube as well. But at some point we may be looking at TikTok doing some of this on there or on X or Twitter, do we call it that? I don’t know, space where we might be able to stream some stuff, take some live questions. So still working that up. Looking for a sponsor if there’s anyone out there that would like us to do that and just to share that. We’re also doing a sports podcast. So I have a former student intern that’s actually taking up and doing a sports podcast with student athletes and such. So that’ll be a video podcast, follow up with an article. We’re going to be doing that once or twice a month, so check that out when it comes out. And if you have any ideas that you’d like to share with us about coverage and stuff, certainly do that. I want to thank our sponsors again, EV Remodeling Inc. And Clearwave Fiber for stepping up, for supporting us for these podcasts as well as the publications and doing the things that we do. Journalism isn’t always easy. We try to get the facts right as best we can. This is why I do these podcasts also, and Brian does it with me to make sure that we’re putting out good, accurate information versus what you might see sometimes posted that may be totally wrong or inaccurate. So this is what we’re trying to do. And sometimes we’ll make mistakes on the print reporter side, but between me and Brian will clarify these things as we go. So thank you, Brian. Appreciate you being with us.
Brian Johnson 0:46:15
Thank you, Rico. Thanks for having me.
Rico Figliolini 0:46:17
Sure. Thanks, guys.
Related
Podcast
Inside DreamHack Atlanta: New Features, Esports, and a Growing Georgia Gaming Community [Podcast]
Published
1 week agoon
September 27, 2024
DreamHack Atlanta 2024, from October 4-6
In this episode of UrbanEBB, Rico talks with Lyndsay Postell from DreamHack Atlanta to discuss the excitement surrounding this year’s event. Lyndsay reveals new experiences, including a tabletop gaming tavern and robotics demonstrations, while sharing how DreamHack continues to evolve with its diverse community of gamers, cosplayers, and tech enthusiasts. Whether you’re into competitive esports, casual LAN parties, or discovering the latest indie games, DreamHack has something for everyone!
Join us as Lyndsay dives into how DreamHack Atlanta is growing its family-friendly offerings while staying true to its hardcore gaming roots. From cosplay competitions to charity events and creator hubs, this year’s event promises to be an unforgettable weekend for gaming fans of all ages. Don’t miss this insider look at one of the biggest gaming festivals in North America!
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – DreamHack Atlanta
00:01:24 – Excitement for Upcoming Events and Mobile Esports
00:02:52 – Innovative Products and Exciting Partnerships
00:04:43 – Enhancing E-Sports and Gaming Community Experiences
00:08:43 – Millennials Bringing Kids and Family to Gaming Events
00:10:06 – A Family and Community Affair
00:13:03 – Indie Playground at Dreamhack
00:15:30 – Dreamhack Dallas Boosts Indie Developers
00:18:03 – Vibrant Atlanta Cosplay Community Shines at DreamHack
00:22:10 – Call of Duty Championship Weekend
00:24:36 – Passionate Creator Hub and Exciting Guests
00:26:35 – Charity Initiatives and Live Streaming
00:29:23 – Celebrating Atlanta’s Tech Community and STEM Initiatives
Podcast Transcript
Transcript:
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hey, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of UrbanEbb here in Peachtree Corners, the city that lives and breathes smart city stuff just north of Atlanta. And we have a great guest today from DreamHack Atlanta, Lyndsay Postell. Hey, Lyndsay. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:18 – Lyndsay Postell
Hey, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to talk about DreamHack and get to hang out with you for a bit.
00:00:24 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, me too. I’ve been going to DreamHack for the last three years. Two of my kids are actually following me there this year.
00:00:32 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh, that’s so fun.
00:00:33 Rico Figliolini
Yeah, they’re going to be doing some social media, some stuff like that. One of them wants to be a creator, so she’s checking it out also.
00:00:40 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh, I’m so excited.
00:00:40 – Rico Figliolini
She’s excited. She actually just bought all her gaming stuff computer set up everything.
00:00:49 – Lyndsay Postell
Did you get like the whole pc rig, the cool headphones and everything?
00:00:52 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, everything. The chair, I mean everything. And everything matches because she’s a girl. So everything has to match.
00:01:01 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh, you gotta have, all of my stuff is white like I love everything to look like really white and clean. So I get that.
00:01:06 – Rico Figliolini
There you go. And that’s exactly what she did. Everything’s white. Even the CPU, looking inside the CPU, it’s all white in there. So it costs a bit more but, you know.
00:01:16 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, it’s worth it. It’s worth it.
00:01:20 – Rico Figliolini
Apparently. So she’ll be coming, too. So we’re all excited. We can’t wait to get there next weekend the 4th through the 6th.
00:01:23 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah October 4th through the 6th
00:01:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, yeah. So it’s going to be cool and I can’t wait for the Call of Duty mobile championship either. Million dollar prize.
00:01:39 – Lyndsay Postell
I know it’s amazing.
00:01:41 – Rico Figliolini
I know, it’s incredible.
00:01:42 – Lyndsay Postell
And, I mean, I think that I applaud the people who compete in COD Mobile or any mobile esports incredibly because I feel like I fat thumb things so incredibly. Like, I’m terrible at mobile anything. So, yeah, you’ll see me playing Candy Crush. They can handle COD Mobile. I’ll be on Candy Crush.
00:02:05 – Rico Figliolini
You know what’s funny? My daughter has me. We’re in a group, family group, playing Fortnite. But then I’m off playing Call of Duty on my mobile device sometimes. I get to Legendary every season, but I can’t get enough points that make sense. These guys are just ripping it over there.
00:02:19 – Lyndsay Postell
I know. It’s insane. It’s insane. Some of the skills and how quick people are on those little screens, I don’t get it. I’ll stay to event planning and organization, but I absolutely love seeing it happen because it’s like magic.
00:02:35 – Rico Figliolini
It’s fantastic. So tell me, so this year is going to be big, right? Every year is a little bigger than the last, I think. What big changes are coming this year to ‘24, to DreamHack?
00:02:46 – Lyndsay Postell
That is a super great question. So like the product team and the partner, I mean, everybody’s been working super, super hard to continue innovating and making new products. One of the things I’m really excited about is the new tabletop tavern. So we are using one of the auditoriums and turning it into this like D&D tavern that people can go and enjoy live experiences and one shots and really dive into that tabletop experience. And I mean, that’s just one of the things like we’re partnering as well with Georgia First Robotics to work with the community, but also bring robotics to the show.
00:03:14 – Rico Figliolini
That’s a student-driven thing, isn’t it?
00:03:16 – Yes. So it’s a 5013C or C3. I always get that wrong. And it’s just a phenomenal org. And I think they work with K through 12 all the way into the college space. And they have a little Lego League that’s so sweet for like the younger kids but it’s really, really cool, so excited about that. And small spoiler, we might have some of the bots running around during registration in the registration area for people but you didn’t hear that from me.
00:04:00 – Rico Figliolini
That would be great. I can’t wait to see it. As far as this week, I know Atlanta, Georgia is becoming a bigger gaming environment, space, I think. There’s a lot more startups here. So it’s just more so than some people might think. The same way that Texas is big in anime. Who would think Texas would be big in anime?
00:04:24 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah.
00:04:25 – Rico Figliolini
So, and Georgia is the same way, I feel like. who would think Georgia is like big in the space. So the week that DreamHack is happening here next week is Games Week Georgia. Which is sort of an overlay of other things, right? Esports summit, creative summit. How do you all, you know, how does that enhance the experience? How are you all collaborating?
00:04:48 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, yeah. So super excited to be working with Skillshot and Ghost Gaming on the Georgia games. Or the, I always mess it up, Games Week Georgia activations. But I mean one of our big goals and especially I mean, my official title is product manager of communities and associations. So one of the things that we always try to do is really work with the local community, work with the local orgs that are there that are really empowering the community. The fellow gamers, the fellow nerds, the fellow fans. So, really excited for Games Week Georgia. I mean, Skillshot and Ghost are both amazing partners. And by doing this, we’re able to give people a broader experience. DreamHack is of course kind of the the cherry on top and, you know, the masterpiece at the end of the week. But this allows everyone in the community to be able to network and engage and go to different events that might be more specific to their type of gaming or what they’re interested in, in the gaming ecosystem. So this is, I want to say, our second year doing Games Week Georgia. I might be wrong on that, but it’s been just amazing working with them like they are so, so phenomenal and i’m really excited to stop by a lot of the events myself honestly.
00:06:11 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I think it’s going to be great for you know professionals even the casual gamer to be attending some of this stuff because the future is changing right? It’s exploding, trends in this market.
00:06:21 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. Well and that’s also something that’s like really important to us is every single product we build at DreamHack, we want to make sure that we have something for everybody. So whether it’s like you’re just interested in gaming, you’re a professional gamer, you’re in the collegiate sphere, whatever it is, we want to make sure that you can go to DreamHack and still have a weekend full of activities and things to participate in. And I think that we’ve really been, like you mentioned, kind of the ecosystem growing. And I think that’s really accurate. I think that the gaming ecosystem as a whole has been really blowing up, especially COVID was a really interesting time for all of gamers, because a lot of people who weren’t gamers threw themselves into gaming. And now that we are, you know, back out of that bubble, people really want to come together and meet those online friends and, you know, build those communities together. So, well, I’m, I mean, I’m just, I’m really excited to see. There’s always one moment that I catch during every show that I’ve seen. And there’s many more, but there’s always like two friends that run up and hug and it’s their first time seeing each other. And it’s like, you know, these best friends from online getting together and getting to enjoy the weekend. And I’m really excited about that. And, you know, we have community gatherings, which are similar to like community meetups, all for that. And yeah, not to get all hallmark-y, but I really love how the community comes together for DreamHack for sure.
00:07:51 – Rico Figliolini
You know, it’s amazing. I think sort of my generation of parents and stuff look at their kids and they’re like, they’re socked away in their room and stuff. They’re playing on, you know, they’re playing on their games. They’re on Discord. I mean, even my youngest, who’s almost 21, he’s communicating with his friends all online. And then they show up to these conventions. It’s almost like, well, that’s the complete opposite because now they’re socially outbound. And my daughter, who’s the middle child, she’s playing with gamers on the West Coast. So there’s a three-hour time difference. So she’s playing until three in the morning sometimes, whereas she’s midnight, you know? And so it’s crazy.
00:08:36 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. No, I mean, it’s awesome. I also feel like what we’re seeing in kind of the millennial generation having kids is we’re starting to see like a lot of these millennials grew up playing PC games or console games. And so we’re seeing these really cute moments with like their kids growing up. And one of the really cool things, I think it was my second DreamHack ever. This will be my eighth DreamHack. But I was talking to someone and they had their like two-year-old kid with them. And they were I’ve been going to DreamHack for years. I’ve been to the ones in Sweden. I’ve been all over for DreamHack. And now my daughter is here with me and this is so cool. And that was just like sold for me. I was like, okay, this is one of my favorite memories. So yeah.
00:09:20 – Rico Figliolini
And I can, and I can see that because I think it was last year maybe or the year before, I met a couple from Wisconsin, young couple, 12-year-old kid. The father drove from Wisconsin to Atlanta to make sure he carried, he had the CPU for the bring your own computer, right? And so he brought it. He didn’t trust it on the plane. His wife flew with the kid. He drove all the way in and they met up and he was playing Fortnite the rest of the afternoon and the rest of the day, I guess, or weekend.
00:09:52 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh my gosh.
00:09:52 – Rico Figliolini
It’s a family affair.
00:09:53 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, it is a family affair. And it’s also, it’s, you know, it’s a community affair, if you will. You get to meet your friends or watch some of your favorite like competitive gamers compete against each other or you know watch the cosplay competition or if you’re into cosplay you can enjoy all of the perks of the cosplay corner and the meetups and gatherings and yeah that particular story is really cool. And the byoc is our big bring your own computer LAN party that’s like the staple of DreamHack. And it’s on Friday. Seeing everyone wheeling in their you know chairs and these giant totes and PCs and like the commitment of the gamers that come to dreamhack for byoc is incredible. But the atmosphere is unmatched when we’re all set up. It’s incredible.
00:10:52 – Rico Figliolini
Do you, doing it for eight years now, I mean, you saw the growth of it from eight years ago. Do you see the type of person changing that you see there?
00:11:00 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. So, and I apologize, my eighth DreamHack. So, you know, we have about two to three each year.
00:11:09 – Rico Figliolini
So yeah, that’s true.
00:11:10 – Lyndsay Postell
But I think I do. I mean, I think back to my first DreamHack. And I think the biggest difference is that we’re seeing a lot more families coming in. And we’re seeing a younger crowd starting to really come in and it’s been really cool. But we still have that amazing core like hardcore gamers. Our byoc crowd, the competitive crowd. So it’s not that it’s changing in a way. I think it’s more growing and that just kind of speaks to the products that we build and how it’s becoming more inclusive for everybody, which I think is pretty cool.
00:11:48 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I think so too. If you go to, if anyone that goes to the website to find out more information, there’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s just like, there’s something for everybody in that list of speakers, events during the weekend. Yeah. So many things.
00:12:07 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. I mean, we have the DreamHack Theater, which is our panels room, which is just packed full of incredible panels. Our community campground is where the community gatherings happen. And that’s packed full. We have the largest artist alley and indie playground that we’ve ever had in North America. And I think the largest indie playground that DreamHack has ever had and you know there’s going to be like many events happening like the indie mixer and you know it’s going to be, it’s going to be a really good show. I’m really excited for it. I’m ready to get on the plane and be there.
00:12:43 – Rico Figliolini
And you’re coming from Cincinnati. So that’s where the weather is better on the day that we’re recording this because the hurricane Helene is coming in.
00:12:52 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Sending love to all of my friends in Atlanta right now. Cause I know that’s rough.
00:12:58 – Rico Figliolini
Kind of calm right now, but it’s going to be crazy later. So tell us also a little bit more about the indie playground. What does that look like? What does it encompass?
00:13:12 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, so I’m super biased because I am the product manager that gets to oversee the indie playground. But the indie playground, we always try to work with local or just phenomenal indie orgs to help curate the space. So we’re working with orgs like Women in Gaming International, IGDA. We’re working with GGDA, which is the Georgia Game Developers Association, the Indie Cluster. We’re working with Black Voices in Gaming as well. And so what this looks like is this time we will have around 60 different indie developers all exhibiting different games. A lot of them are not out yet. A lot of them are demos. So it’s kind of the first time that people can come and play these games or play test them.
00:14:00 – Rico Figliolini
Oh, okay.
00:14:02 – Lyndsay Postell
We have a little mixer happening on Friday just for the developers and some publishers as well. Because overseeing the indie playground, I think, yes, we want to create something that’s incredible for the attendees, but we also want to create something that’s really, really accessible and valuable for the developers who are taking the time to travel out and be there and exhibit and spend hours and hours on the show floor talking. And so one of the ways we do that currently is we waive all of the booth fees for the indie developers to make it like to lower the barrier for people to be able to exhibit or develop. Because some of these people are, you know, they, some of these developers, it’s just them. And, you know, it’s just their kind of their baby and their project and we want to support them and try to get as many eyes as we can. And so we also have something in our, the DreamHack app if you download that called Quests and we have quests all through the festival. And one of the quests is to run to the indie playground and wish list one of the games that you enjoy or vote in an audience choice award, which we do throughout the weekend. So I could talk about the indie playground for forever. You might have to stop me because it’s like my favorite.
00:15:14 – Rico Figliolini
Well, I could see why too. I mean, there was someone from, your team told us about DreamHack Dallas, where one of the indie game developers a few days later, ended up getting a VC calling them and investing in their company.
00:15:26 – Lyndsay Postell
Yes. So that’s Banjo Toad Studio. They’re absolutely phenomenal. So if you guys stop at DreamHack, make sure to check them out. But yeah, they have a game called 1000 Cuts. The developer is so sweet and so kind, but he emailed us. And this was before we even sent him, you know, information about Atlanta. And he said, hey, I just want to thank you guys. Because of DreamHack, we’re now fully funded. And I was like, oh, my gosh, that’s incredible. And, you know, it really, it validates the work that we’re doing for sure. But I was just so happy for that developer. And I’m really excited for the developers that are going to be in Atlanta as well.
00:15:59 – Rico Figliolini
Sure. And he’ll be there too. You know, it just gives a whole different value to it. It’s not just a gaming place. You know, so it’s completely different now. You know, the other thing going on, obviously, that we can’t ignore, besides VR that has been around for a while, right? But the AI-driven games, driven games also like you know like real engine and other software. Do you see, what do you see as a future for DreamHack festivals like or is there anything happening now in this festival about with VR and AI driven stuff?
00:16:42 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. So for, we do have a huge like VR free play area where people can come in and do all these VR games. And it’s always, it’s really really fun to do but also to watch because, I mean, I’m sure you’ve all seen the clips online of people like you know going crazy with VR sets on and you have no idea what’s happening but it’s entertaining on both sides right? So it’s just a really, really cool activation. I mean as far as AI, that’s mainly the developers you know like if they use AI programs to build their games or help code out games. But as far as DreamHack currently that is all us, that is still us and Excel sheets and a lot of Slack messages. And yeah.
00:17:31 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Well, let’s move away from the gaming for a little bit because cosplay is a big thing also. And I think there’s a lot more programming going on. And you’re overseeing it. So tell us a little bit about that, that community and how that’s going to be, what that’s going to look like here in the next week or so.
00:17:49 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, the first thing to state about the Atlanta cosplay community is they are so passionate. It is such an incredible, vibrant community. And this is the first time where cosplay has been on my plate that I’ve been overseeing it for Atlanta so I’m really excited to get to work with them. We’re gonna have a phenomenal cosplay competition on Saturday on our main stage. I believe that starts at 4 p.m and then we also are going to have a community gathering with Beltline cosplay we have photo cubes attached to the cosplay corner for photo shoots for cosplayers and all attendees whoever would like to come up and take like really cool themed photos. The cosplay corner itself has a lounge inside of it just for cosplayers to be able to sneak away. I always say take the wig off kick the heels off for a second and be able to rest and relax so really excited to get to work with the Atlanta community firsthand for the first time and yeah. Dallas was the first time that the new cosplay team took over cosplay and it was so phenomenal so I’m really excited to be able to bring that and you know multiply that by the passion of the community.
00:18:58 – Rico Figliolini
I’m really excited to see it.
00:19:01 – Lyndsay Postell
We also have a drag show called the Drag and Drop Drag Show that’s happening on Friday and then all of the drag artists that we have do cosplays of various game characters. So it’s really fun like everything we do. Even though you would think like oh, why is drag, how does that relate to gaming like, oh easy they’re, you know characters. So it’ll be really fun. There’s going to be a lot of entertaining stuff. Main stage is going to be packed.
00:19:30 – Rico Figliolini
Wow. It’s going to be exciting. I mean there’s such a massive crowd that’s going to be attending. I’m sure you know we have Atlanta, we have local flavor, we have people coming in from local communities. How do you handle international gamers that may be coming into Atlanta? How does that work?
00:19:48 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, I mean, we do have people from all over the States, all like tons of different countries that fly into a DreamHack. And it’s not even just for our big competitions like the COD Mobile stuff. It’s really for all of the content, for the BYOC, for the experience. So, I mean, one of the biggest things that we do is we just really try to focus on accessibility as a whole, because obviously, we have every type of walk of life coming in. And so we want to make sure that anyone can sit down and understand what’s happening on main stage or enjoy the COD Mobile Tournament or whatever is happening. So the best way to kind of support international gamers is just making sure that everything we do is thought of from every single angle and every single walk of life. And so it’s accessible for everybody. But yeah, it is really cool when I’m walking around and I’m hearing all these different dialects and languages and it’s like, wow, this is really incredible. It’s really fun.
00:20:49 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. I mean, it’s between that and everything else going on.
00:20:53 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah.
00:20:54 – Rico Figliolini
Esports is another big thing, right? Competition within that. We hadn’t really spoken about that yet. And I know that’s been there, too, especially with the gaming side of it and the betting side of it also if you will. Well the franchises of it. So tell us, you know, a little bit about that type of draw and what’s coming here as far as Esports goes.
00:21:15 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, so just off the top of my head, I know we have like 20 Esports competitions that’ll be happening. Starting with the big one million dollar COD Mobile Tournament, all the way down to, we will have a ton of tournaments happening in our free play area that any attendee can walk up, sign up for and play. So there’s going to be, I mean, off the top of my head, kind of any game title you can think of. I think there’s going to be a tournament that a lot of people can engage in. And so it’ll be really exciting. If you want to come and compete or try, you know, playing something in Freeplay Rico, you should, because it’d be really fun.
00:21:51 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I think so. I think I’ll do that. Yeah. As far as COD, the Call of Duty part, is that championship through the whole weekend, or is that, how is that going to actually work?
00:22:04 – Lyndsay Postell
So super transparently, I don’t have that schedule off the top of my head. I know it is on our website if there’s more info there, but I am 99% sure that is through the entire weekend because I mean, the hype of that has been building up around that is, you know, going to last a week.
00:22:24 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, yeah, it’s a big thing. A million dollars. No one’s going to like, not look at that. As far as the, you know, we’ve spoken about the other stuff, the artist alley, I’m sure there’s, that’s going to be huge as well. I liked it last year, but there’s the conference part or the vendor part as well, right?
00:22:48 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. Yeah. So like I mentioned, I mean, we’re going to have the largest Artist Alley and Indie Expo we’ve ever had. But the expo itself is also the largest expo that we have had as well. I mean, we have more stores, more businesses, more merch that’s coming in. One thing that’s really notable is we are going to have, we have something called the Georgia Pavilion, which is a section inside of the expo with local Georgia businesses that we bring in and, you know, make sure that we want to also highlight the Georgia ecosystem. Again, working with the community. So they will be in the expo. They’ll have a nice section there so yeah the expo will be really cool. That’s also where the Georgia First Robotics stuff will be throughout the weekend if you want to come check them out and learn more about them as well. Yeah, the expo is going to be really cool this year.
00:23:38 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. Have we touched upon what, you know, I mean there’s so much going on there.
00:23:44 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing that I do want to mention that I don’t think I’ve talked about yet is the creators that we have coming to the show. So we have over 500 approved creators that are going to be there from all different types of streaming platforms. And we have something called the Creator Hub where you can literally just walk by and it’s like lined with PCs of your favorite streamers and creators just streaming live there. So like your daughter will be super excited to see that.
00:24:16 – Rico Figliolini
I think so.
00:24:17 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah. But it’s really phenomenal. And the Creator Hub team are, again, I know I keep saying it’s so cool and everyone’s so passionate, but it’s, it’s true. Like they are very passionate about taking care of the creators. So there will be meet and greets as well at the creator hub. You know, we’re going to have on Main Stage, Dimension 20 and like Brennan Lee Mulligan coming back again. And there will be a meet and greet with him at the creator hub. You know, some of the big names that we’re going to have there are like Dr. Lupo, you know, so there’s incredible names. And I love the Creator Hub.
00:24:54 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I forget who it was. I think it was last year. Maybe it was the year before they were in a cube in the middle. So what was that? That was like he was there.
00:25:00 – Lyndsay Postell
Oh, yeah. So that was Ludwig.
00:25:05 – Rico Figliolini
Ludwig. That was 72 hours he was in there?
00:25:07 – Lyndsay Postell
Yes, he was in there for 72 hours and I think he made like two times his charity goal. But that was that was so fun. And I mean I have to give you an insider peek it was even funnier after the festival closed and it was just like the staff cleaning up and getting everything ready for the next day and he was still just kind of in the box and we were like, Hi Ludwig, sorry we can’t help you, hope you’re okay. You know like just walking around this empty convention center, I mean BYOC was going on like you know across the convention hall but it was really just him alone in this box at night. And I felt a little bad, but it was phenomenal. It was for charity.
00:25:52 – Rico Figliolini
People loved it.
00:25:54 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah, it was super, super fun. I mean, last year we also had T-Pain came by and he streamed at the Creator Hub. And I mean, this year with Dr. Lupo and Brennan Lee Mulligan and Anjali and like a bunch of different people coming in. I’m really excited. We also, the one other thing I don’t think I’ve touched on is the charity work that we do. So that’s something that I help oversee as well. And we’re going to have six incredible charities also stationed in the expo. And we have a week-long stream-a-thon that’s hosted by a creator called BB Jess. She’s also our main stage host for Atlanta. And that week-long stream-a-thon with a bunch of different creators leads all the way up to Sunday on the main stage where we close out the stream-a-thon. And all of that money goes directly to those six incredible charities. So that’s always really, really fun. And the charities love it. They get to come up on stage and do fun little games and skits with BB Jess. And so I’m really excited about that. And that’s part of our Dream Big initiative, which oversees, that’s kind of what we call our charity leg. So yeah.
00:27:09 – Rico Figliolini
That’s cool to see that you all are giving back to the community like that. Are you guys streaming as well online like Twitch or any of the other platforms? So if someone can’t come can they watch it?
00:27:20 – Lyndsay Postell
Yeah so some of our content will be streamed. Some of our content can’t be streamed, you know, just because of music or whatever it is. But if you, a lot of our channels are like DreamHack on Twitch, or, you know, DreamHack NA, I would also definitely check us out on our Twitter or our Instagrams, which is DreamHack North America or the umbrella kind of DreamHack account, because we’ll be posting about that as well. So yeah, I think that, for example, I believe the Cosplay competition will be streamed, which will be really exciting. And I think that’s going to be on just the main DreamHack channel. But don’t quote me on that because it might be, we have a couple of side channels. So if you look up DreamHack, you’ll find it on Twitch.
00:28:06 – Rico Figliolini
Right. Right. So DreamHack, they can either Google DreamHack Atlanta or come to DreamHack.com/Atlanta, I guess. Cool. I think, you know, I think we’ve covered everything. There’s anything you think, Lyndsay, that we should be adding to this? Let me know.
00:28:28 – Lyndsay Postell
No. I mean, I just want to like, I want to thank Atlanta for having us back again. This is, you know, we’re celebrating, I think, our sixth year back in Atlanta. And it’s one of the, DreamHack is one of the longest running North American festivals at this point. And it’s just really such an honor to be back in Atlanta. It’s one of my personal favorite cities. I mean, the community is just full of legends and vibrancy and community. So it’s always just an honor to get to work with like the school districts and you know help out the collegiate students and help out all the students. And Atlanta is just amazing so just a huge thank you, while I’m on the podcast, to Atlanta in general for having us back because it’s phenomenal.
00:29:16 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. And being that I’m based in Gwinnett county out of Peachtree Corners we do a lot of stuff with autonomous vehicles. I mean, we’re out there doing things with technology that other cities are not. So we have a STEM school here in Peachtree Corners, STEM high school. They may probably be participating with the robotics part as well. So there’s a lot going on. And I think that there’s a lot of people that are going to want to drive, come out there and be there for the weekend. Yeah. I’m excited myself, but Lyndsay, I appreciate you coming out and talking to me.
00:29:53 – Lyndsay Postell
Thank you for having me. Yeah. I hope to see you and I hope to see your daughter streaming at the creator hub or hanging out at the creator hub if possible. That’ll be really cool.
00:30:02 – Rico Figliolini
Great. Thank you. Again, say hi to Nick and everyone else. Appreciate you being here and everyone that’s watching and listening to this, if you have any questions put them in the comments. I’ll make sure we will get those answered. And do share this with other people and check the links in the show notes in case you can’t find anything but I’ll have a few links in there as well. But thank you, Lyndsay. Appreciate you being with me. Stay safe out there, okay?
00:30:29 – Lyndsay Postell
It’s been a pleasure. Yeah, you too. Stay safe with the hurricane coming in and we’ll see you at DreamHack.
00:30:33 – Rico Figliolini
We made it through with the power, so we’re all good so far.
00:30:37 – Lyndsay Postell
That’s all that matters.
00:30:39 – Rico Figliolini
Thank you. Bye, Lyndsay.
Related
Land Use and Development
Navigating Land Use Changes, Business Growth, and Community Engagement in Peachtree Corners [Podcast]
Published
1 week agoon
September 25, 2024
Exploring Land Use with Shaun Adams
Land use changes, business growth, and community engagement shape Peachtree Corners’ future. From revitalizing office spaces to innovative mixed-use developments, the city is working to attract investments and meet the needs of its residents.
Peachtree Corners Life’s host Rico Figliolini is joined by Shaun Adams, Community Development Director, to discuss how the city adapts to new trends, assesses vacancy rates, and gathers public input to guide its growth. Learn about the city’s plans, including focusing on office renovations and diverse housing options, and how the community can get involved in the upcoming public meeting on October 3rd.
Resources:
Peachtree Corners Website: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/
Community Development: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/190/Community-Development
October 3rd Community Engagement Meeting: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=210
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Peachtree Corners Land Use Moratorium
00:01:58 – Revitalizing the Central Business District
00:04:53 – Public Engagement Meeting
00:07:06 – Insights from Asset Inventory and Changing Business Trends
00:11:11 – Improving Office Amenities and Competitiveness in Tech Park
00:14:03 – Reinvestment in Aging Office Buildings
00:16:15 – Evolving Uses in Office and Mixed-Use Developments
00:19:51 – Attracting Diverse Businesses
00:24:00 – Exploring Mixed-Use and Diverse Housing Options
00:27:39 – Mixed-Use Development
00:29:42 – Efficient Residential Density Options
00:33:17 – Trail Connection Around Technology Park Lake
00:40:41 – Evolving City Management through Conferences and Collaboration
00:43:00 – Accessing City Development Information
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, Georgia. I’m here with our Community Development Director, Shaun Adams. Hey, Shaun. Thanks for joining us. Before we get started, and we’re going to be discussing the land use moratorium that’s been in effect for almost six months. But before that, I just want to say thank you to EV Remodeling Inc. for being a sponsor, not only of our magazines and our journalism, but these podcasts as well. So you should visit them. They’re a design build firm here in Peachtree Corners. Eli will take care of you. He’s a great guy. The company is called EV Remodeling, and you should go to evremodelinginc.com and visit them. Some great pictures of what he’s done over the past few months. You can browse right through there and then reach out to him. So let’s get right into it. The moratorium is just more than halfway through. It’s going to end November 3rd. And this is a moratorium on residential new application rezonings in a specific area in the central business district. So at some point, there were so many things coming in and so many applications coming in, so many people taking somewhat advantage of wanting to do what they want to do, that the city decided to stop and put a moratorium on new applications to say, well, I think we need to look at this, change a few things maybe, have some public hearings, focus groups, and come back and add to that land use plan, which is, I think, a great thing you all have done. That’s going to end November 3rd, and there’s a public hearing that’s going to be coming up for public comment, I think, Thursday, October 3rd, between 6 and 8 p.m. at City Hall. So we’ll get into that. But I want Shaun, Shaun, if you wouldn’t mind explaining a little bit about why the moratorium briefly was put in place and where you all you know where the city’s at what the timeline has been actually moving forward on that.
00:02:13 – Shaun Adams
Sure thing. So as you indicated you know the central business district just to help people out if you really think from Holcomb Bridge Road up 141 to into the Forum, Town Center. That’s kind of our central business district area. This plan within that is really going to focus on our commercial office portion of it. So Tech Park, Spalding Triangle, Corners Parkway, those areas up and around 141. And so about four months in and what we’ve kind of done so far, one of the biggest things that we’ve done is an asset inventory. We really took a look at our underutilized spaces, vacancy rates, condition assessments, what approvals or redevelopments have occurred so far, but maybe haven’t come out of the ground yet. Looked at our existing proposed trails. You know, we have a trail study. We have some that are already in design and underway or built but we have others proposed but those proposals are largely based off of where we kind of have a path of least resistance through properties or easements but as redevelopments come into play there could be opportunities to maybe realign the trail so it makes more sense based off what’s coming down in the future. And so the first couple months took a lot of time taking a look at that and understanding where we are. We looked at about 100 commercial office buildings. So that was good feedback to use for now and in the future. August, September, we had a couple of focus groups. One of the first ones we did was with a combination of some of our existing board members from Planning Commission and our two authorities, our Downtown Development Authority and our Redevelopment Authority. And what’s great about their feedback is not only do they have a level of industry expertise that runs the gambit from real estate to finance to development to engineering, but they’re all residents who care about seeing how our city moves forward. And so that was a good group. We had about 18 in total there, which for a focus group is a good size. Our consultants kind of ran that meeting. We showed them our map of the asset inventory that we did, kind of used that as a jumping off point. And then we turned around a few weeks later and did the same with some of our brokers and office owners in the area that do a lot of business here to help kind of learn what are they hearing, whether they’re a broker who’s representing a building for sale or they’re representing tenants looking to lease up. And understanding when they’re showing buildings with their tenants, why are they choosing here versus why are they going to Alpharetta or somewhere else? What’s missing? And so we got a lot of good feedback as a part of that focus group. And as you’ve mentioned, public engagement meeting, October 3rd, we’re going to take kind of what we have to date, bring that to them. It will be in council chambers from 6 to 8 p.m. It’s an open house style. And so just kind of help everybody out with that. We will have representatives check them in, kind of give them a one page, if you will, of what we have, what they’re going to see. Using council chambers will be great because we have the TVs down the sides where we’ll have that map up. So no matter where they are in the room, they can see the map. We’ll probably have four to six stations, each one kind of representing a different subsection, if you will, of the central business district. And we’ll have both staff and consultant representation at each of those so that people can come in, they can ask questions about what they’re seeing. We’ll have boards there. And if you remember during the comp plan update process about two years ago, or a little less than two years ago, people were able to put dots in, provide feedback based off a certain question. So one of the benefits of Kimley Horn being our consultant on the small area plan is they were also the consultants on the comp plan. So they have all of that data that the public gave previously. So one of the things we wanted to do is as a refresher as well, is say, here’s what you said 18 to 24 months ago as it relates to the central business district. Here is what the business community has said through our broker owner, Finkers groups or other Finkers groups we did this time. What do you see? What has changed for you in the last 18 to 24 months based off of the feedback provided? Or for those of you who weren’t either in the community at that time or for whatever reason weren’t able to be a part of those sessions, your input can come in as well. So this is building upon the input that we had and helping understand what’s changed. And by having that data there, I think it’s good for the community to see, oh yeah, this is what we thought back then. I agree with that still, or you know what, based off of, you know, XYZ, I think it should be something different and here’s my input. And so we can bring all that together. And then with that, we have a good six week time period before it would be set to go before planning commission in November and council in December. Both of those times, of course, will be public hearings where the community will be able to provide additional input as you would in a typical process.
00:07:19 – Rico Figliolini
Alright. So I have a couple of questions that pop up just because of the discussion here. Was there any surprises you found when your group did the asset inventory of 100 buildings? Because we all have an impression of what we think is going on. But were there any surprises that you found while you were doing that?
00:08:04 – Shaun Adams
You know, there’s quite a few things. That and the vacancy aspect of course. The trick is we’re using CoStar, which may not always be accurate, but kind of seeing the number of buildings that kind of blended together in terms of where we have needs for activation of underutilized space instead of it being just pockets here and there. It’s kind of Corner’s Parkway area, actually. You think about some of the properties over there, there’s a lot of small parking, building. So it’s kind of nice to see kind of how these nodes may have formed throughout that process. And you know another thing is how few properties it would take to connect key pieces of our trail and where some of our hubs are naturally already starting to take shape to say, okay, if a couple of things go in the right direction or we can time these right, then we can connect key stretches of trail through Tech Park that could allow people to run from office to the Forum or wherever to their home.
00:09:06 – Rico Figliolini
Did you find, as you were doing those asset inventories, I don’t know how detailed it was, but types of businesses in there, did you all notice any shift or difference over the, I don’t know even how you would quantify that necessarily without going back a few years, but seeing the turnover maybe would be, is probably the better question over the last five, six years, changes in the type of business in that inventory.
00:09:34 – Shaun Adams
So, I mean, one of the things we are seeing and matter of fact, I mean, it would jump ahead, but we had a recent rezoning, resolving a split zoning, and probably seen a couple of tax amendments for uses like fitness studios come in. But what we are seeing is that flex office is stronger than a lot of traditional office right now. So you have a lot of smaller businesses who need, they don’t need a whole lot of admin office space, you know, a couple of thousands per feet, but they might need a space to house excess inventory or supplies because they’re a service-oriented business that provides their service offsite, mechanical contractors, commercial janitor services, things like that. And an office institutional zoning doesn’t do well with that, but we’re seeing flex office spaces like a lot of our one-story buildings are, where they have that kind of mix of office and warehousing. That’s coming in more, it’s coming in stronger. And so making sure that our code aligns with that is something. And we’ve also heard from the brokers and owners that these are some of the uses that are coming in.
00:10:46 – Rico Figliolini
To go into the brokers and owners, or maybe just the brokers for the time being, or a mix of both, what are you hearing from them that we lack? Let’s start there first, from let’s say Alpharetta or Roswell. Alpharetta is like one of the biggest tech hubs north of Atlanta. Probably 700 companies, if that’s still a good number, there are startups and tech companies. Obviously, that’s a competitive space, right? A competition or rival for us, if you will. So what are we lacking? Have you heard anything specific?
00:11:22 – Shaun Adams
Some of what I’ve heard, I mean, I think you might have seen too in papers of race to quality. You’ve heard that a little bit. And so with a lot of our office stock, it was built in the eighties and those that have kind of redeveloped over time or, you know, reinvested into the office over time, they’re positioned even better, But, you know, having more of that activation and amenitizing of the surrounding. So as we talked earlier about green space, trail connectivity, having some retail or supporting service base in the studio or something like that, where they can work out during lunch and not have to go up to Town Center or somewhere else, but having something kind of central to Tech Park that they can easily get to, or if they want to walk the trail to get to it on lunch, just to clear their head for an hour. Having that is something that, you know, we’re hearing we could use and put us in better competition. But the other part of it is to some of the buildings and seeing them. Part of what we did is reassess the property by looking at the parking, the signs, the landscaping, and the building. Because we can understand based off of how each owner is investing in that building, you know, are they in ramp up mode of trying to pull tenants in or are they in maintenance mode? And being able to understand where that building is in its real estate life cycle or that property is can kind of help us better plan for how can we preserve it and enhance it and stabilize it for the long term.
00:13:03 – Rico Figliolini
So are you seeing, I’m thinking Intuitive Robotics, right? They’re moving along, their construction is being done. I think the parking deck is, I don’t know if it’s complete, but everything’s moving along there, for example. Modern, new looking. Some of the buildings are moving to renovate, right? At the outside of it, new monument signs also I’ve noticed as I drive through Tech Park and some of the other areas but so is that something that you’re seeing too like an outward visible change to the buildings? Because driving to work you know a lot of people were working remote, some people, a lot of people are working remote. A bunch of people are working. It’s hybrid also, and you want to enjoy where you’re working. Some of these old buildings are really old buildings, like you said, 80s and 70s. You feel like you’re going back in time almost in some of these buildings. Are you seeing a reinvestment, a larger reinvestment than you all thought coming in? Because that’s difficult. They’re not rezoning or filing an SUP or something. So they have to file a permit to do certain things. But are you seeing things more than you thought?
00:14:20 – Shaun Adams
We’re seeing some in various places. Again, I think the flex office building stock is doing it more and more. And so those office buildings that are one story, roll up doors in the back, they’re going well, they’re leasing up. Some of the mid-rise office, it’s really honestly a mix. Couple of corporate locations have come in recently, which has been good and has taken up some space in those areas. And that’s helpful. I would say it’s largely stagnant, but part of that right now was what the cost is to bring a building up. They’re having to get, some of what we’ve heard from brokers is, hey, if we’ve got to get a building and spend 100 plus a foot on it to get it to 200 a foot then it’s hard to get the rents to justify that cost and that’s kind of what puts it in maintenance mode. And so part of what we asked was okay, how can we amenitize around you, bring something in to make it easier to invest into that property so that you can justify the rents. Because if you have the amenities, then you can probably get the rents as well. And so that’s part of what we’re hoping to identify out of this plan is where we can, you know, make some of those adjustments. I’m also hoping that rate cuts make it easier for them to want to invest. So I feel like every other week we hear companies are bringing people back to the office. You know, remote work is here to stay. And I think until that pendulum kind of settles down in the middle, it’s just going to be a state of flux.
00:15:57 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Yeah, the rates, I mean, half point drop. Who knows if next year will be another half point drop next quarter or the quarter after. But yeah. And I think the market, I mean, from what I see anyway, from what I’m hearing, right, the market has accepted it already. I think they’ve already worked it in, but who’s an economist? The economists don’t even know sometimes what’s going on. It’s like the stock market. People say, well, drop 500 points. Why did it? It’s like no particular reason. People are covering shorts maybe you know it’s just like or whatever the new use is. I know that there’s, you were talking about like fitness places and stuff. Are you, what type of new uses are you seeing that the city has to sort of work into the into the regulations that don’t exist like that’s not enumerated out there? Are they specific?
00:16:55 – Shaun Adams
So using fitness studio as an example we have health and fitness centers in our code currently and they’re in C2 and that typically is your LA Fitnesses, things of that nature. And so when you think about Stretch Lab and Cryotherapy and Alloy Personal Training and some of those ones that you see in the Forum, they can go in under that already because it’s a C2 or it’s a mixed use development. But C2 uses are allowed in there. What we are finding is some of our buildings that are office buildings, how they’re zoned O&I or zoned M1, those uses aren’t contemplated because they tend to be retail heavy. But on a smaller scale, 4,000 square foot fitness studio or CrossFit box or something like that may be a good amenity to put in the main floor of an office building to support the tenants out of there. But our code wasn’t allowing for it. So as we identify some of those uses, we’re trying to make sure that, okay, we’re not opening a pandora’s box of allowing them to go somewhere where they don’t make sense. But as long as they’re an accessory and supporting to the overall office environment, then we want to allow that. So that’s one great example. And that’s why that one was put in there. The kind of social hobbyist clubs that you’ve seen, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about the car storage, car club. We’ve seen other, I’ve seen golf simulator clubs come in that kind of blend a business club environment, but have that simulator component to it. I’ve seen those in different jurisdictions and just wanting to make sure that if it’s something that fits in an office building as it currently stands and can be, you know, a supporting amenity and draw an attraction to the tenants there, then want to make sure our code, you know, allows for it because that’s only going to help them lease it up.
00:18:44 – Rico Figliolini
Right. I think we, at some point, talked about, I think Brian Johnson and I, at some point, talked about, or at least I brought it up, about use is a larger use, if you will. I’m always thinking that there’s 500 acres there. And like you said before, just because of the nature of the beast, some things evolve, these nodes are created and such. Is there even thought or discussion, have you heard from brokers, on bringing in larger campus-type development into an area? GSU, for example, has several satellite campuses throughout the city. One in Dunwoody, for example. Georgia Tech has done that, I think, or UGA in several ways, places. And that’s just education hubs like that. Has that ever come up? Or even has, because we’re autonomous vehicle and autonomous smart city focused, there’s also pharmaceutical biofabrication companies, those types of companies. You know, just a different, have you heard anything, or has anyone talked about that, like diversifying the type of businesses here in the city?
00:20:04 – Shaun Adams
From a development standpoint, our team is certainly looking out there and trying to attract, whether it’s suppliers to some of our existing companies that are here in the area, the Intuitives of the world, people of that nature, also life sciences, those types of groups, certainly wanting to try to attract them in where we can using Curiosity Lab and what we do there to maintain that technology focus of Tech Park. We don’t want to lose that where we are. So we’re hoping that by doing more and maybe even looking at opportunities for the testing that goes on at Curiosity Lab, thinking about it on a larger scale than a test track or a facility, but where our opportunities to partner with businesses within the area to test certain technologies, maybe on their property or around it, that type of thing. I mean, I’m not in the middle of that every day. That’s more kind of the ag dev side, but I certainly touch it and support it where I can. I haven’t had people kicking tires on it recently from that standpoint, but I think certainly I know Georgia Tech teaches some classes up here already, you know, any opportunity to bring institutional in that supports the businesses around or kind of supplier or accessory users to some of our larger corporations that are here. That’s definitely a focus of our economic development team.
00:21:35 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Moving away from that a little bit, did the moratorium include changing some regulations with regard to actual development, like the actual building of buildings or the actual renovation of buildings where we have an opportunity if someone comes in for a special use permit or for redevelopment to say, okay, I think we’ve learned something over the last two years. Maybe we want more. If there’s going to be a residential component to something, we want to make sure that, I don’t know, it’s LED certified or it’s individually wired units. I know that’s part of some of the zoning, but is any of that being revisited?
00:22:19 – Shaun Adams
Certainly. I mean, one of the things that, I mean, the small area plan itself is going to be focused on kind of the nodes and maybe what goes there, generally speaking. But what I’ve talked with the consultants about is as we identify gaps in our code to be able to achieve what we’re trying to do. The plan, recommendations for tax amendments in that regard is important as well. And that goes to the regulation just from the building side. I mean, one of the things, you know, I kind of intentionally did with a couple of the development proposals that came through recently was get a little more specific on the elevations and especially elevations that touch or have visibility to public right-of-way to ensure that we can as closely as we can get it to come out of the ground as it looks on paper you know we want to be able to do that because if you’re selling a vision we want that vision to be reality and not you know an alternate you know universe of it kind of thing. So I’ve done that by virtue of conditions where I can, because when you put it in code, right, you might find yourself in an unintended consequence of not having the flexibility. But we are intentional about that. I will say we’ll probably see a couple of new zoning districts come out of this to kind of help bring us up to what the market is really looking for. For example, we have one mixed use development in our code right now, and it’s three uses. It’s 32 plus units an acre. The way the uses are identified is office, residential, and retail. We’ve kind of interpreted public uses such as a trail as a use in previous districts. And that may make sense for a kind of downtown core where you need a ton of residential to support the retail because it’s a retail heavy center like Town Center and the Forum but it may not make sense in Tech Park where you’re activating a utilized space so looking at more of maybe say a commercial mixed use where it stays commercial heavy you’re preserving the office the redevelopment of any retail and or residential that exists is more supporting its accessory or you know and supporting to the commercial property creating an opportunity for that where it might make sense. And then also we don’t have a code that allows for a mix of housing types under one subdivision, if you will, or development. So, for instance, Gwinnett County has a traditional neighborhood development zoning district where you can have a mix of townhomes to three different lot size single family detached home under one development. And, you know, part of what we’re seeing now, we’re clamoring for built-for-equity products. We’re a redevelopment city. We don’t have big swaths of green space to be able to develop estate-sized subdivisions on anymore. So how can we be creative about the space that we have, the infill opportunities we have, to put developments on there that attract the buyers that we need. We need housing for seniors. We’ve heard them say, look, I want empty nester style housing, but I still want to own it. Okay. So we want to find that product type for you. I’ve heard a phrase, first stroller generation recently. So you’ve got young professionals, but then as they get married and they have that first baby to push that first stroller, their thoughts on what their home life is going to be is different than the young professional, and maybe it’s still single or married without kids. And so how do we create those opportunities for them at an attainable price point? And you have certain fixed costs in construction that you can’t control. And so one way you can control it is being creative about setbacks, lot sizes, density, and things of that nature. And so looking for opportunities to allow for that. So we don’t have just a bunch of townhomes either coming in. How can we mix product types into smaller infill developments, getting the density that somebody may need to justify the product or the project while providing a product that the market’s actually looking for.
00:26:32 – Rico Figliolini
Obviously, that makes sense to me. There’s different needs, right? Different age groups have different needs, like you said. And some of them may not want the large land, but they may want. I’ve seen developments like, for example, I think it was Trellith, Georgia. That’s where the big studio is. And some other places similar to that where you do have some mix of housing where it’s townhomes. It’s sort of single family also on a really small plot of land, but big enough for a family, but it’s still separate, right, separate pieces. Some people might say it’s on postage-size land, but they have a backyard, and they might have even four bedrooms in that house, or five even, with a nice deck, let’s say. I know it was in Canada. It was the same way. It was this development where it was mixed use, and I walked into this house. And it seemed small in the front. It was a one-car a two-car garage, with a side entrance. But it was a five-bedroom, three stories, beautiful house, the small deck on back. And then a really nice backyard also. But small, nicely done, craftsman style and stuff. I don’t know what that would cost here in the States, but over there, it wasn’t too bad. So, but space. Maybe within that development, you know, Pocket Park or whatever. I mean, are you thinking along those lines? I mean, Medlock Bridge Road, for example, is full of houses on one side that are these big lot houses. At some point, those may change. I mean, those are, I don’t know if they’re one acre or two acre lots. I mean, they may, you know, over the next 10, 20 years, change and become something else. High density. Are you looking at that? Is that some of the, because that’s within the Central Business District map, I think.
00:28:36 – Shaun Adams
So actually after the hexagon building going down Medlock, I think in the 2045 update, some of that has been dubbed village residential to create that transitional density coming off of Town Center and going towards Spalding, South Peachtree. Because you have a mix of towns and smaller lots, single family subdivisions there now. And so acknowledging the fact that those one and a half, two acre older homes may at some point in time be sought for redevelopment. How do we want that to look and how can it assimilate, you know, bring those two character areas and planning nodes together in a logical flow. And so that has been contemplated there, but I’ve also seen some of these developments occur on 12 to 18 acre sites. So you don’t need 40 acres, 30 acres to do it. And so being able to create that opportunity and in reality, you know, I hate to say high density in that regard because people assume, you know, multifamily or something, you know, like that. In most cases, those developments can do it at 10 units an acre or less, which is really more of a townhome density, you know, just like a bunch of townhomes. And so to me, there’s as much of an architectural benefit and design benefit to that because you’re seeing differing product types. Some people don’t want their wall to be shared with another family. So even if it’s a five-foot setback, side setback, that alone, it’s effectively a townhome, but that alone to them feels different.
00:30:07 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I’ve seen that. Anything else that’s with the moratorium that we should bring up or discuss? Otherwise, I’d like to move on maybe to some of the stuff that’s going on as well.
00:30:21 – Shaun Adams
Sure. The only other thing that I would say that was probably the biggest, a surprise for me was the request by, especially the broker owners on where we can coordinate with the County, especially with fire and things of that nature. So most people don’t realize that since we don’t have fire inspection, fire marshal and house of the city, that still goes to the county as well as anything water sewer related and so you know they can work in parallel with permitting and things of that nature but we are actively working with our building side to create better coordination with Gwinnett. But hearing that it’s at a point where sometimes it impacts a tenant coming in because they have a tight timeline and when they need to be up and operational was something that I thought was great feedback. That’s a process thing that we can work on and kind of push Gwinnett on for really is what it is. Pushing Gwinnett on more and seeing how we can help them turn around their inspections faster and keep things moving within the permitting side of the house.
00:31:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that is great for you. I never thought about that. You’re right. I mean, it’s just like that’s outside the city’s responsibility at this point, but cutting the red tape would be good. Any other surprising stuff that you found?
00:31:44 – Shaun Adams
In the realm of surprising, not really. I think there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve heard more and just getting more of that kind of consensus within that kind of helps understand the direction of where we want to go. But I think it’s shaping out nicely. I think the community will – I look forward to more of their feedback and really, if anything, being able, since I wasn’t on staff when the update happened two years ago, but being a resident, I attended a couple of those myself. I really look forward to seeing to the extent that there are changes in the thought process just in the last two years, you know, from the update to now, I’m really looking forward to that feedback and seeing how we can implement it into this proposal and make this time well worth it.
00:32:28 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, interesting. I’m sure there will be more unique feedback. I mean, there’s a lot more people that have come in over the last two years. So it will be interesting. Moving away from this for a little bit, what are the developments or what other things are coming up that people should be aware of over the next two months besides this that you’re aware of?
00:32:54 – Shaun Adams
So on the new front, I mean, I guess one last thing I would say that kind of transitioned us is, you know, I know we’ve talked about 25 Tech Park South before the 13 condos, but as a part of that, they’re agreeing to create, provide the easement for a trail connection around that lake. So we already have existing trail around the Ashrae site. We already have agreement and principle from other office owners to extend it through them, which will now connect to this. So this gets us mostly around Technology Park Lake with that trail. So just an example of when a redevelopment opportunity comes in being able to partner with them to get those other public facing amenities and make it happen faster than what it would if we had to just pick you know go piece by piece on our own ground. So that has been approved and so we would expect to see that you know take. That is a conversion. But outside of that, we don’t have any residential developments or anything right now in the pipeline. What is upcoming on council next week is a second read on a text amendment for the townhome district, the RTH, residential townhome district. The townhome the residential townhome currently the density on it is eight district units an acre. RTH, district, we’re proposing to go to 10 units an acre, which is consistent with what Gwinnett County does and they’ve done for a few years. We’ve seen it in other jurisdictions. And, you know, it’s an up to. So it’s a situation where we’re in a position where we need housing stock where we can. We’re clamoring for bill for equity housing stock where we can. So in certain situations where if a couple extra units an acre make the difference from a developer saying this site only works if it’s multifamily versus this site could work as townhomes. Then, you know, or a bill for equity product, then we want to provide that opportunity to consider it. Just because it says 10 units an acre, though, doesn’t mean council has to thumbs up 10 units an acre. They can say, well, on this particular property, eight units an acre makes sense. So it’s a tool in the toolbox that can be used. So that’s coming before them. We have a pawn shop SUP, which will be located. It’s the same plaza as Tortuga’s on Holcomb Bridge, just north of Crooked Creek. And so that’s an SUP for that. They’ve been in, they have a business existing in Tucker. They’ve been in operation there for 10 years. No issues. Had no reports a predominantly a jewelry reseller really when you listen to kind of the product of what they’re looking to do. The applicant even indicated the planning commission when questions about you know crime and concerns that came up to say that they made a decision a long time ago not to accept tools or anything like that because it’s really hard to track and to ensure that it’s legitimately brought in. And so they limit themselves predominantly to nicer jewelry, stones, things of that nature. And so they’re coming before us for that SUP, where council planning commission had recommended approval. And then we had planning commission last month, we had an in-home daycare SUP. And so that’ll be first read next week in council, and it’ll go before on a second reading public hearing in October.
00:36:23 – Rico Figliolini
So in-home daycare?
00:36:25 – Shaun Adams
Yes.
00:36:26 – Rico Figliolini
Like a daycare or a children’s daycare?
00:36:30 – Shaun Adams
It’s a children’s daycare, but they’re capped at up to six kids. And so, and it’s kind of, you know, I have a quick PSA opportunity on this. Really the SUP is an SUP for customary home occupation. So section 607 of our code is for customary home occupations. And most people don’t realize this, but the way it’s set up is any home-based business that provides a service on or adjacent to the premises or conducts a sale transaction on the premises has to have an SGP. And all of them are technically limited to trip counts of up to six per day so that’s really what this is an SUP for. It’s for a customary home occupation it’s just that the occupation is an in home daycare so they’re only going to have this.
00:37:19 – Rico Figliolini
Okay so similar if it was a hair salon, if you will. Someone was doing hair salon type work, if you will, in a home. Because I’ve seen that sometimes on through Gwinnett County. Yeah. So, okay. So that makes sense.
00:37:36 – Shaun Adams
Hair salons, music teachers who give their lessons on property. If you’re an accountant and you have people meet in your home, that is a service. Your consulting service is being provided on site. Therefore, technically, you should have an SEP. So we know that this probably goes on a lot undetected, unfortunately. But that is kind of where we are with it. And so that’s why they’re there before us. There was an in-home daycare in the same neighborhood recently where that person stopped doing it and this one’s kind of picking it up they’re doing it on their right from the start and so that one prior to actually didn’t have an SUP came in before that was a requirement and so it was kind of grandfathered in if you will. So they’re following the process and going through that so we will see that in October. It will be first next week. And then the last thing is actually not as much zoning, but it’s zoning adjacent, which is the social recreation facility. So if you remember, we had that. I’m going to go through in April on the zoning side, where it’s kind of dealing with the racing simulators, any type of business like that. So adding that to the alcohol ordinance so that it aligns with the zoning code so people will see that ordinance first read next week and public hearing on it in October.
00:38:57 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. But that includes stuff like, well, I mean, VR stuff and that type of stuff, laser tag or escape rooms, I guess. Because there’s no particular zoning for that, I don’t think. Would that work with that?
00:39:15 – Shaun Adams
Correct. So right now, what you see most commonly is indoor recreation facility. But the way that is commonly defined is that the food and beverage is clearly incidental to the rec facility. So when Nitrozone was here, or when you go to a Top Golf or Mario Andretti Racing, that type of thing, the facility is taken up so much by the rec aspect that the food is smaller. But you’re seeing post-COVID response again. You’re seeing more businesses doing smaller footprints. By virtue of that, their alcohol sales might be more than the 20-30% you typically see in code for the bigger ones, but they don’t go over 50%, which is usually that kind of big line. Our code not only didn’t contemplate it in zoning, but also didn’t contemplate the license for it in alcohol. The alcohol portion of it’s now coming through, which aligns with the zoning that was adopted back in, I think, April.
00:40:10 – Rico Figliolini
All right, cool. So it’s never ending. The city has to constantly keep evolving and working and finding new things that they have to attend to, right?
00:40:21 – Shaun Adams
We actually are maintaining a list. As we come across things, we maintain a list of text amendments to take a look at. And then ultimately what we do is we research them, compare them to other jurisdictions to make sure that before we bring it forward, it truly aligns with where we’re trying to go as a city and doesn’t have an unintended consequence. But it’s definitely a revolving situation.
00:40:44 – Rico Figliolini
I’m curious. Every industry has a conference or trade show. Do cities’ management have trade shows where they can go to and find out what other cities are doing across the country? Is there such a thing that you do comparatively? You might find new things that you never thought about even.
00:41:08 – Shaun Adams
So I would say yes, by department. And so actually last week, I was at the City County Institute for Georgia, which is where we get our CLEs. And we get everything there from the do’s and don’ts of what other jurisdictions have experienced, recent case law decisions, the impact of that on our jurisdiction, ordinance amendments, the do’s and don’ts of that. So we get it from that’s the legal side of what I do as well. But we have Planners Association. We have city county managers, both at the state and federal level. So we certainly have opportunities. If anything, you almost have to be strategic about the ones you do attend because you can get to have too many. And so we really try to look at that to make sure that it’s giving a good return on investment when we do go.
00:41:56 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. I mean, there’s a lot of cities around here, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell, that are doing a lot of different things also. They’re all trying to figure out, like we are, right? Trying to figure out what’s best for the city, for who we are and stuff. So interesting process. So let’s not forget that October then Thursday, October 3rd, 6 to 8 at City Hall is the public meeting about the changes to the land use plan for the Central Business District. If you have any questions, I’m sure Shaun Adams would love to handle some of those. So you can put comments as you watch this into Facebook or YouTube, wherever you’re at, and I’ll make sure that Shaun gets those. We’ll have links in the show notes as well on the website to some of these meeting agendas that you all can look at. Anything else, Shaun, before we wrap up that you’d like to share?
00:42:56 – Shaun Adams
The only other thing that I would encourage everybody to do is go take a look at our website on the community development side. We’ve made some changes recently, and happy to get those over to you so that you can share them. But we have now all of our current land uses are on the page and pretty much anybody, you can get to that page from anywhere, whether it’s the agenda site on our main page or the button. So you can, when you go into current land use pages, you can see the application, you can see a site plan if one was needed, elevations, if it’s a redevelopment you can see the staff report once it’s posted. And then once it’s adopted it goes to an archived section on that same page where you can get, you have the ordinance as well. Anyway this process wheel if you will it’s pretty cool take a look at that so you can understand how development gets through. And at the bottom of that page, we have a couple of different flow charts. So depending on how you like to take in information, I think we pretty well run the gambit on that for you.
00:43:57 Rico Figliolini
I think we have an article on LivinginPeachtreeCorners.com. So if you all visit that, you’ll see that as well. And I’ll have links to that. So it’s a great site. I mean, way, way more, not that it wasn’t transparent before, but way more, much easier to find everything all in one place. So check that out. Shaun, hang in there with me for a second. I just want to say thank you to everyone for joining us. EV Remodeling Inc. is our sponsor of these podcasts and our publications. So go visit them, find out a little bit more about what they do in their remodeling services, renovation work here in the city of Peachtree Corners, or wherever you’re living within the metro area. Their website is evremodelinginc.com. And obviously the city is PeachtreeCornersGA.gov. So go visit them as well. And you can find way more information out there than you need probably. It is a portal of information. So you can get lost in there and find stuff, but check out definitely from that homepage. You’ll see the land use stuff. So check that out, but thank you all for being with us. Appreciate it. Thank you, Shaun.
Related
Peachtree Corners Life
City Manager Talks Tech Park Condo Conversion, Jones Bridge Park Safety, and Forum Parking Enhancements
Published
4 weeks agoon
September 5, 2024
A podcast with City Manager Brian Johnson
In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini interviews Peachtree Corners City Manager Brian Johnson. They discuss the transformation of 25 Tech Park into a 13-unit condo, a rezoning initiative addressing office space vacancies, and future developments like outdoor parks and trails. They also explore local zoning challenges, parking solutions at The Forum, and community concerns over Jones Bridge Park. Tune in for an insightful update on city planning, public safety, and the evolving landscape of Peachtree Corners.
Resources:
Peachtree Corners Website: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/
Current Land Use Cases: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/1406/Current-Land-Use-Cases
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Introduction and 25 Tech Park Condo Conversion
00:02:21 – Rezoning for Residential Conversion of Office Building
00:07:14 – Comparing Home Sizes and Prices in Duluth Area
00:09:48 – Efficient Redesign and Outdoor Space
00:13:47 – Addressing Vacant Office Space and Zoning Changes
00:18:04 – Land Use Planning Process Explained
00:24:36 – Concerns Over Jones Bridge Park Safety and Access
00:31:28 – Securing Community Access and Navigating Challenges
00:34:53 – Evolving Plans for Parking and Retail Development Plans
00:41:52 – Closing Thoughts
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. This is Labor Day weekend, interviewing and talking with Brian Johnson, our city manager. Hey, Brian.
00:00:11 – Brian Johnson
Rico, how are you?
00:00:13 – Rico Figliolini
Good, good. Thanks for being with us. This episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about 25 Tech Park and the 13-unit condo unit that’s going to be working out of that building. And we’re also going to talk a little bit about what the RDA is doing with new buildings coming out and some of the rules in that. And then we’ll recap a little bit with Jones Bridge Park and what’s going on there. And some update on that. So why don’t we start? So 25 Tech Park, Technology Park Way, is where a 13-unit condo development is going to go. And it’s literally going into an office building that’s going to be gutted out versus it being torn down and going on that. So tell us how that’s working and why they chose to do that versus tearing it all down and maybe building 40 townhomes there, which they could, right?
00:01:12 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, they could. So this one is a little bit unique in that it’s actually, to back up, it’s actually 25 Tech Park South. Believe it or not, they’re in the infinite wisdom of whoever named the streets inside of technology park. We have technology parkway, which runs essentially parallel to PIB to Peachtree Parkway, you know, in the middle of, of the split and the connection coming off into Tech Park, coming off of, I guess it’s now Peachtree Boulevard, not PIB, but coming off of there into Tech Park Atlanta, there’s a small stretch of road that links up Peachtree Boulevard and Technology Parkway. And of all the words that could have been used, they decided to call it Tech Park South or Technology Parkway South, which it doesn’t even really run north-south, but regardless, that’s where it is. And this is an example of a property owner who’s owned the office building for 25 plus years and approached the city with this rezoning request because the building’s use for office only is such that he doesn’t believe he could generate the amount of you know, rent that he could by doing something else and the current condition of the building is older so it’s not competitive for those who are really looking for. So he would have to put money into renovating it. And he just said the money to put into renovating something merely to chase, you know, less office occupants than we’ve had, you know, maybe ever. And so he said, I want to do something different. He is a, he’s a resident, really a age-restricted or retirement community developer by trade. So he has residential development experience and wanted to do that here. It’s the first time we’ve allowed resident or residential development inside of tech park not on the main corridor like on 141 or you know Peachtree Boulevard. So he came in and asked for 13, it to be rezoned for 13 condo or equity units and came to that number because he’s taking the existing building and he’s gutting it and turning that into residential units. It’s a building that overlooks the lake in Tech Park. So it is in a good location, easy access to two main roads out there. And the product or the target audience for the residential units are going to be a target unit we’ve talked about here recently, which is either the empty nester who has owned a house in Peachtree Corners for a long time. They don’t have kids. They want to downsize, but they don’t want to leave the area. And they’d like to buy something and not rent. And there’s nothing really here for them to buy that doesn’t basically take what they could get out of their house and put all of it into something else. An example of that would be Waterside. Some of the complaints from people is those units are as expensive as the home that I would sell to move over there. What’s the point? And so the empty nester, and it’s not so, you know, too expensive or the, call it the earlier home buyer or equity purchaser. By earlier, I mean, it might be the very first time somebody buys something. And so they’re not in a position to buy something that’s you know approaching a million dollars and, but they want to and they like the area so it could be that missing middle, you know or the early purchaser or the empty nester. So to be able to do that and still be you know have market rates and not be any kind of a rent control, you know, situation, the developer doesn’t want to do more units than he’s asking. The city actually was interested in that’s a product we desperately need. And he could have as many as maybe 40 of these units if he had demoed the building and built a new building and went higher than the two stories it currently is, maybe two additional stories. But wasn’t interested because, he felt like it would of course, a lot more headache and everything than a reno. And he felt like it would push the price point above the one he wants to hit, which is five, he wants to maybe try to keep it at six or below. And he doesn’t feel like he can do it if he has to scrape and do a complete rebuild because the construction costs would be higher, so you’d have to put more.
00:07:07 – Rico Figliolini
Do you remember how many square feet these units are?
00:07:12 – Brian Johnson
Each one? No. I do believe we can pull that up as we’re talking.
00:07:19 – Rico Figliolini
The interesting part to me, I was looking at homes just recently with my son. And he was looking at Duluth for argument’s sake, just kicking stuff around. 1,400 square foot, $400,000. I mean, some of them are not good looking homes. They’re in also older neighborhoods, like old neighborhoods, like 40-year-old neighborhoods, probably 50, or 40 maybe, or somewhere around there. But they were like 400 grand for like 1,400 or 1,300 square foot home, which is small for that amount of money. And you really couldn’t find anything for less than that. I mean, essentially a starter home for most people will be around, in this area at least, Duluth, Peachtree Corners, forget Berkeley Lake. It would be somewhere around $400,000 if you’re lucky to get that for a small home. So you’re really looking at maybe half a million for a decent, what you can call starter home maybe.
00:08:23 – Brian Johnson
Right. Yeah, and that’s where we’re at. So, you know, he’s trying to, I’m trying to see if I can find the square footage. Alright here it is. Looks like there’s going to be two types of units. Six of the units are 2 000 square feet, three bedroom, three bath. And the remaining units looks like will be 1,500 square feet, two bedroom, three bath. And it’ll have direct access to, oh, and what’s part of this rezoning is for the developer to put in the section of our multi-use trail that goes around that lake. So it now we’ve also got verbal commitment from the owner of the only property that’s in between this one we’re talking about and Ashray, which is where our current trail ends. They are very open for us to do the trail at the back of there. So it looks like we’ll be all the way around almost to be able to link up to what Cortland did way back when it was built, what, eight years ago, seven years ago?
00:09:50 – Rico Figliolini
I think Cortland Apartments you’re talking about, which was called something else before that, I think. So, interesting to me when you mentioned that, about actually working in the same building, because we at one point talked about repurposing office buildings. That it’s not easy to do that, it’s actually difficult to do that because the plumbing doesn’t, you know, people look at that and say why can’t they repurpose? Well, if you look at a typical office building, the restrooms are probably in the center or in a certain place. And so they’re not all spread out and you have to work your piping and all that. So my assumption is they’re going to gut out this building totally and rework the piping to be able to make it work. It sounds like to me.
00:10:38 – Brian Johnson
It’s only two stories. And it’s built into the slope as it slopes away from, you know, the property slopes away from Technology Parkway South down towards the lake. So each of the units will enter at grade for them. So there’s no stairs in these units.
00:10:59 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. Yeah, I’m looking at the elevation plan.
00:11:01 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, stacked over each other. So that’s, you know it saves ADA compliance they don’t have to put you know graders in. And they, the I guess the joists in between the two floors were built in such a way that there’s a lot of room for them to then rerun plumbing. And since it’s two stories if they rerun it they just get to go both directions, you know have the unit. So it just it was you know one of those where it worked out the way the building was built. So I mean again we’d love to have more of this product. But, you know.
00:11:46 – Rico Figliolini
Right. So I’m looking, yeah, and I’m looking at the, I guess the survey plot because there’s a lot of parking around there. So what are they doing with that? Because apparently, you know, I mean, it’s 13 units, and I can’t see 13 units using all that parking around it.
00:12:11 – Brian Johnson
They’re reducing the impervious surface footprint of the property by over 13,000 square feet.
00:12:20 – Rico Figliolini
Okay.
00:12:30 – Brian Johnson
And so the parking, let’s see the total parking spaces on there is 46 for this. Which is a pretty significant reduction. What they’re doing with the parking spots that they’re ripping out is putting in a park, an outdoor area for the residents.
00:12:44 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. No amenities, just a park area? I’m just wondering, is that along the trail? Probably?
00:12:56 – Brian Johnson
It is. So you know the course the trail will be right along the shoreline of the lake including much like if you’ve been on it behind Ashray some of it’s out on piers even out from. So there’ll be a lot of that there. And they’ll have a connection from that section out to the road so you can get out to the sidewalk there and to walk parts. And then that green space that they’re creating is just going to be for the residents. And it’s not activated. I think it’ll probably be seating and maybe trees and maybe something. So not big and not open to everybody. You don’t need it.
00:13:40 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. This has been going on for a while too, I think, right? Their application’s been in there for a while. So this obviously was approved just recently at this last city council meeting.
00:13:51 – Brian Johnson
Yes, this last one.
00:14:01 – Rico Figliolini
So we have a moratorium going on right now. Which will end at some point soon. There’s going to be a meeting set up and an open house, probably October 5th, if I remember correctly. That people, it’s a public meeting. People will be able to go to talk about some of the improvement to code, regulations, dealing with buildings, redevelopment. Want to just talk briefly about that? We’re going to have another podcast on this with Sean Adams about this. But if you could just speak to it.
00:14:32 – Brian Johnson
Because I have somebody who’s more of a subject matter expert than me, and that’s Sean. But what we did is we wanted to and you know I think if those who keep up with this stuff know we started to have a quite a significant increase in larger rezoning requests coming into the city kind of our central business district if you will. We had some really big ones, the Da Vinci Court, Day Building. That’s just a year after you had some other significant ones like at the Forum. And we know that with the office product, the office market being as soft and under, you know, significant duress right now, that combined with we had office product owners starting to come to the city with all sorts of, some of them unique, some of them you could maybe go so far as to say weird or like uses that we’re like, eh. But some of them were in a gray area because you’ve never had a situation where existing office product was envisioned to ever have some of these uses. So code doesn’t specifically speak to it. So it started to get worse. So we were like, we need to just take a pause. And this moratorium is again, only for a certain area of the city, only for certain uses. And in fact, the 25 Tech Park South is the last one that got in that their application came in before the moratorium started, which is why these things take a while to get through the system, if you will, the process. And we just knew that we needed to relook at our code. We needed to add protections where we might need to add protections. We needed to add language where it might be, we want some of the uses that these owners have been proposing. We wanted to be flexible so that we weren’t sitting on office product that not only was vacant and not generating any revenue for the cities through our occupational tax, which is one of our most significant revenue streams since we don’t have city property tax, but we didn’t want office product to not only you know go vacant from that standpoint but vacant office product is not climate controlled it starts to fall apart quicker when people aren’t in it taking care of it and you just run the risk of the building going down into a state of disrepair such that then nobody would ever want it. And then you get into problems beyond that.
00:17:29 – Rico Figliolini
So having that moratorium, which comes to an end soon, is a smart move, I think, right? And giving the city an opportunity to address all those issues. So that’s coming up to a public meeting too because there’ll be suggestions of what those changes are.
00:17:49 – Brian Johnson
Our internal experts and some external consultants and land use experts have been working on this together. And they are about ready to have, again, a product that’s worthy of the public hearing and weighing in on. That’ll be the October 5th date open house where you can come in and in and see what’s being proposed. At the end of that, there’s a little bit of time that we can take any input from the public and tweak it, and then it’ll go in front of planning commission and then ultimately in front of city council.
00:18:29 – Rico Figliolini
What I want to point out to people, too, is that the city’s taken an improvement to the website. So if you’re looking at land use plans and such, it was a little bit more difficult to find that, not because it was being hidden, but just because government websites aren’t always the easiest to navigate. But you all have really improved the website quite a bit communication-wise. And although there may be people out there that feel that they’re not aware of what’s going on, stuff is getting out there in a variety of ways. Not everyone’s listening. There’s a lot of noise out there and stuff. But you all did a good job with, there’s a link on the website I’d like people to know called Land Use Cases. This is at the city’s website, right on the homepage. If you go there, you can actually see the current land use cases that are filed and active, along with their application, the site plan, staff report, when the first public hearing is, or read rather, and when the second read is, which is the public hearing where comments could be made and such. So a lot of information here. And there’s one, two, three, four, there’s five cases right now active as we speak. One of them was approved. That was the 25 Technology Parkway South. So if you’re interested in what’s coming up, this is the page to go to. These are the things that you can look at.
00:19:53 – Brian Johnson
And then don’t forget, like, we’re going to change it based on your suggestion, Rico, but it’ll essentially say how does an application become a product or a project? How does an application ultimately become a project? And we created four different ways that somebody might be able to kind of see. And it is complicated. There’s a lot of law involved, a lot of public meeting and, you know public hearing requirements I mean it’s a big deal as we all know. So we describe the process in four different like ways and so for somebody who wants to know, well how does almost like how does a bill become a law this is essentially how an application become a project.
00:20:45 – Rico Figliolini
That’s right. It’s really easy. It’s really easy. The first part that you go to is how does land use application become approved project? And it shows 13 steps. And it’ll explain each one of the steps from pre-application meeting all the way to fees paid all the way to public hearings all the way to planning and commission public hearing. I mean it’s 13 steps through this before you finally get to permitting the piece. But it’s, so for anyone that doesn’t know the process,it is a long process to do this and does take time.
00:21:23 – Brian Johnson
It is. And you know when you do it and all the arrows that you’re going around, you know, you’re like, wow, there are a lot of steps, but there needs to be. And, you know, our steps are the same steps that everybody else, every other local government has to go through. You know, there’s some slightly different ways they do some of those steps, but we all have to go through those steps. So hopefully this will make it a little bit easier. And then hopefully this may, it’s a little bit easier to understand the process and specific cases a little bit easier to find them. I believe now there are seven different vectors in which you can get to the same land use document. You can get to it from the council agenda or a planning commission agenda. If you happen to know that, you can get to it from our calendar. If you know the date, you can get to it from the department, from the homepage. Any way we could think of that somebody might think, oh, I want to find that information. We link it to the same, you know, packet of documents that you described. Hopefully it makes it a little bit easier. And this is based on things we were working on and some input from the community. So, yeah.
00:22:42 – Rico Figliolini
No, this is terrific improvement. I haven’t, usually city government and county websites. It’s a very difficult process to, to find things because it’s, because of the way it’s done. It’s, they’re not companies, you know, doing, making things easier because it’s commercially viable for them to. It’s not an apple website or you know but you all have improved it and it’s so much easier now to find those applications than it was before.
00:23:12 – Brian Johnson
You know Rico, our biggest challenge, most government’s biggest challenge when it comes website, is too much information. Because everybody you know, by law, we have to be transparent. And then beyond the minimum transparencies, if you will, residents, citizens are always saying, you know, well, I didn’t know that, or where do I find that information? You should make it, you know, publicly accessible. Well, our website is the epicenter of that. Everything linked to that. Social media posts link back to the website, newsletters back to the website. So our website is constantly under pressure to put more because people are like, that should have been made available to the public. Well, how do you make it available? You put it on the website. And so it is a challenge for us to make it, put lots of things on the website, but not make it so crammed and condensed that it’s just hard to find. And that challenge you just brought up is a real challenge that we will struggle with probably all the time.
00:24:23 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, I’m sure. And there’s a lot. I mean, just doing the drop-down menus, you could see dozens of choices of where to go. And the website is chock full of information. I mean, it’s a tremendous amount of information, depending on who you are and what you’re looking for. So I wanted to actually touch upon something else too that we spoke about last time, which was Jones Bridge Park and what’s going on there. There’s some updates. I know there’s a public meeting that’s going to be held, let me just say that, October 15th at 2:00 at Pinckneyville Community Center. So it’s being held by the community group that, you know, very intimate knowledge of Jones Bridge Park. A lot of stuff going on there. So we talked a little bit about it. But if you could give us, again, a brief about where we are with this, that would be great.
00:25:23 – Brian Johnson
Well, this is kind of this meeting that you just referred to and some previous ones are the result of residents who live in homes that are up against Jones Bridge Park or nearby, you know, neighborhoods that suffer the loss of quality of life at best. If not, there have been instances where somebody ran from police down into Jones Bridge Park. It’s a dead end. They bail and they’re running through neighborhoods in the middle of the night with, you know, law enforcement chasing them, including aviation units like their helicopter up with searchlights. And so, you know, there’s some concerns. And Jones Bridge Park is unique in that it’s one of the few parks, and least in North Metro Atlanta, that has access to the Chattahoochee River all the way down to where there are man-made improvements for you to get into the river versus like walking down, unimproved, you know, wet bank. It’s also one of the few places that has, I wouldn’t call them rapids, but some whitewater right there.
00:26:58 – Rico Figliolini
They have rocks that were added, outcrops to the river and such.
00:27:02 – Brian Johnson
Right. And then it’s been improved over the years to have lots of covered pavilion, you know, barbecue pits, things like that, playgrounds. So it’s a big park and it’s popular for those who might not have access to pools or want or barbecue or just playgrounds. But unfortunately, when the park closes there are people who like to go back in there and it’s a big park and it goes way back, winds way back in there. And the residents have brought up some concerns and you know the authority, not the ultimate authority, but the ultimate responsible party is Gwinnett County because it’s a Parks and Rec Department asset. And residents are concerned that there’s access to the park because there’s not a gate that’s being closed when the park closes. And so people go back there. And it’s a minority of the time if there’s somebody back there that when Gwinnett PD is even either notified or able to send an asset there to deal with a trespasser and as a result people go back there and they do some pretty, I mean, we’ve had, you know, gunfire back there. Luckily, nobody.
00:28:20 – Rico Figliolini
Six times.
00:28:22 – Brian Johnson
Yeah. And then a lot of vehicular stuff, even short drag racing, doing donuts back there, speakers. You know, you’re talking about, you know like it, I think the hours are dawn to dusk of the park and so you know depending on when, what time of the year it could be you know as early as six or seven where it’s dark and people are still doing things. And so people go back there loud music, drugs. We’ve had a lot of inappropriate behavior back there. And, you know, Gwinnett responds when Gwinnett can respond, but it’s not been enough for the residents to feel like their quality of life and safety is being protected. And so this frustration is born out of that.
00:29:25 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. There are definitely a lot more people using the park over the past few years than there were before. So I think it’s just gotten more aggravating for people.
00:29:37 – Brian Johnson
I mean, Metro Atlanta is growing, so it’s not going to get any less.
00:29:41 – Rico Figliolini
No, it’s just trying to figure out how to, you know, I know the city was going to pay for the gate, the timed gate to go down and the maintenance of it is negligible over a year. But, you know, I mean, that’s the county right?
00:30:02 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, so the county you know the Parks and Rec Department of Gwinnett County, it’s their facility. Them not closing and opening a gate you know their contention is we don’t have the staff to do that. But the residents themselves have offered to be the ones to do that. You know like look let us open and close it every day so at least we prevent it, they haven’t wanted to do that. I don’t know the reason. I suspect it might be that, well, you know, what happens if they close it and then they don’t open it, you know, early enough so it gets the next day or what, I don’t know. I would submit that you know I think we talked about last time where the fields club has multiple facilities and they have, and multiple entrances to multiple facilities and the fields club doesn’t have staff to be able to open and close it every day. So the residents that are nearby there just kind of basically they just because they’re, you know, oftentimes 10 feet away from the gate or not much farther. They just kind of, you know, organize a little spreadsheet. Hey, Rico, you’ll do it on this day. I’ll do it this day. And you just go out and there and close it, unlocked it and it’s unlocked the next day. And when it started, I remember, you know, Fields Club happened to be on the board saying, look, if this doesn’t work out well, we’re going to have to, you know, not allow you to do that anymore. You know, if you’re locking it before somebody can get out and they had, you know, the authority to be back there or whatever. It’s worked out well so I’m not sure why Gwinnett didn’t say we’ll let you try it unless you screw it up and then we’ll you know remove that. But they just said no thanks so then at the city we offered to buy and have installed a vehicular gate similar to what you see at say railroad crossings gate. We researched ones that automatically go down at a certain time and go back up at another time so it could be programmed to do it automatically and it was remotely accessible so that emergency services could have it go up, you know, if they needed to get back there. And we offered to donate and install it if Gwinnett would then take it over, because it would be securing their park and it would be at their entrance. And we don’t have the authority to restrict some access to property that the city doesn’t own. And we, the company that quoted the price for the purchase and install also gave us a price of about a thousand dollars for the annual maintenance for this company to do annual maintenance and for them to have the remote accessibility. So it would have been, they accepted it, you know, $1,000 a year. Mind you, this is an organization that has over a billion dollar budget. But $1,000 a year and they have declined that option as well. So I’m not sure where we will go. We will also have a presence at that October meeting. Yeah, the 15th. We’ll have a presence at that meeting as well. Our marshals will. But unfortunately, it’s not going to get better. We’ve got to figure out something. And so hopefully we can.
00:33:45 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. It’s always one thing or another that goes on in the city. Everything from Town Center, parking deck, to the Forum, to all these other places. There was just another purchase done in the community of the $9 million purchase of the shopping center on Holcomb Bridge Road, where there used to be the Outback Center. The restaurant used to be there, but that’s where you’ll see Peachtree Corners Eye Clinic, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell. So that property was just purchased.
00:34:02 – Brian Johnson
Well, you know, North American property was just bought by Jamestown.
00:34:08 – Rico Figliolini
There you go. There was another, right. And I spoke to someone from North American Properties. Nothing will change. Apparently, it will continue on with the plan that they have, the improvements that they want to do. So, you know, but yeah, things change, right?
00:34:39 – Brian Johnson
They do. And you know, no government can say, well, you know, you can never sell it or you can never do this. We’d love to, but we can’t ensure that a company remains a viable company. Companies go out of business. They merge. They make business decisions to go different directions. I mean, it is an ever evolving thing. And so you try to build in protections against the worst case from happening. But, you know, legally, we can only go so far, we just want to make sure we go as far as the law allows us to restrict certain things from happening after that initial change.
00:35:27 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, we’re fortunate that we have a good neighbor there, for example, at the Forum. I mean, they just opened the plaza. They’re going to move on to, I think, the parking deck later next year or something.
00:35:40 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, they’re working on it because that’ll be next. Yeah that’s, certainly there are people who have been complaining about why would they remove some parking if they didn’t already have a, and you know it’s not.
00:35:54 – Rico Figliolini
It’s just a nicer looking place now.
00:35:57 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, it is. Well, I will say an update on the parking though, they have made the decision that it’s more cost effective for them to take the overflow parking for you know, those who are visiting the proper, shoppers if you will, and they were going to move that and put it in the service parking lot by Belk. But given the amount of utilities, storm water, water and sewer, everything that are underground and what it would take, they’re going to add it to the pedestal that will be part of the parking for the apartments and the hotel on each side of the front entrance. So if you’re coming in off of 141 there’ll be a parking decks on both sides as you’re going down kind of the angle towards the fountain and that’s, they’re going to add another level on each side for the shoppers to park at. And then those who are either in the multifamily or the hotel are in other levels. So that’ll be where, it’s called Pedestal. It’s built in where you have the units above it. And that’s where, so, you know, really it’s the same distance of a walk. Maybe it’s a little bit easier to get to it, drive into it. So you wouldn’t have to do the fountain and across the way to the back.
00:37:36 – Rico Figliolini
So when would that happen then?
00:37:38 – Brian Johnson
It’s still happening at the same time. It’s just, they’re going to build the parking for the shoppers first. So that’s going to continue to go up above it when it’s time for the hotel or the multifamily to go in.
00:37:56 – Rico Figliolini
So when you’re driving up, there’s a part where it sinks down on either side. So we’re going to build, and that’s parking right there also, but they’re going to build the deck then onto that parking, those parking spaces.
00:38:09 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, well, I’m not so sure that they’ll do one level below it and then keep going. When you’re driving down from Peachtree Parkway to Forum Drive, you’re driving to the fountain.
00:38:23 – Rico Figliolini
Right.
00:38:24 – Brian Johnson
On each side, there is, you know, below that ramp down there, there’s, one’s behind, what is it? Ulta? I think it’s the back of Ulta, and the other one is the back of Barnes & Noble.
00:38:37 – Rico Figliolini
It’s not Ulta, I don’t think. Ulta’s on the other side. So it’s behind Barnes & Noble, and then, I forget what the retail is over there. It’s a retail store. I forget what that is.
00:38:49 – Brian Johnson
It’s typically where you’re going to go.
00:38:52 – Rico Figliolini
And they’re still, I know they’re still able to do the apartments is what they want to do above that area. Are they still the Indigo, a boutique hotel of some sort? They’re supposed to be on the other side, I think.
00:39:05 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, the only change is just moving the shoppers’ parking from where the Belks was to closer to the road.
00:39:15 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. So they’re not doing anything back there like you said because of utilities? And because I drove back there recently I would stop back there this past weekend to go up to you know to do some shopping. And I noticed the utilities and stuff like that I was wondering how they would build that out there.
00:39:33 – Brian Johnson
it just was more expensive to do all that than it is to add a level on the two sides of the main entrance so yeah which was a decision
00:39:42 – Rico Figliolini
Because I was thinking also, because isn’t that retaining wall back there too, I think? The weight of that parking deck on there, I was thinking it’s going to be tremendous with the deck and the cars. It was just like, can they hold it?
00:39:55 – Brian Johnson
They were going to have pillings. But they were going to have to relocate utility lines. You start getting into, and I think there’s also Georgia Power’s got a, what do they call it?
00:40:10 – Rico Figliolini
Transformer?
00:40:12 – Brian Johnson
Yeah, it’s a station. It does multiple things. It could be a transformer. Anyway, Georgia Power’s got what they need to serve the entire property is back in that parking lot. So, you know, the residents who live back in Amberfield, you know, should be happy because there won’t be any change back there.
00:40:35 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:39 – Brian Johnson
You know, but those who are complaining about, oh, there’s not enough parking because they’ve removed some in the middle, do what they did. I mean, there is parking, plenty of it right now. It’s just you have to walk maybe a little bit farther than finding. And I know that’s frustrating. Who wouldn’t like to park right in front of?
00:41:01 – Rico Figliolini
But if you could park right in front of something, that means there’s not enough business going on, not for anything. That’s really what that is. And if you’re walking and you go to the plaza side, I mean, they’ve done a really nice job there, I think. An area that you can eat, you can hang out there. The more stuff there will be, more of the restaurants. I mean, it’s just going to be a nicer atmosphere to be at, I think. Brian, thank you. It’s been a pleasure learning more about what the city’s doing and stuff. So everyone, thank you for being part of, you know, for listening in. And if you have any questions, for sure, put it into the comments. This is a Simulcast live feed, that you’re listening to on Facebook or YouTube. So we’ll try to answer them post the show. And I’ll put some of the links to some of these things that we talked about in the show notes. That’s where you can find it there as well. But hang in there for a Brian. But thank you again for being with us. And also thank you for our sponsor, EV Remodeling. Eli, who does a great job in building renovation work from start to finish. So check them out. He’s a resident of Peachtree Corners. His website is evremodelinginc.com. Great guy. So check out and we appreciate their support for these podcasts and our publication. Thanks again. Take care, guys.
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