Town Center Updates, Lululemon and Attracting New Companies

On this episode of Prime Lunchtime, host Rico Figliolini speaks with Peachtree Corners city manager Brian Johnson about the challenges the city is facing and the innovative ways they are addressing them. Brian provides insight into the policies and strategies that Peachtree Corners is exploring to combat today’s issues, including the recent Lululemon incident Additionally, listeners will hear about the city’s efforts to attract businesses, renovate popular gathering spots, and improve infrastructure.

Timestamp Where to find it in the podcast:

[0:00:00] – Intro
[0:02:22] – Incident at Lululemon
[0:17:12] – Companies Moving into Peachtree Corners
[0:23:28] – Updates to the Town Green
[0:31:41] – Closing

“We’ve scheduled some meetings with some of the entities that can do some things to help… It’s important to note that our camera system, the city’s camera system, is unequivocally the reason why police were able to identify and ultimately apprehend the last two homicide instances we had here. So we know it works, we want to have as much of it as we can, so we’ll do our part.”

Brian johnson

Podcast Transcript

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

Hi. Everyone, this is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life and today, as usual, once a month we talk with city manager Brian Johnson. Hey Brian, thanks for joining me.

Brian Johnson 0:00:11

Rico, thanks for having me.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:13

Yeah, it’s always good, doing this once a month, although I call this Prime Lunchtime with the city manager. We’re not having lunch, but it’s during lunchtime, so I appreciate you giving that hour up. Before we get into it and some of the discussions about what’s going on, I just want to introduce our sponsors. We actually have two beginning with this episode. One is our lead sponsor of EV Remodeling. Eli, who owns it and lives here in Peachtree Corners, has been a great supporter of us. It’s going on our second year. EV Remodeling does a lot of the renovation work from start to finish. You can find their work both in an article we did online at our website, livinginpeachtreecorners.com or go visit evremodelinginc.com. Eli’s a great guy, great family, does some really good work. So check them out. New sponsor beginning this month is Clear Wave Fiber. They’re here in Peachtree Corners. They were actually an elite sponsor of the Criterion Road race that we just had with Curiosity Lab. They’re 100% fiber. They’ll take care of your business and your home, so you should check them out. It’s Clear Wave Fiber and we appreciate them being part of our corporate sponsor family. So thank you for doing that. So, Brian, I guess the first thing that we should talk about and get out of the way is something that’s hit. Even though we’re so local in such a small town. In the scheme of things, Peachtree Corners has been like all of a sudden, I find our name on the New York Post, the UK Mail. And a lot of it has to really do not with us as a city, but with Lululemon, which is a store that is in the Forum. It’s a nationally known brand, my daughter buys from there too. It’s a great brand, but things happened just a week or two ago, caught on video and that was made public. It’s not unusual that it hasn’t happened in other places, but we’ve hit the map because of that. So can you tell us a little bit about that? We had a discussion about it.

Brian Johnson 0:02:22

Well, you’re right. What we did is we kind of got caught in the middle of what is national phenomenon, it appears, and that is there have been some corporations like Lululemon, there are a number of other ones that have adopted a policy that affects their response to shoplifting or theft of any kind of merchandise from the stores. And the policy regulates the employees behavior during and after. And it’s kind of twofold. One is, policies are generally that if they’re witnessing a shoplifting or a theft, theft in progress is to not intervene directly, is to not engage directly the individual or individuals doing it. And that one is when you read the articles and some of the studies on this stuff that’s generally for the safety of the employees, you don’t know what the person stealing merchandise will do. If they have a weapon, are they going to assault you. So they’re just generally like, look, do not engage them, do not get near enough them or interfere with what they’re doing. Let them leave. And then some of the big brands have in house security, yeah, security that they’ll investigate and see if they’ll do. So that’s kind of one part of this. The part that maybe has people more like kind of having a difficult time understanding is they don’t call the police during and in some cases even afterwards, that they’re just going to write it off as lost merchandise. And the purpose behind that in the cases where a corporation does have that policy is there has been some internal cost benefit analysis that they think that there is a greater risk to the corporation of calling the police and potentially being accused of profiling than just writing off the loss of the merchandise. And so they’re like, we’re not going to call the police about this at all. Because there could be instances, of course, with corporate policies, it’s a blanket across the country, so there certainly could be instances where it clearly wouldn’t be necessarily that. But they’re just worried that there could be instances where some employee makes what I call it levels an accusation against somebody to the police even after the fact. And that person maybe invariably either wasn’t involved or they level an accusation against a corporation that you’re only accusing me because you’re profiling me for certain reasons. And so they said, we’re not going to call the police. So unfortunately, why that affects us is we have stores here that are part of national and international corporations, and some have this policy. And the Forum certainly has stores that are struggling with the nationwide, and I stress the nationwide phenomenon because some of the discussion around here is like, oh, crime has decided to focus on the Forum or focus on Peachtree Corners. And that is not the case. It’s unfortunate we have any, but we are no different than other locations that are struggling with the fact that certain criminal elements, juveniles, just certain people who are willing to break the law, know that they can get away with it to a certain degree on certain stores that have this policy. And in the case of lululemon, there was an instance where, having this policy in place, there were individuals who, it appears, in the view of lululemon’s leadership, did not remove themselves from the case of this theft terminated, and then the termination resulted in the spouse of one of the individuals posting a long kind of blog about it. And it started with two employees were fired because they called the police, which Lululemons come back and said that wasn’t the case. They were fired because of other policies, which appears to be they did not remove themselves from the immediate area of these people. But it got picked up nationally because people were like, wait a second, you got fired because you called the police and then it kind of got what? But anyway, as this story took off, it starts always with there was an incident in Peachtree Tree Corners, Georgia, at Lululemon, and then it goes into the corporate policy and how this has contributed to some of the increase in criminal activity we see, at least when it comes to the shoplifting and theft. So that’s the incident we could certainly talk about the specific case here, but that’s why we were.

Rico Figliolini 0:08:13

So the ladies that followed them out, if the reports are accurate right. The posting, I’m sure listen, there’s three sides to the story, so accuracy can be depending on where it goes. I’ve read enough articles on this because this has appeared in sites like the New York Post, UK Mail, I mean, it’s been internationally, even reported to a degree because of Lululemon’s brand right. If they hadn’t followed them out, which they shouldn’t have, I guess I can appreciate and understand the liabilities of a business where they want to make sure their employees are safe, but also it’s a cost factor too, right? It’s not good to have your employees go out because lawsuits can arise from some of these things for sure, because lawsuits are like we’re a society where we like to sue everyone.

Brian Johnson 0:09:03

We’re litigious, no doubt about that.

Rico Figliolini 0:09:07

But if they didn’t follow them out, they didn’t see the car marking or the car the make and model and all that, these guys would never have been arrested in Peachtree City where they went, I guess it was the next day to do the same thing at Another Lululemon and they were arrested. And now they’re in jail. Or at least they were in jail, because the aggregate amount of what they stole was a felony range versus a misdemeanor range, if the reporting is accurate.

Brian Johnson 0:09:33

Right, because they wouldn’t my understanding as well, I don’t know, at some point they may have been caught, but the make and model of the vehicle was a result of the theft at the forum location of Lululemon. And that did play into the very next day, the same group of four went down to Peachtree City, south of Atlanta and did the same thing. And the police, having the make and model, knew what to look for when they tried to leave. The, I guess the was almost like a shopping mall. And so there are multiple exits and they were able to keep the from leaving. And they had already changed their license plate, so that would not have helped if we had picked up here. Now, it’s also important to note a couple of other things. One is there are a number of other corporate policies that have affected this kind of activity both at the Forum and elsewhere. I mean, you know, have talked to North American Properties, who owns the Forum, and Avalon. Avalon has stores that the same thing is happening. Avenues at East Cobb, other locations they have when there are others. My understanding is Victoria’s Secret, who has a similar policy, has more the on a somewhat unfortunate regular basis than even Lululemon. Unbelievable. They’re not the only ones. Again, we got caught with individuals who understand we’re kind of tired of having to see this. And it was brazen, if you watch the video, brazen about this. But nationally, it’s on the increase. In fact, there are some cities, usually big cities, who won’t even prosecute misdemeanors at all. And so those who do this know that if you keep the value of the merchandise that you’re shoplifting or stealing below a certain threshold, then that’s right, essentially no consequences to your action. And these stores are just writing it off. I don’t think most of what we’ve read, most of the comments that we’ve received are not incredulous. Reaction has not been about, well, they got fired, or the belief that they got fired for not removing themselves from the immediate location of all these people doing it. A lot of people believe, oh, they got fired for calling the police.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:09

Right. Because that was part of that commentary. But I mean, even still, I guess that I think what this probably shows or what’s necessary maybe at some point, is that the Forum, unlike Town Center, has no cameras there. And that may be something that the maybe have to look into.

Brian Johnson 0:12:31

Well, there’s two things going on at the Forum. That the city. We’ve scheduled some meetings with some of the entities that can do some things to help. But right now, on the exterior roads that you drive on to get to these stores at the Forum, the main boulevard, there are not specific exterior cameras on the parking spots and the roadway. And so that’s going to be discussed. The other issue that is going to be harder is Gwynette PD. When they were finally called after this incident, they had, I can’t remember it was either four or five officers that got there within two minutes, but it was all done already. The group had left, and Gwynette PD has implored these locations. Call us. We can’t do anything if you don’t call us. But the corporate policy of, hey, we don’t call the police because we would rather write it off than get accused of profiling, which usually tends to be the racial profiling. There’s other types. But the risk some corporations feel that that is greater than calling the police is such that when that police department is very frustrated as well, because they’re like, this is happening right under our nose, and we are here. We had officers in the area could have done sending you called. I don’t know how to fix that per se, but we certainly can do some things, and we’ll do some things to maybe increase our ability to ultimately solve and prosecute some of this criminality. It’s important to note that our camera system, city’s camera system, both video and flock hide in with Fusis is unequivocally. The reason why police were able to identify and ultimately apprehend the last two homicide instances we had here, which fortunate, but at least we had the ability to do that. So we know it works, want to have as much of it as we can, so we’ll do our part. But unfortunately, there’s going to be still a struggle with corporate policy on an individual store basis on what they do with what’s happening inside.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:03

Yeah, and I know it’s frustrating, apparently for the Forum also because they’ve had discussions with the businesses, and it’s out of their control as far as that goes.

Brian Johnson 0:15:12

And they’ve also employed. I’m glad you brought that. It’s not just Gwinnett PD, it’s the landlord. North American Properties has been like, please, this hurts us all when this happens because some of the local community social media comments, like on next door, there’s people who are like, why isn’t the forum doing more? Or you should reach out to the city. The city shouldn’t let this happen. We would love to be able to get these stores to do something about it, and then these employees feel handcuffed, too. Hopefully, if we get enough of this solved or the word gets out that you really are under surveillance when you’re out on the public right of public spaces, that maybe the criminal element won’t come here, but it is not exclusive to us. Nobody wants it to happen. And look, as frustrating as these policies are, the other thing we got to be careful of is I read a lot of I’m never shopping at Lululemon again, and I get the stance, but we’re not careful. We are going to end up by taking a stance there, driving Lululemon away from this particular location, and now we’ve got another empty storefront.

Rico Figliolini 0:16:34

They’re understood. I mean, these types of things actually have driven companies to actually close. Walmart has closed in places. Other stores have closed in neighborhoods where these things are happening.

Brian Johnson 0:16:48

I don’t think it made at their corporate headquarters. And again, there’s greater forces at play and other social considerations that they put into it. Right or wrong, whether you agree or not, it’s just what we’d hate to see is the end of the day, this location is closed because it’s not getting enough sales. And again, now you got an empty storefront.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:12

I don’t think that certainly would be the case. So hopefully things will be a little different. All right. There’s other things happening in the city. There’s certainly governments and companies that are flocking to the city of Peachtree Corners for a lot of different reasons. Curiosity Lab is one of the to be able to do like that race that you all put together between the city and Curiosity Lab with the Criterion Road race that was just phenomenal. Be able to do that. Over the past year or so, the French American Business Chamber relocated here. Several companies like Valmat, which is I think a Danish company, relocated into the three corners.

Brian Johnson 0:17:54

There are companies that partnership agreement with Audi.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:58

Audi, that’s right.

Brian Johnson 0:17:59

No idea. That may materialize into something more. I mean, that’s the purpose of all this is Curiosity Lab is merely a magnet to get companies here. Our hope is once Curiosity Lab gets them to the area and they’re using Curiosity Lab or they’re collaborating or doing whatever is we talk to them and convince them, hey, look at this community as a whole. This is a great place for maybe you to expand your business or do certain things. I just got done meeting with the supply chain leadership at Intuitive Surgical at their headquarters in Sunnyvale and purpose of it was to get the list of all of their tier one and tier two parts suppliers that they purchased parts from to assemble the DA Vinci robotic assistance. And the purpose of us getting that is we’re going to go to then those part suppliers and say, hey, wouldn’t it be great for you to have a location really close to one of your biggest customers? Wouldn’t it be great? And if so, let’s talk about how much square footage you need and what can the city do to so that’s how we’re using this. And then of course we know that Curiosity Lab was ultimately a decisive point in Intuitive decision to come here. So the means to an end, but yeah, I mean, continues to play out.

Rico Figliolini 0:19:30

I’m glad you brought that up about the list of suppliers and stuff because I don’t think people understand what a city does as far as economic impact and bringing businesses here and what’s involved. It really is a salesmanship type of thing and to be able to show that right, I mean, you’re traveling in fact, weren’t you all in Israel recently and now there’s an Israeli government related business organization that’s going to be working out of Peachtree Corners.

Brian Johnson 0:19:58

Tell us CTO of the city. The person who really runs Curiosity Lab day to day. He went to Israel, spoke at it by invitation, spoke at a conference, but he was able to close a partnership agreement that we had kind of laid the groundwork for last year when I was there. And that’s Israeli governmental agency called the Israeli Innovation Authority. And their job is to foster incubate and help develop Israeli startup companies and their expansion into the international market. And we’ve worked out a partnership agreement in which they’re going to vet this big pool of startups within the nation of Israel. Vet them down to ones that they think are ready to come to the US. Meaning their product they think is one that’ll work. They’re financially healthy enough that they can scale somewhere else and then they’re going to push them to the US through Curiosity Lab. We’re going to offer some assistance when they land here. Somewhat similar to what the French American Chamber does for French companies is they get here and then they’re kind of like, all right, I’m in the US. Talk to me about what it would take for us to hire people here. Is there certain paperwork we got to do? We want to be close to certain things. Where’s the good market to do that? Sometimes we keep the here, sometimes the leave and go elsewhere in metro Atlanta, elsewhere in Georgia, elsewhere in the US. But at least we had a shot at saying maybe we can meet your need. Maybe you stay here within our corporate limits and you don’t leave on your expansion. But we’ve executed an official partnership agreement to have that pipeline get created between the Israeli government and Israeli startups coming to the US. So it’s great opportunity for us to maybe land some companies that have product and maybe they want to expand and stay right here inside our it’s amazing.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:20

Israel, the startup nation. I think there was a book about that about how they have more startups per capita than any other nation and they’re small. Right. Unbelievable. So things are still moving along with technology obviously here. But we’re also looking at the city as a whole being community driven. Right? I mean there’s stuff going on. Like just recently one of my friends texted me from it was Saturday night, it was a concert night. I think it was the Michael Jackson tribute. Tribute, right. He said there were more people there than he’s ever seen since the park opened, since Town Center opened. Now I don’t know what the numbers could be.

Brian Johnson 0:23:04

We probably exceeded 5000 at the Town Green. I think that Queen concert that we had what, two years like the summer before COVID probably bigger, but yeah, we exceeded 5000 out in the Town Green. I mean it was well attended. It was a gorgeous day. In fact, unfortunately actually the end people were needing to leave because they didn’t dress properly because it got a little bit chilly.

Rico Figliolini 0:23:28

When the crazy weather it goes from 42 to like 79 and just like unbelievable. Like Northern California almost the must be that cooling effect. I forget which one it is but the council series is going great. A lot of stuff going on there. We’re going to have the Peachtree Corners Festival again at Town Center. I think that’s in September. But when all that’s done, I think part of what the city wants to do at this point is because the Green, the inner circle of that oval, has had so much traffic and bumpy areas in it and stuff. The city is going to take that down by 2ft.

Brian Johnson 0:24:09

Yeah. So look, we created the Town Green specifically to be a gathering spot, a community amenity where people want to go to. And we’ve done what cities will typically do to foster that. We have a concert series that brings people there, provides entertainment and opportunities for us in the community to see each other, to socialize. The playground is a great amenity out there, the fitness trail, so on and so forth. But the downside to that comes with things like we got to spend more money cleaning it up because there’s more people. Our custodial work out there has increased exponentially. The off duty police protection has increased. Trying to get kids off the playgrounds late at night when it’s closing at eleven. Those are good problems to have because a lot of people want to go out there. But one of the things that unfortunately we’re going to have to do to make sure that it looks the best is we’ve got a big two acre oval and that has a ring of sidewalk around it and inside it, it’s got all this grass. Well, the original soil that the sod was planted on top of is your typical Georgia clay. What’s happening is when it gets wet and you have a lot of weight on it, like whether it was two years ago, the festival was rained. The first year out there it rained, it was kind of a mess. We’ve had some concerts where it’s wet, you get on it and when the clay gets wet it gets squishy and so it squishes down and it gets uneven. And then when it dries it gets hard, but it then hardens with all the waves and undulation of all the weight. So one thing you’ve got is it started to get lumpy. And the other thing is clay doesn’t necessarily always facilitate grass growing. So we known that there was a risk that we had to do with this. But anyway, at the day after the last concert we got a project. We’re going to come in and we’re going to remove the sod and about 2ft of all the soil and the clay. Then we’re going to put in a drainage bed for it to drain the water better. We’re going to put in good soil, and then we’re going to attempt because we prefer grass over artificial, we’re going to attempt to put Sod back and go one more year, next year, and see if we can’t if there’s enough gaps between when you have large groups of people on it that the grass will grow well, and hopefully that’s the case. If not, we’ll ultimately go to turf. But either way we’ve got to improve the drainage. So that will happen right after the last concert. We’re also the original locations of the three. First call it playground equipment where you have two climbing things and you have that hill with the slide, right. That area is going to become a taut area, meaning playground equipment specifically for kids that are like four years and under so much lower, easier, safer type of playground stuff. So that’ll be kind of the todd area. Then if you want to consider the area where the Qantas and all the big stuff is kind of the intermediate, then if you feeling froggy you can go over to the fitness trail and some things there. Now we’re going to have to make some improvements to the fitness trail as well. For us to insure it, we’re going to have to put a fence around that area and there’s going to have to be some signage out there restricting it to people of a certain age or ability. Okay.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:13

Isn’t there insurance on there already?

Brian Johnson 0:28:16

There is, but what’s happening is the insurance company saying, look, you just opened up all this new playground equipment that is attracting a lot more people. Well, those kids especially, there’s a lot of unsupervised kids there. They then turn around and right there is this other stuff and they want to go and do it and they’re not either capable or old enough or under supervision. And so we’re going to have to it’ll stay there. We’ll make it look it’ll still be look unique. We’re kind of coming up with ideas on way to do that, but that’s coming. And then redoing the sod and the tot lot will start the day after the last compter. So we don’t interfere with any of that. It’ll be the fall but here maybe within a month we’re going to start construction of the dog park.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:11

Now where is that going to be in relation to stuff?

Brian Johnson 0:29:14

So if you’re standing on the town green staring at the stage, it’ll be to the left of Cinebistro in the woods. It’ll be almost alongside of Cinnabestro as you’re staring or if you want to consider it, the back of Cinnabestro if you’re going in bistro’s front door but.

Rico Figliolini 0:29:34

There’s a walkway that goes that winds out.

Brian Johnson 0:29:38

It’ll be where the dog park a little bit farther back. Probably the best way to get to the dog park is going to be to drive your car to the side surface parking lot for cinema. Okay, that’ll be the best way to enter it. And so we’re going to have a dog park, a pretty big dog park. Some of it will have two areas, one for bigger dogs, one for smaller ones. And then within each of those areas there’ll be some artificial turf and some natural area with certain little things for the dog and then seating area that are covered for the dog owners. And then we’re exploring putting in some sort of a call it a permanent stand, if you will. But it may be almost like operate like a bar or a beverage area where once you go inside the fenced area of the dog park you could go up to this area and get a drink.

Rico Figliolini 0:30:34

Okay, that sounds cool. All right. That’s probably one of the local businesses already. Or maybe another business would be there.

Brian Johnson 0:30:42

If we did it. We probably bid it out and see who wants to run it.

Rico Figliolini 0:30:47

Sure.

Brian Johnson 0:30:49

We’re certainly not going to, I’m not going to be pouring mixing drinks or anything. Yeah, there’s some good around here. Buckhead has a dog park that’s wildly successful, and they have a little mini bar that operates certain hours so that the dog owners go there and while they’re watching their dog and socializing, they can get a drink. This is why we created it. It’s a gathering space and hopefully some of this activity bleeds over into the forum. The forum started their phase one of parking spots and putting in more outdoor seating and outdoor amenity space. So they’re moving forward with their stuff. So a lot going on in that area because that’s our downtown and we want to make sure we support it.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:41

Definitely a lot of activity and even more stuff that’s going to be coming along that we’ll be talking about in further podcasts once the feasibility study has been finished with the Pickleball study and a bunch of other things also that’s happening, like the comprehensive plan because that comes to a head at some point, actually. When does the final report get put out?

Brian Johnson 0:32:05

August or September 1 of the two.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:08

So we’ll be covering that as well and talking about that on these podcasts. So we’ve come to the end of our time, I think, Brian, and don’t want to monopolize all your time.

Brian Johnson 0:32:18

Thank you.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:19

I do appreciate you being out with us and talking to us about these things. It’s good to get clarity and thank you for your input in the city’s point of view on Lululemon and the things going on as well as the stuff coming up. I mean, all exciting, all exciting things. So check out, our listeners here, check out LivinginPeachtreeCorners.com for a little bit more on what’s going on in the city. And our latest issue is out. It’s actually at locations like Ingles and Dunkin Donuts. It’s in a bunch of other places. It’s going to hit the mailbox in a few days, so check it out. There’s a lot of stuff on it. And Summer reading recommendations is the cover story, so see what your neighbors are recommending as far as what’s a good read this summer. Check that out. Hang in there with me as I close out. Thank you again for our lead sponsor, EV Remodeling, for being a sponsor of this and for Clear Wave Fiber for being joining us as a new sponsor and a great supporter for this coming year. But thank you all. Talk to you later.