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.

Exploring the Unexpected in Gwinnett County

Elliot Brack, a longtime journalist and resident of Gwinnett County, founded the Gwinnett Forum. The online forum has attracted a steady flow of content from various sources that Brack carefully moderates and publishes. This episode highlights the county’s transformation, local histories, and the importance of providing a platform for diverse public opinions and covering local news. Hosted by Rico Figliolini.

Resources:
The Gwinnett Forum: https://www.gwinnettforum.com/
366 Facts about Gwinnett County Book: https://www.gwinnettforum.com/2018/03/order-366-facts-about-gwinnett-county-ga/

“I started Gwinnett Forum not to make money, but to extend my life—and so far, it’s worked for 24 years. I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can.”

Elliott Brack

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Elliot Brack’s Lifelong Journalism Journey
00:02:51 – Unexpected Opportunities and Challenges of Running an Online Forum
00:04:37 – Balancing Political Perspectives
00:06:38 – Gwinnett County’s Rapid Growth and Media Coverage Challenges
00:09:46 – Balancing Short and Long-Form Journalism
00:11:14 – Exploring the Unexpected in Gwinnett County
00:15:44 – A Newspaper Man’s History of Gwinnett County
00:17:39 – 366 Facts About Gwinnett County
00:24:14 – Diversity of Cuisine in Georgia
00:26:56 – Daughter’s Passing and Cherished Memories
00:30:16 – Voting Irregularities in Small-Town Elections
00:33:32 – Jury Duty and Politics
00:35:25 – Serving in the Army in Germany
00:39:44 – Closing Thoughts

Podcast Transcript

Rico Figliolini – 00:00:00

Hi, everyone. My name is Rico Figliolini. This podcast is Urban Ebb, and it discusses culture, politics, everything that you can think of about the urban environment and the suburbia that we live in. And my great guest today is Elliott Brack. Elliott, thanks for coming.

Elliott Brack – 00:00:18

Thank you. Appreciate being here.

Rico Figliolini – 00:00:20

Yeah, no, this is cool. Elliott’s been a longtime Gwinnetian.

Elliott Brack – 00:00:24

50 years now.

Rico Figliolini – 00:00:25

50 years, way longer than me, double the span that I’ve been here almost. And he publishes an online publication called Gwinnett Forum, which is a great informative piece. I learn something every week whenever I get the newsletter from you. Why don’t you tell me, let’s start off with a little bit about your background, you and your family.

Elliott Brack – 00:00:44

Good. I am born south of Macon in middle Georgia. Went to school, grew up in Macon, went to school there and at Mercer University. Then I went into the army, spent three and a half years in Germany defending your country. I’ll come back to that if you want to. Then to the University of Iowa for a master’s. Then to South Georgia and started publishing a weekly newspaper where I stayed 13 years. Then I came to Gwinnett in 1974 with the Gwinnett Daily News. Stayed with it until just before the New York Times bought it and ended up my newspaper career as the associate publisher of the Gwinnett Extra of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And then I had to retire because of age limits there. So I started Gwinnett Forum, an online moderated forum about activities in Gwinnett. I started it for one reason. Can you guess the reason?

Rico Figliolini – 00:01:44

Tell me.

Elliott Brack – 00:01:45

Well I had seen too many people retiring doing nothing dropping dead. So I didn’t want to do that. So I started the Gwinnett Forum. Not to make money and I’ve never made money on it, I’ve got a decent retirement but I did  it to extend my life and so far it’s worked for 24 years and I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:07

Terrific. I feel the same way. I don’t think everyone asks me when I’m retiring and at that age where I could and I’m like, no, it doesn’t make sense for me to do that.

Elliott Brack – 00:02:16

Not if you’re having a good time.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:17

Yeah, you’ve got to enjoy life.

Elliott Brack – 00:02:19

And luckily I’ve had good health so you stay with those two and you’re all right.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:23

Yeah, especially through COVID and all that too.

Elliott Brack – 00:02:26

Yeah, we missed that one.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:28

Yeah, that’s cool. So, you know, let’s stick to, so your journalistic background runs deep and long.

Elliott Brack – 00:02:35

That’s all I’ve ever

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:37

Yeah. So is there a particular part of it that, is there a story from out of that that might have inspired you further to do something than you otherwise would have?

Elliott Brack – 00:02:48

I just fell into everything. I’m lucky.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:50

Okay. All right. It’s a good thing, I guess.

Elliott Brack – 00:02:52

I never saw the job come to me, and so I’m happy.

Rico Figliolini – 00:02:58

All right. Well, when you started Gwinnett Forum, though, I know you wanted to start it because it kept you busy.

Elliott Brack – 00:03:05

Yes.

Rico Figliolini – 00:03:06

But you’ve done a lot with that, I think, over the years.

Elliott Brack – 00:03:09

Well, I have been surprised from the very beginning when I didn’t know if I would get anything. I wouldn’t know anything to put in there. But from the very beginning, I started getting material from other sources, from public relations people, from city officials, from all kinds of places. And it just keeps coming. Even this morning, I didn’t know what I was going to use as my lead story. And then we found something happening, the widening of U.S. Highway 120 to four lanes. And all of a sudden, that’s the story you know and it just keeps coming in.

Rico Figliolini – 00:03:42

You know I feel the same way sometimes when we put out our magazines it’s like what are we going to put in the next issue and life happens right so it just keeps coming at you. Is there anything that you found along the way doing Gwinnett Forum that you know when people do online forums and stuff, you have to moderate, you have to do certain things.

Elliott Brack – 00:04:07

It is a moderated forum. It’s got to get past me to get in.

Rico Figliolini – 00:04:11

Okay. So have you found where, you know, things sometimes got a little hairy around certain things? What subjects? What topics?

Elliott Brack – 00:04:18

Well, mostly politics, of course, lately has been a lot about Mr. Trump in there. But we’ve always had politics in there. And I always endorse candidates ever since 2008 in all the elections.

Rico Figliolini – 00:04:29

Yeah, I’ve noticed that.

Elliott Brack – 00:04:32

So we’ve become political some. But some of the better stories are about individuals, when you go out and meet a person and write about them. And that’s fun.

Rico Figliolini – 00:04:43

So do you lean more moderate, Republican? How’s your politics?

Elliott Brack – 00:04:47

I try to stay in the middle. I want to hear from Republicans and Democrats and independents as far as that goes. I must admit I’m a liberal. I accept that. But still, I don’t want to shut anybody out who wants to say something. That’s why I try to make it a forum of public opinion from different sources.

Rico Figliolini – 00:05:09

Based on the moderation you’re doing, how are you seeing the politics right now?

Elliott Brack – 00:05:14

What do you mean by that?

Rico Figliolini – 00:05:16

Are you seeing within your forum, you know, and every forum is a little different, right? They attract certain types of people.

Elliott Brack – 00:05:22

Right.

Rico Figliolini – 00:05:22

Are you seeing more Trump?

Elliott Brack – 00:05:25

I get probably more reaction from Trump people, and I always try to print their reactions. I don’t want to just be known as a leftist or a rightist.

Rico Figliolini – 00:05:25

Right.

Elliott Brack – 00:05:36

We seldom don’t print a letter. We sometimes cut it shorter just for space. But we like to get to be able to show what people are thinking.

Rico Figliolini – 00:05:51

Okay. All right. Yeah, politics is tough, right? Because you have Trumpers, you have, I say Trumpers, sorry about that, MAGAs, and you have now, it used to be Biden, and now it’s Harris. RFK Jr. every once in a while pops up.

Elliott Brack – 00:06:07

We haven’t had much on the third-party candidates for some reason. People are not how we’re dealing. We’ll just talk about the two main parties.

Rico Figliolini – 00:06:16

Even before Harris came in?

Elliott Brack – 00:06:18

Yes.

Rico Figliolini – 00:06:19

Really? Okay. Interesting. Other parts of the country don’t.

Elliott Brack – 00:06:22

But that’s just with us in our little forum there.

Rico Figliolini – 00:06:25

Right, right, right. Are there particular issues that you’d like to cover in the forum?

Elliott Brack – 00:06:30

Well, we’ve always covered the growth in Gwinnett because it just continues every year. We sometimes, we get in more people in Gwinnett each year than larger than the 100 smallest counties in Georgia. You know, we continually get in about 10% to 15% every time you turn around, it looks like.

Rico Figliolini – 00:06:52

Are we still the largest populated or the second largest at this point?

Elliott Brack – 00:06:56

We’re second largest in the state, and it’ll be a long time passing Fulton because they had a lot of, Fulton consists, really, for you who weren’t born here, of three counties. Did you know that?

Rico Figliolini – 00:07:09

No, I did not.

Elliott Brack – 00:07:10

Well, two counties, Milton in the north and Campbell in the south, went broke during the Depression, and Fulton absorbed them. That’s why you can get on a bus, a barter bus in North Fulton and go all the way past the airport in Fulton County to South Fulton County in about a 50 or 60 mile ride for one fare.

Rico Figliolini – 00:07:33

Wow, okay. I never knew that. And I wondered why the county stretched as long as it did.

Elliott Brack – 00:07:37

It’s really three counties, you know. But now Fulton is running about 200,000 more than Gwinnett right now. And we may catch them someday, but with their bigger geographic area, we probably never will. But still, when I moved up here, there were 100,000 people, and now there’s a million.

Rico Figliolini – 00:07:57

So covering such a county, Gwinnett County, I mean, how do you do that?

Elliott Brack – 00:08:01

Well, nobody does it, especially the traditional media, the Atlanta newspapers and the Gwinnett Daily Post, Daily Post down to two days a week. The Atlanta papers no longer have any reporter covering Gwinnett. They’re only looking at the hole in the donut. They’re not looking at Cobb or Gwinnett or Fulton. And that’s sad. That’s bad for government and bad for democracy, too, I think.

Rico Figliolini – 00:08:28

Sure. So are you covering, I mean, it’s hard to be able to cover city councils.

Elliott Brack – 00:08:33

I don’t cover anything. People write me. I don’t have any staff. I don’t have any reporters or anything like that. It’s just me and editing what people send in to me. So that’s not much cover if you ask me.

Rico Figliolini – 00:08:46

No, it’s not. Now, it’s a sad state of affairs. Let me tell you. And you’re right. I’ve noticed the Gwinnett Daily Post. I mean, if it bleeds, maybe it leads, but mainly high school sports.

Elliott Brack – 00:08:58

Yeah, high school sports, therefore, take it. But now that’s what bleeds where it leads. That is, chasing ambulances is what the television stations do. They think just because someone got evicted or a tree fell on a house, that’s news. They aren’t covering hard news or investigative reporting of statehouse or the prisons or something like that. You just don’t see that. Why? Because it costs money. Chasing ambulances is cheap.

Rico Figliolini – 00:09:24

Yes. No, I agree with you. And the journalism, like the Woodward Bernstein type journalism, never happened today.

Elliott Brack – 00:09:31

You’ve got to. It’s unusual. Now, sometimes the Atlanta papers, and I get concerned about, they will have a story and it’ll go on and on and on, maybe two or three pages. That’s one reporter covering that. It’s a waste of time. They ought to be out covering small stories, I think.

Rico Figliolini – 00:09:50

Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. You know, that’s long-form journalism, I guess. And it’s like extreme, I guess.

Elliott Brack – 00:09:55

Yeah.

Rico Figliolini – 00:09:57

You know, so publishing Peachtree Corners magazine and Southwest Gwinnett magazine, we also get people submitting articles sometimes. But I tend to want to, you know, like you edit your materials that come in. They don’t go straight in.

Elliott Brack – 00:10:10

No, never.

Rico Figliolini – 00:10:12

Okay. And we do the same.

Elliott Brack – 00:10:13

Because I’m responsible for everything that’s published. You write it, but I’m the one that’s legally responsible. That’s why I read everything.

Rico Figliolini – 00:10:21

True, true. So you don’t have any reporters, any freelancers?

Elliott Brack – 00:10:26

Never have.

Rico Figliolini – 00:10:26

Okay. But you do have a stable of volunteers.

Elliott Brack – 00:10:29

We have several people who write often, and we appreciate them. And then we have the various public relations people of the cities and counties, county and cities of Gwinnett, that send material. And then we have various people who head the nonprofits, and they have a staff, and they send us things. We get a fair amount of material, and I’d say we publish probably at least three-quarters of it.

Rico Figliolini – 00:10:57

Okay, that’s quite a bit. And I got to say, when I get your email, newsletter, every week, twice a week, then.

Elliott Brack – 00:11:02

Twice a week.

Rico Figliolini – 00:11:05

There’s stuff in there I don’t know. And it’s like, wow, okay, I didn’t know that one. And I could say that there’s probably a third of what you put in there that I’m not familiar with, but I’m learning from.

Elliott Brack – 00:11:14

I’m learning, too. I’m learning, too. You’re not by yourself.

Rico Figliolini – 00:11:18

Okay, good, I don’t feel so bad. There are what I like too, I think you have a feature that does,  where is this picture? Find where this image is from.

Elliott Brack – 00:11:27

Oh, yes. We started the mystery picture about six years ago. five, And we have been amazed at two or three things. Gwinnett people travel and it’s hard to slip a picture past and nobody get it. Because somebody will have been that place before and they’ll respond. We have a cadre of four, five, six people who respond to every one of them. But this morning, the first answer I got that was the correct answer is from a guy I’d never heard of before. I mean, one of our readers who was there, you know.

Rico Figliolini – 00:12:01

Is there any of them that struck you that you remember?

Elliott Brack – 00:12:10

Well, I remember sitting in the plaza in Salamanca, Spain one day, and I thought, hey, this would make a good picture. And so I snapped the mystery photo for it. The next issue I put it in, four people got it, and two of them had been there the week before.

Rico Figliolini – 00:12:26

Oh, really? Serendipity. That’s good. Amazing. The world is not as large as we think, apparently.

Elliott Brack – 00:12:31

And the hardest pictures, though, usually if we snap a picture in Gwinnett that hasn’t been published anywhere before, that’s the hardest for our people to get. But we just don’t, I don’t see enough good pictures in Gwinnett to click.

Rico Figliolini – 00:12:48

I’ve seen some stuff through Georgia, though. Because Georgia has great, great landscapes, great places.

Elliott Brack – 00:12:54

We can’t publish any if it’s copyrighted, though. We have to, the pictures all come from readers that have been to these places.

Rico Figliolini – 00:13:00

Individuals, yeah. Do you feel that you want to do, you know, you know, Gwinnett Forum is the thing you do on a regular basis. Is there anything else you want to do? Like, would you have chosen to do something else besides Gwinnett Forum? Or is this?

Elliott Brack – 00:13:16

I just fell upon it. I don’t know if it’s an idea. When I started it, my son said it wouldn’t work. And my son is important because while I don’t have any staff, when I finish it in a Word document, a simple Word document, I send it to my son. He manipulates it and puts it out on the internet. I don’t know how to do that.

Rico Figliolini – 00:13:36

Oh, okay.

Elliott Brack – 00:13:36

He said, I don’t think this is going to work. A few years later, he had one like it.

Rico Figliolini – 00:13:43

I’m sure that the traffic you get to the website is pretty good.

Elliott Brack – 00:13:47

Well, we think so. We think we have about 10,000 readers, but in a county of a million people, that’s not very many.

Rico Figliolini – 00:13:54

No, that’s not actually. But you’re not on social media either.

Elliott Brack – 00:13:58

I don’t play with that stuff. I don’t understand it. I do the simple Gwinnett forum. That’s it.

Rico Figliolini – 00:14:05

So if no one subscribes to your newsletter, they really wouldn’t be able to get to you.

Elliott Brack – 00:14:10

get to you. Well, it’s on the web. If they wanted to go to GwinnettForum.com, they could read it. But we like to send it by email like you, to people. They’ve shown interest in it. Okay, here it is right in front of you every, twice a week.

Rico Figliolini – 00:14:28

Right, right. You decided, I mean, being here half a century, to put it that way, I guess, you decided to do Gwinnett history. That’s a big undertaking.

Elliott Brack – 00:14:39

Well, it was. Let me go back and explain some things. We used to do a tour of Gwinnett. I say we. I started out with Wayne Shackford in 1975. We did our first tour of Gwinnett. And over the years, we started doing them twice a year, fall and spring. And later on, when Mr. Shackford joined state government, we had other people help us narrate the tour. It was a six-hour bus ride around Gwinnett, and one person can’t do it. You need help just to relax your throat. Anyway, we’ve had Brooks Coleman. We’ve had Jim Steele. And in the last few years of the tour, we had Wayne Hill, the former chairman of the commission, who was no longer on the commission. And I learned a lot from those two people, well, Jim Steele and Wayne particularly. But as we would get off the bus each day, they’d say to me, you ought to do a history of Gwinnett. I said, look, I want to see it in print tomorrow. I don’t want to see it in print three or four years from now. I’m a newspaper man, you know. But finally, after I retired, I got to thinking that maybe I ought to do a short history of Gwinnett. I wanted to do a hundred page history of Gwinnett. So I sat down one Friday afternoon up on a porch in the mountains, and I wrote for most of the afternoon. And when I finished it, by the way, if I needed a date, I left it blank. I was just writing from memory. So anyway, I read through what I had written. I’d written 50 pages. And I remember shaking my head. I hadn’t touched the subject, I’d say. I had just skimmed over it, and I said, what am I getting into? So what I got into was three and a half years before we finished that book. And on two or three occasions I thought I had finished it. I forgot this. I had to go back and do that one. It ended up 850 pages. This covers basically from Gwinnett’s growth from 1950 to the present day, or 2008 when we finished it. Because we had two other histories up until that time. And I wanted to show the past. We cover some of the early history, but that’s just a skim and a bunch. But I’d known most of the people who I was writing about. They knew me, and I had some credibility, and they had some credibility. So I started writing, and it took forever. We published it in 2008. We republished it two more times, so we still have some copies left. And this is not inexpensive. We sell it for $75. If you want a history, I’m the only one that’s got one.

Rico Figliolini – 00:17:24

Sounds like you could be one of those college textbooks.

Elliott Brack – 00:17:30

Well, if you want the history of Gwinnett recently, it’s in there. By the way, we also published another book. This is 366 Facts About Gwinnett. This came about by the chairman of the county commission, Ms. Nash. Called me one day and says, can you come up with 366 facts about Gwinnett? And I said, why that number? She said, well, we want to publish one on the first day of the bicentennial and another one on the last day of the bicentennial. And I said, well, Charlotte, I don’t mind doing that, but how about let’s put it in book form so we at least keep those facts out there a little bit. So the first one we published was a red book. This one is a change in colors, but I republished it to blue. And the idea here is that this one is new and improved. It’s new because I had to go back and update the facts in there, how many students were in school and things like that. But it’s improved because my service station manager told me and said, you know, that red book is a pretty good book, but if I want to tell somebody about it, I have to go through the whole book to find that fact. Can’t you index it? So I indexed that one, making it improved, you see. Now, let me tell you the rest of the story. One of the first persons I handed it to went straight to the index and told me, I’m not in there.

Rico Figliolini – 00:18:52

A little egotistical. That’s funny. Can they find copies of this online?

Elliott Brack – 00:19:00

No, no, not online. We’ve sold a few. We’ve got a few left, but not many. We’re about out of that with the second printing.

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:08

When was the last printing of this stuff?

Elliott Brack – 00:19:10

Last year.

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:11

Last year. Yeah. All right, cool. And there’s no digital version online that they can, PDF of a sort that they can order digitally?

Elliott Brack – 00:19:16

What?

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:22

No PDF that people can order online?

Elliott Brack – 00:19:23

No, no. You can order the history book on PDF, but not this one.

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:29

Gotcha. Alright. Cool. Anyone that thinks they want a copy of this, which is great. I’m just thumbing through it. It’s interesting, some of the stuff that I’ve not.

Elliott Brack – 00:19:38

The fact I like, and I forgot the number, such a significant fact and an insignificant fact, really. How many baseballs the Gwinnett Stripers use in a year?

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:50

Well, that’s interesting. Now, that would be. How many?

Elliot Brack – 00:19:55

It’s in there.

Rico Figliolini – 00:19:56

I’m going to have to look through it. Here’s another interesting fact. The Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, anyone that’s old enough to know that one, is actually home-based in Peachtree Corners.

Elliott Brack – 00:20:05

That’s right.

Rico Figliolini –  00:20:05

I didn’t know that until just like a few years ago. I was like, man. You know, and the same thing Peachtree Corners has, the company that owns the salvage right to the Titanic is actually based in Peachtree Corners as well. So a lot of interesting stuff in Gwinnett County.

Elliott Brack – 00:20:22

It gets more every day.

Rico Figliolini – 00:20:24

Yeah. It’s just, you know, when I first moved here in 95, and I moved here because the Olympics. I moved here because Gwinnett County.

Elliott Brack – 00:20:31

A lot of people moved here because of the Olympics.

Rico Figliolini – 00:20:32

Yeah, because the county was the fastest growing in the nation, according to Money Magazine. So we came down here, we looked around, we bought the first and only house that we have here in Gwinnett County, or Peachtree Corners. Because of the school system.

Elliott Brack – 00:20:46

Yeah, a lot of people do that because of the school system.

Rico Figliolini – 00:20:51

So it’s, I mean Gwinnett has a lot of history to it. And maybe not all of it. It’s funny how some people, the old timers that I speak to every once in a while, they’ll tell me like, oh yeah, I remember the day my parents used to tell me. They would live in, Fulton think, County or Milton maybe at the time. And they would if you’re going to the other side of Gwinnett don’t you dare go through Gwinnett County.  You go right around the other side of that county.

Elliott Brack – 00:21:14

Well, let’s go back to Gwinnett used to be a lawless county. When I was coming up from South Georgia, I was told, said, boy, don’t go up there. They’ll shoot you up there. And there had been two major instances of lawlessness in that. One time the three deputy sheriffs were killed here in Gwinnett County with their own guns by people who were stripping automobiles of their parts, and the deputies ran up. Somehow the bad guys got their guns and killed them. That was 1964, a very bad story. And then in 1988, a lady who was a student at Emory was kidnapped and buried alive 83 hours underground in Berkeley Lake.

Rico Figliolini – 00:22:07

In Berkeley Lake?

Elliott Brack – 00:22:08

Yes. And they caught the guy, and he demanded a ransom. They ended up catching him, and they knew. He told them where he was buried, and they brought him up here, and they had to search Berkeley Lake. Now, this was before Berkeley Lake was built up at all, all those houses you see around the school there. It was a pine forest. And a guy who worked at Rock 10 plant right near there says at 10 o’clock in the morning, every policeman in the world seemed to show up over there, and they were combing the woods for Barbara Michael. They finally found a grave, and everything stopped. No one had brought a shovel. They had to go back into Norcross and Ivy Harbor and buy a shovel. In the meantime, the guys who were left there were digging with their hands to get her out.

Rico Figliolini – 00:22:50

Was she alive?

Elliott Brack – 00:22:59

She was alive. The guy who had, the guy and a lady who had abducted her had put drugs in the water. And so for some early time, she was not aware of what was happening. They’d also put a flashlight in with a battery, but eventually the battery went out. And she was an heiress from down in Florida. And she didn’t say anything to the press about it until finally, several years later, a reporter for the Miami Papers got her to tell her story. And that’s the name of the book is 83 Hours Til Dawn.

Rico Figliolini – 00:23:35

Gwinnett’s famous for really dastardly things.

Elliott Brack – 00:23:37

This was 64 and 68. I came up here in 74 and it was still by the way, the sheriff who went to prison did not go to prison for moonshining he went because he owned a thousand moonshine jugs.

Rico Figliolini – 00:23:53

You’re kidding, right?

Elliott Brack – 00:23:55

He went to prison.

Rico Figliolini – 00:23:57

It’s like someone going to prison for tax evasion, not for the crime they were evading.

Elliott Brack – 00:24:00

That’s right.

Rico Figliolini – 00:24:03

Okay. So that’s, you know, Gwinnett really, it’s interesting how it’s changed.

Elliott Brack – 00:24:10

It’s so diverse now. I remember when the first Chinese restaurant, we came from Lawrenceville, where I was living then, to Jimmy Carter Boulevard on the east side, where China One was a restaurant. That was our first China. And the first Mexican place was in Duluth called Acapulco.

Rico Figliolini – 00:24:31

Authentic Mexican? Authentic?

Elliott Brack – 00:24:33

Yeah, both were authentic. But of course, we’re just covered up with any kind of foods you want now. You could go down the street and get it.

Rico Figliolini – 00:24:39

Yeah, someone actually, someone that’s funny because someone else was complaining there’s another, there’s a sushi bar that will be opening in the Forum, in the Plaza, the new area that they just built. It’s a two-story deck thing. So they’ll be opening soon. And they’re a sushi bar place. And they were like, we have too many sushi places in this city. Which is kind of funny when you think about it. When I moved here in 95, coming from Brooklyn, the things that I didn’t, unless you really maybe went into certain parts of Atlanta, couldn’t find a really good bagel place, couldn’t find a good pizza place. And even the Chinese food was a different type of Chinese than up in New York, because there’s Szechuan and there was another one. And so it was funny. I mean, it took us a while before we really found good Italian food.

Elliott Brack – 00:25:29

Now you find it easily.

Rico Figliolini – 00:25:30

Everywhere. Yeah. I mean, it depends. A couple of restaurants out there say they’re Italian. I know my father-in-law loved the Olive Garden, and he was from Sicily.

Elliott Brack – 00:25:44

I can’t stand it.

Rico Figliolini – 00:25:45

He was from Sicily, and that was his favorite place to go to. And it was like, you don’t want to go to Maggiano’s? He’s like, I like the Olive Garden. I like the bread.

Elliott Brack – 00:25:54

My daughter was a waitress at the Olive Garden, and I didn’t like the taste of their food.

Rico Figliolini – 00:26:01

Yeah, I mean, there’s other Italian restaurants that aren’t legitimately Italian, but they smother their food in sauces and stuff. And you don’t see that in Italy, really.

Elliott Brack – 00:26:12

I remember when we were in, we spent a month on a vacation in Florence, Italy. I mean, that food there is so delicious, it’s pitiful. I mean.

Rico Figliolini – 00:26:19

Can’t find the same stuff here.

Elliott Brack – 00:26:21

No, it’s not like it is here.

Rico Figliolini – 00:26:22

No. Yeah. They ban stuff in Europe that they feed us here. It’s not the same world. So you’ve written a couple of books. You’ve done the Gwinnett Forum. Do you see yourself wanting to do anything else?

Elliott Brack – 00:26:30

No, I’m getting old. I don’t want to do much more.

Rico Figliolini – 00:26:35

You could do more. Are you kidding? The whole idea of doing stuff is to stay alive, right?

Elliot Brack – 00:26:42

The Forum keeps me busy and keeps me busy enough, you might say.

Rico Figliolini – 00:26:46

All right, well, that’s good. Anything you want to say that we haven’t really touched upon?

Elliot Brack – 00:26:53

Well, I will say this, and I don’t mean to be maudlin, but we lost our youngest daughter two weeks ago. She battled cancer for six years, and yet she was leading 20 students in Greece for four weeks before she died.

Rico Figliolini – 00:27:07

Before she died, really?

Elliott Brack – 00:27:08

She just kept going. She was always positive about this. She thought she was going to beat it, but of course it takes everybody. It looks like it’s in its way. But that’s been tough. We’ve got two other children, but watching her go down was the hardest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Rico Figliolini – 00:27:35

I think for a parent, to see their child go first is not something a parent wants to see.

Elliott Brack – 00:27:42

No, it just stays with us all the time. We’ve had a great outpouring of comment and thought and cards and food. People have just been wonderful, but it hurts.

Rico Figliolini – 00:27:57

I would imagine. When did you lose your parents?

Elliott Brack – 00:28:03

Well, they’ve been gone quite a while, both my father and mother, maybe 30 years, 20 years ago, 25 years ago.

Rico Figliolini – 00:28:12

Are you an only child?

Elliott Brack – 00:28:14

Yes, I am. I had a brother who was born and died three months later, and I remember my father taking that small casket and walking out our door and us going to the church. I mean, I was about four years old at the time, and I remember that. By the way, when was the first time you voted? What age were you?

Rico Figliolini – 00:28:38

I think I was in my early 20s. I was 20, 21, something like that?

Elliott Brack – 00:28:44

I actually voted when I was four years old.

Rico Figliolini – 00:28:47

No, you didn’t.

Elliott Brack – 00:28:49

I was down in, staying in South Georgia, middle Georgia with my grandmother and her son. And it was voting day. So we went to the Turkey Creek voting precinct in Wilkeson County. And my grandmother stayed in the car, and I walked with my uncle toward this one-room courthouse, as they call it. And by the way, I remember as we were walking up there, there were tubs of soft drinks all over the place and ice. And I remember one of the first things I remember was a man said to me, son, do you want a drink? And I said to him, sir, I don’t have a nickel. And he says, boy, today you don’t need it. He handed me an orange knee high thing. Anyway, my uncle went in and got his ballot and got one for his mother. And this is violating law, but took it out to her car. And she looked at the ballot for a while and said, hmm, here, boy, you vote. So on the hood of that car, I marked that. Now, I don’t know who I voted for, but I suspect I voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And I suspect I voted for Eugene Talbot.

Rico Figliolini – 00:30:00

Okay. You know, it’s like stories like that. I can imagine other counties then that is like going back. That’s amazing.

Elliott Brack – 00:30:11

And nobody said anything.

Rico Figliolini – 00:30:12

No, hey, you know.

Elliott Brack – 00:30:17

Everybody knew each other.

Rico Figliolini – 00:30:18

Yeah, well that’s the problem.

Elliott Brack – 00:30:20

Probably 200 people in the whole precinct, you know?

Rico Figliolini – 00:30:22

And how many people in that county?

Elliott Brack – 00:30:25

Probably less than 5,000, 10,000 or something like that.

Rico Figliolini – 00:30:36

You know, that’s funny because it’s just like you think about that. And I think about like Brooklyn and voting over there and people you know today would say, oh you know people they shouldn’t be voting. A four-year-old voted like a long time ago. But you find things like that all over the place right? Missing ballot boxes.

Elliott Brack – 00:30:49

Oh, I remember when I was in South Georgia, it was a real controversial election. And this guy’s, this candidate’s father, after the vote counting was over, the courthouse was locked down. This is a county of about 20,000. Courthouse was locked down. But the father stayed outside in his pickup with a shotgun all night in case anybody tried to sneak in the courthouse and do something.

Rico Figliolini – 00:31:14

Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. There are people that do that today sometimes. They’ll sit outside voting areas in right to carry states.

Elliott Brack – 00:31:26

I got introduced to politics when I was in South Georgia within the first six months when my partner’s father-in-law ran for sheriff because the crooked sheriff had gotten killed. And all of a sudden, I’m in on the inside, drafting the strategy. And all that stuff. I didn’t mean to do that.

Rico Figliolini – 00:31:37

How old were you?

Elliott Brack – 00:31:38

Oh, I was 26, 27 years old then. And I planned to be an objective newspaper man. But then all of a sudden, I couldn’t be called objective because I was helping him get elected.

Rico Figliolini – 00:32:00

I wonder how much different that. When I grew up, politics was the late 70s, early 80s for me, really. Democratic machine, Brooklyn County. I worked for, the county was broken down into sections, right? Districts, if you will. So I worked for the district leader in that area, and his name was Tony Genovese.

Elliott Brack – 00:32:23

I remember that name.

Rico Figliolini – 00:32:24

No relation to the…

Elliott Brack – 00:32:25

But still, Genovese. I remember that name.

Rico Figliolini – 00:32:28

Yeah, yeah. But even that family has no relation from what I understood anyway. But the politics of doing stuff, suppressing votes, putting out flyers that were essentially not meant to stop people from voting. Well, it was meant to stop people from voting for a candidate. So suppressing the vote, if you will, is what they called it.

Elliott Brack – 00:32:49

We call that just politics.

Rico Figliolini – 00:32:52

Yeah, different words, different places. Everyone was doing their thing. But I did learn quite a few over there. And I even tried to, I was called to a jury duty. I was like 20-something. And I really didn’t want to go. I had work. And if I didn’t work, it’s an hourly job. So I went to my district leader and he said to me, he said, what do you, what do you need? I said, I have this thing. I don’t want to go to jury duty. Can you take care of him? He crumples it up, throws it in the waste basket and says, it’s done. And I looked at him like, no, no, seriously. And he’s like, do you think anyone is going to come out and say you didn’t go to jury? There’s millions of people there. They don’t do that stuff. And I was like, okay, well, this is the way it goes. Politics is…

Elliott Brack – 00:33:36

Have you ever been on a jury?

Rico Figliolini – 00:33:38

Yes, I’ve been on a jury, although not in the South. When I was called to jury duty in Gwinnett County, they asked me, where are you from? I said, I’m from Brooklyn. They said, why’d you move here? I said, well, to get away from the crime. I was not picked on the jury duty, and I was never since actually called back.

Elliott Brack – 00:33:57

I’ve been on a jury one time, a murder trial.

Rico Figliolini – 00:33:59

Were you called and actually sat on the jury?

Elliott Brack – 00:34:01

I was on the jury, yeah. We were sequestered, too, for four days.

Rico Figliolini – 00:34:05

Wow. How’d that go?

Elliott Brack – 00:34:07

Well, the district attorney at that time did a bad job. We kept waiting for him to ask one more question, and it would have slammed the guy. He never asked it. So it was a hung jury. Later, they tried him again, and he was convicted.

Rico Figliolini – 00:34:24

Okay. Well, again, good experience. Let me ask you also about you mentioned you were in the armed forces. Can we touch on that a little bit? How old were you? Were you legitimately the right age?

Elliott Brack – 00:34:39

Yes, yes. When I was coming along you had the draft. And so while I was in college, I joined the National Guard.

Rico Figliolini – 00:34:45

Okay. How old were you?

Elliott Brack – 00:34:46

Oh, 17, 18. Went to camp at Fort McLean, Alabama for two years. Then this is when I was in college. And when I got in the third year of ROTC, you could no longer be in the Guard. You had to transfer to the Reserves. And I stood two more years there while I was in college. Then I was commissioned a first lieutenant. And I was sent overseas to Germany. They said, sign here and your wife can go with you.

Rico Figliolini – 00:35:10

What year was that?

Elliott Brack – 00:35:13

That was 58 we left.

Rico Figliolini – 00:35:14

Okay, okay, 58.

Elliott Brack – 00:35:15

No wars going on there.

Rico Figliolini – 00:35:17

And your wife was able to come with you?

Elliott Brack – 00:35:19

My wife went with me. We sailed on a ship and landed in Bremerhaven. The day we landed in Bremerhaven, we didn’t know it, but my wife’s father was killed in a tractor accident. A tractor ran over him when he was trying to open a gate. Anyway, she had to fly back immediately and all that stuff. Anyway, my job, I had a great job. While I was a part of the post operation, we ran the post, the military policemen, the doctors, the post office, the PX, the commissary. I was the commissary officer. I ran a supermarket for the post office. And I also ran a class six store. What is that?

Rico Figliolini – 00:36:05

I have no idea.

Elliott Brack – 00:36:07

Liquor. I was a liquor and commissary officer.

Rico Figliolini – 00:36:10

And you were how old?

Elliott Brack – 00:36:13

22 years old. And the Army gives you a job. If you don’t do it, that’s all right with them. They can get rid of you and put somebody else in there. But I was three and a half years in Germany. We supported the 3rd Army Division. These are the guys who, in the little towns around us, were barracked there. They would go out in the field and get muddy and cold and all that stuff. I didn’t have to get muddy and cold. I had a great job. It was sort of like a training for a master’s degree or something like that. But it was management, really, because I was managing about 60 German people, and I had a sergeant and a PFC and me, and all the rest were German.

Rico Figliolini – 00:36:55

Did you speak German?

Elliott Brack – 00:36:57

I took German in college from a professor who mumbled. Mumbling German, we didn’t learn a thing, I don’t think. But when I got over there since I was working with all these people, I got a pretty good accent in German. I could speak it a little bit. Now, that’s only half of it. You’ve got to hear it. I couldn’t hear it. But my wife could hear it better than I could. She never even took German.

Rico Figliolini – 00:37:22

Oh, that’s funny. German is very guttural.

Elliott Brack – 00:37:24

By the way, I had one famous customer while I was over there that we fed Elvis Presley.

Rico Figliolini – 00:37:28

Was he in the armed forces?

Elliott Brack – 00:37:29

He was drafted like everybody, and he went in as a PFC.

Rico Figliolini – 00:37:31

So you got to see him?

Elliott Brack – 00:37:32

He was a good soldier in those times. He wasn’t into his problems, you might say. His mother just died, so he brought with him overseas his father. He paid for his father to come over. So his father was his official dependent. Elvis came in the commissary two or three times, but girls would mob him, and it made him crazy. But Mr. Presley, we got to know pretty good. He was a good old gentleman.

Rico Figliolini – 00:38:00

All these little things that go on in life. I’m surprised, actually, when you came back, you didn’t work for Ingles or become higher up in those.

Elliott Brack – 00:38:10

I had no idea I wanted to go be a supermarket manager. I came back with this distinct idea directly to go to college for a master’s. I went to the University of Iowa to get out of the South. I’d been in Germany three and a half years, but I always knew I was coming back home. I had no idea about staying away.

Rico Figliolini – 00:38:34

You know, this has been a great conversation. Great to hear about Gwinnett County. Great to hear about your background. Sorry about your daughter.

Elliott Brack – 00:38:49

Thank you.

Rico Figliolini – 00:38:51

You know, we should do this again, I think. Maybe even pick a topic or a time that we can…

Elliott Brack – 00:38:52

We’d probably talk about the same thing.

Rico Figliolini – 00:38:53

You know, I mean, there’s more about Gwinnett than… You know, most people don’t even know this. You know, when I came here in 95, I mean, there were a lot of farmers that owned 100, 200, 300 acres that became millionaires because of development.

Elliott Brack – 00:39:02

Oh, yeah. They just held on to the last bang all of a sudden.

Rico Figliolini – 00:39:08

And these farmers were making maybe household income $50,000 at the time.

Elliott Brack – 00:39:13

Oh, I doubt that. $45,000 probably.

Rico Figliolini – 00:39:15

I bet. And they would get these developers coming up to them saying, if you give us these 100 acres for an option and we get it developed, you know, rezoned is what it was, right? You could be a millionaire and we could have, you know, 300 houses on these 100 acres or something.

Elliott Brack – 00:39:32

Many people retired on that, yeah.

Rico Figliolini – 00:39:34

Yeah, quite a few people, actually. In fact, you know, going back through history, there’s been county commissioners or one in particular that had some issues also, I guess. But there may be other, you know, corruption and stuff.

Elliott Brack – 00:39:51

But generally speaking, since I’ve been up here, we’ve had commissioners and developers. Two developers were big when I was first up here. But we’ve had these people who were native, for the most part. They wanted to make a buck. They did. Many of them got pretty wealthy. But they also wanted to sell you another plot of land so they couldn’t clip you too much the first time or you wouldn’t come back. And so we’ve had pretty good commissioners up here. I’ve been real pleased.

Rico Figliolini – 00:40:27

Yeah, there have been really good commissioners. I agree with you.

Elliott Brack – 00:40:29

One or two bad ones.

Rico Figliolini – 00:40:30

Yes, the bad ones took a little while to find sometimes. When you’re sitting…

Elliott Brack – 00:40:35

Yeah, we got rid of them one way or the other.

Rico Figliolini – 00:40:37

Yeah, but I remember one where he was literally sitting, if anyone connected the dots, they would have seen it two years before, but they didn’t. But, yes, county commissioners have been great. The Parks Department, unbelievable. I mean, the Gwinnett County Parks.

Elliott Brack – 00:40:53

And our water department is unbelievable, too.

Rico Figliolini – 00:40:55

That, too, yes. So we’ve had really good quality, national award-winning quality work here in Gwinnett County.

Elliott Brack – 00:41:02

And our leaders have been national leaders too, in the cities, in the county commission. It’s amazing. We’ve had some good people up here.

Rico Figliolini – 00:41:14

We even have a good governor now. Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter. I mean, Kemp has been a decent governor as well, it seems.

Elliott Brack – 00:41:21

Better than ever.

Rico Figliolini – 00:41:21

Yes, I would say. So we’ve been talking to Elliott Brack, Gwinnett Forum. Appreciate you joining me and we’ll probably have you back again. But thank you everyone for listening and thank you Elliott.

In this episode of Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager, host Rico Figliolini discusses the ongoing trash problems at Jones Bridge Park in Gwinnett County with City Manager Brian Johnson. They explore the park’s overcrowding, littering, and the challenges of managing such a popular amenity.

The conversation also touches on recent city council decisions regarding new apartment developments, focusing on smart city features, development approvals, balancing office market and community needs, navigating mixed-use development challenges, and the complexities of property rights and community growth. Tune in to hear insights on balancing community needs, maintaining public spaces, and navigating the complexities of urban development. 

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Jones Bridge Park Vandalism Concerns
00:01:40 – Challenges at Jones Bridge Park: Overcrowding, Lack of Oversight, and Resident Concerns
00:08:55 – Addressing Trespassing and Security Concerns at a Local Park
00:14:24 – Automated Gate Proposal for Park Closure
00:16:54 – Proposal for Improving Park Management and Funding
00:18:48 – Balancing Amenities and Maintenance Costs in Public Spaces
00:23:32 – Maintaining Public Spaces and Addressing Transient Residents
00:25:48 – Development Approvals: Recommendations and Council Decisions
00:30:27 – Balancing Office Market and Community Needs
00:34:38 – Navigating Mixed-Use Development Challenges
00:37:56 – The Complexities of Development Approvals
00:44:04 – Property Rights and Community Growth
00:47:11 – Complexities of Urban Development
00:51:34 – Addressing Affordable Housing Challenges in the Community

Transcript:

00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in Gwinnett County, the city of Peachtree Corners. I’m with Brian Johnson. Hey, Brian. How are you?

00:00:11 – Brian Johnson

Hey, Rico. Good. How are you?

00:00:13 – Rico Figliolini

Good. Good. Beautiful day. It’s been hot weather. Although, thank God, we don’t have a hurricane really coming our way. So I think we’re fine on that one.

00:00:21 – Brian Johnson

Here, here.

00:00:22 – Rico Figliolini

Before we start on our show that we do, we try to do every month about the city with our city manager, Brian, I just want to say thank you to EV Remodeling, Inc. and Eli for being a sponsor of these podcasts and a good community resident and business here in Peachtree Corners as well. They do design and build, renovation work on homes. Check them out at evremodelinginc.com. We appreciate them supporting our journalism and our podcasts. So let’s get right to it because we’ve been gone from doing this for a few weeks. But I think the first thing that we should start off with is something that’s been out there on Next Door a bit. And I don’t know if it’s quite as bad, although I’ve seen the pictures and it seems as bad. But Jones Bridge Park seems to be getting trashed on a regular basis. And July 4th wasn’t a good weekend for that with lots of stuff just being trashed all over the place there. But some people have complained about that. Some people have complained about the amount of police presence that has been called. I think one person said there were over 300 calls for police to visit in one year in 2023. I don’t know if that’s true. It sounds like a lot to me. But I thought we’d talk about it, you know, you, Brian, because, even obviously, though it’s a county the city’s park, aware of what’s going on there. And so I’m curious, what’s going on there? And, you know, does the city have anything they can do about it?

00:02:05 – Brian Johnson

So there is some challenges with Jones Bridge Park. You know, I will say also important to establish a couple things here. One, Jones Bridge Park is a county-owned and maintained park. And so, you know, there are some conversations we’ve had with them about things. And, you know, after the conversation has been had, we don’t control. You know, if it was our park, I could end up going to my parks and rec director and be like, fix it. So it is, you know, county owned, maintained by Gwinnett County Parks and Rec. Our police department is Gwinnett County PD and so their presence or you know lack thereof as some people you know have expressed frustration about is them now you know that’s not to just, you know, relinquish all involvement, but, you know, there is one of the few parks, at least in this area, that has access, like improved access down into the Chattahoochee River. Yes. So it is a very developed park because it has everything from a lot of covered pavilion space picnic tables grills it’s a gorgeous location it’s the only place on the chattahoochee river anywhere near here that has some you want to call them rapids right and then it has improved stone steps to where you can walk into the Chattahoochee and not have to like, you know, go down some little goat path or whatever.

00:04:12 – Rico Figliolini

Oh, it’s beautiful. I mean, they’ve done a great job there.

00:04:15 – Brian Johnson

It is. Then it has a big playground. And then it also has a section of it that has athletic fields where there’s league soccer.

00:04:24 – Rico Figliolini

Right. In the back right.

00:04:26 – Brian Johnson

So when you combine all of that you have a lot of people who don’t have access to a park that want to go, or excuse me, they don’t have access to nice facilities like covered pavilions and outdoor grills or whatever and they go to the park because it’s a gorgeous location. There’s things for the kids to do. You can get together, you can grill. So it attracts, you know, it’s one of those things where you create your own problem. And, you know, in this case it has. And then to compound things, there are some neighborhoods that back up right to it and we’ve even had tournaments in which Ways or just even Google Maps somebody will drive into the park and there’s no parking for like league soccer tournaments they’ll actually drive into the back of Linfield subdivision that backs up to it and walk through the side yards, the park in Linfield, and then walk between two houses that back up to the parks to get to them.

00:05:37 – Rico Figliolini

Oh, wow. No wonder some of those residents were upset. Yes. And I know the parking can be challenging there.

00:05:46 – Brian Johnson

Yes so that’s all you know so now that’s what all of us when that county as well as the city are trying to regulate you know a fourth of july weekend is you know probably one of the best examples where you just get a crush of people because everybody wants to be outside grilling and having a good time. I cannot speak to Gwinnett County Parks and Rec in that whether they planned for their parks to have, you know, a need for enhanced cleanup event you know i’d like to think that they realize the the fourth of july weekend is going to require extra you know hard to come out and get trash and all that kind of stuff that particular type of thing has not really been where a lot of the challenges are it’s been people that down there when they should not be oftentimes late at night you know I gave examples of soccer tournaments and whatever but that’s more rare what is more common is the park hours hours close at 11pm at that point you’re not supposed to be there but because there’s lack of personnel from Gwinnett County Parks and Rec or Gwinnett County Police the vehicular gate that stays open the park just past Simpson Elementary stays open because there’s nobody. They don’t have the staffing to have somebody close it every night and then reopen it the next day. So then what happens is people either know about it. They go down there and then Gwinnett PD’s presence down there, for whatever reason, has not been particularly consistent. So there are gaps in which somebody is down there and we have calls of cars down there doing donuts, drag racing.

00:07:59 – Rico Figliolini

Is it true that it’s like 300 calls? I mean, someone said they did an Opens record act, and they saw 300 times that the police were called down to the park. I mean, is that even?

00:08:11 – Brian Johnson

Well, yeah, that is potentially possible because or if you consider every call going in to be separate. So for instance, let’s say we had some motorcycles back there, doing donuts, drag revving, racing at midnight, or one in the morning. You could get five people who live in Linfield that call 911. They’ll track five, but it’s actually one incident.

00:08:45 – Rico Figliolini

Gotcha. Okay. That makes more sense. The number could get up there.

00:09:06 – Brian Johnson

But if you told me that there were 100 calls or separate instances in which 911 was called because people were trespassing and doing things late at night or whatever, at night or you know, a hundred calls a year probably would not make me say, you know, but the 300 plus, those are probably counting every individual call. But there are, I mean, one incident down there is too many, certainly many, many, you know, tens, maybe hundreds, that’s way too many. Where we have been involved of late is we have had the marshals down there on a few times where we have seen on social media there being some talk by car clubs and others that eat there. Marshals have been there and it’s hard to know if we did in fact prevent it from materializing. They’ve been down there. They’ve had cars pull in and then turn around and leave because they saw them. But we have involved there. And then the latest is, you know, currently Gwinnett County Parks and Rec, through their director, Chris Minor, is considering a proposal I proposed to them. And that is on the vehicular side chris and I had a conversation it’s many months ago but conversation about the vehicle gate being closed and he you know again intimated to me I don’t have the staff to do it and then Gwinnett PD doesn’t so I said alright this is what I’ll propose. We’ll put an LPR camera there. And there is, there is a license plate reader camera right there at the vehicular gate going into the park. So we can, when, you know, there are incidents there, we do pull video to see if we can use it. Now all these car clubs they’ll or motorcycle clubs or whatever they know about LPR cameras so oftentimes they’ll put something over their license plate when they’re getting ready to do something illegal. So the camera doesn’t always get a good face or we get a face but we don’t have any way to know their name so a face doesn’t mean anything if we can’t you know run the name. So but we do have a camera we already installed it it’s working. The second thing I proposed and he went back and said well I’ve got I said, we will buy an automated gate.

00:11:49 – Rico Figliolini

Okay.

00:11:50 – Brian Johnson

Down at 11 and up at, I believe it opens at 7. And if you are stuck behind it and you come up to it, the motion will have it to where you can leave, but you wouldn’t be able to get back in.

00:12:03 – Rico Figliolini

Gotcha. Okay.

00:12:10 – Brian Johnson

Then once we install they then commit to maintaining it. And it is some degree of maintenance. Anytime you have automated it breaks more often you know, anything, than, a gate that you got to get out of your car and walk around the lock. So there is some dollar amount component to it, but that’s what I offered is you know, to, buy them an automated.

00:12:38 – Rico Figliolini

Would that be similar to, like, you’re waiting on them. Is there, I mean, is that like, that’s like a railroad thing? That’s like the one behind the Forum, I guess. That’s just a bar that goes down?

00:12:49 – Brian Johnson

That’s correct. And by the way, more solid material than like just a wood, you know, painted to, you know, some of the railroad ones are a little bit flimsy. You know, it’s more, this is both to kind of know that you’re not supposed to be there and it should be solid enough that you wouldn’t want a car to go through it because it would damage the car. Some of the railroad ones I’m not sure if it would even damage it if you know hit them.

00:13:16 – Rico Figliolini

No, no yeah I get that and I mean the only other thing I could think of is if I was a car fanatic I’d send someone to the other side of it to, like, wave the sensor so then it opens and then we could drive in. I mean

00:13:30 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, there is no way that if somebody is hell-bent on getting in the car, we can just, you know, make it.

00:13:37 – Rico Figliolini

I mean, but that’s the easiest thing. The thing I was thinking, as long as – somewhat of the same lines that you were thinking. And I’m not sure what the sheriff’s hours are. But there’s a gate there that closes. It just needs a good lock on it.

00:13:56 – Brian Johnson

There’s already a gate there, but you have to have somebody physically go out there and lock it. And then physically go out the next morning to unlock it. And what minor had said is I don’t have the staff. And Gwinnett  PD is like, we don’t have the staff to do that. So like, you know, we would love to have it closed and locked. But what I’m saying is: In lieu of that put an automated gate down And it could be two arms that you know can’t get it to go up. You can even go so far as if you’re on the other side after the park closes you could end up to where it doesn’t go up with motion. The Fields Club actually does this. There are facilities where if you’re caught behind the gate after hours, you’re not supposed to be there. You actually have to call the non-emergency number for Gwinnett PD. They have a key and they’ll get out there at, you know, whenever they can.

00:15:06 – Rico Figliolini

And that almost sounds better because, you know, if the park is closing, technically, is it at dusk or is it technically at 11 p.m.?

00:15:14 – Brian Johnson

It was 11. I mean, maybe there’s different hours. I mean, I thought it was 11.

00:15:20 – Rico Figliolini

So, I mean, I think it’s reasonable that whoever’s still there should just be stuck there and call in.

00:15:26 – Brian Johnson

They have a problem with that again, but again, that’s not our park.

00:15:30 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:15:31 – Brian Johnson

So, once I would turn it over at Parks and Rec, they could work that out. But no, I don’t find that unreasonable that if the hours of the park are clearly, you know articulated through signage there, you get caught behind the gate after it closes. You’ve got to call a non emergency number. They’ll have the ability to raise it. But maybe then. And I think in the Fields Club, their arrangement is if a Gwinnett PD officer has to come out and unlock the gate, they get a trespassing violation at the same time. So wait there for however long it took for somebody to have the time to get there. But that was our proposal because then it wouldn’t be staff intensive. But, you know, Chris’s point, well taken, and that is you’re providing me an amenity that does or will have to have maintenance dollars attached to it. So he was like, I need to run this up the flagpole, whatever,  I just have to come back. But that’s our current proposal.

00:16:52 – Rico Figliolini

I think that’s great. Yeah, I think you can even modify that to the degree like you said with what Linfield does, guess. Because how many times is someone really going to be stuck behind there anyway? At some point, is it every night? Doubtful right? I it’s not going to be like that. And if there is, that’s another problem. But, right? And the cleanup I can understand that being an issue. part, And that’s not always. I know there is an issue like that especially summertime weekends where the trash bins are overflowing. There’s not enough trash bins. They don’t want to put more trash bins. Maybe they put plastic bags there, but people do steal the plastic bags. You know, there’s other parks. You know, if we had a nonprofit set up called like Friends of Jones Bridge Park, you know, where they raise some money, they go and they buy some more containers for the parks. Because maybe, like you said, I mean, there’s always expenses to maintain things. People don’t understand that even Simpsonwood, which is a passive park, which is what Jones Bridge is, that budget, I’m sure, I think they said was $370,000 a year for that park. That sounds like a lot, but there’s trash collection every week. There’s a bunch of other things that have to be done there, mulching and all that stuff.

00:18:12 – Brian Johnson

Well, Jones Bridge is an active park because it has activated, it’s got active programming. It’s got soccer.

00:18:18 – Rico Figliolini

True, true, true. That’s true.

00:18:19 – Brian Johnson

So it is. Yeah, I would supplement what you said by just saying, you know, as government, anytime we’re looking to add an amenity, there are two types of dollars that you have to consider that is the upfront cost of constructing the amenity, improving the amenity, whatever. Take it up. I mean, we get constantly people who tell the city, oh, you should just buy that property and turn it into a park. Well, one, is as soon as you have a public parcel, people want it to be improved. Hey, what picnic table is there? Can you put a playground or whatever? And now you get into the second dollar amount and that is the annual amount that you’ve got to budget to maintain it. We have pushed back in some cases on things that we have the money to do right then, but we know that it’s going to be adding an annual cost that we just do not want to go down that road. And so you have to make the decision that, look, we either need to do this, maintain this right, or don’t do it. You know, our Town Center is a good example. I mean, you know, we’ve created, you know, some of our own maintenance, you know, challenges, maintenance obligations by putting in more playground equipment, attracting more people. So we have to, but we committed that that’s our downtown and we’re going to make sure we manage it right. If you can’t, then close it or do something, you know, and there are even intermediate steps. If grills, grills are actually a controversial thing to add to a park.

00:20:11 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, for sure.

00:20:12 – Brian Johnson

Grills there, it attracts people who want to spend time with larger groups of people. If you don’t have that, you would not have as many of the fourth of july you know stuff. So if people unfortunately don’t take care of things and take care of their own trash, which they should. And by the way a non-profit or a community group has been discussed before. The problem is I’ve been in meetings with even Gwinnett County Parks and Rec in the room, but residents talking about what’s going on. Oftentimes when it comes up, the residents are kind of like, you know, A) who’s going to be part of that group? So there’s a lot of people who have a lot of demands on their time. And so it’s going to invariably be the people who live right there. And then their other argument is you are charging us Gwinnett County Parks and Rec specific millage or property tax to maintain these things. You know, why are we having to supplement you taking taxes from us that are specific to parks and rec and now we also do extra work because you’re saying you aren’t allocating the resources necessary to maintain your home.

00:21:37 – Rico Figliolini

This is why there are cities like Duluth and Johns Creek, I believe does this that have their own parks department because this way they know they can zone down to their locality they can take care of their own parks. You know Gwinnett is huge, Gwinnett does a great job the parks department, I think does a really great job in maintaining a lot of the sports facilities a lot of the parks but it’s a demanding thing like you said. I mean it’s and you got to deal with people’s just people being trashy. 4th of July there’s, if there’s not enough trash bins, they don’t, they’re not going to take trash home with them. They’re going to leave it there. And unfortunately, and that’s a sad thing, but that’s just the way it is.

00:22:16 – One of three, you’ve either got to have a representative down there during the day to be policing as it’s happening.

00:22:23 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:22:24 – Brian Johnson

If not you either can put extra trash bins out there or remove some of the amenities that are creating trash. Which you hate to do saying when people don’t you know their behavior is such. That’s another, I’m not recommending I’m just saying that. Or you allocate you know you come up with the schedule that you know the day after 4th of July, you’re going to have extra crews going out there to clean it up because, you know, it’s like our concerts. The morning after concerts on the town green we have extra staff that goes out there and cleans it up really well because we knew that there’s going to be a lot of people on the town green. People just don’t take care of stuff that’s not theirs. It’s sad, but it’s reality. And we just have to, you know, allocate resources accordingly. And so, yeah, there are some things that can be done to mitigate this. You know unfortunately Jones Bridge Park is a great amenity but great amenities attract people from parts way outside of Peachtree Corners and you know and more people than the residents would normally load on that park. And, you know, that’s the downside of having a great unique amenity.

00:23:50 – Rico Figliolini

So at least the city’s talking to the county and you’re just waiting to hear back at least about that gate.

00:23:56 – Brian Johnson

That particular thing, yes, we will continue to. Because it is in our corporate limits and we are interested. And those residents there should not be dealing with what they’re dealing with. So, you know, but you know, certainly it would be better if we controlled it directly. No doubt about it. We don’t.

00:24:17 – Rico Figliolini

All right. So cool. I’m glad we got to talk about that. I know that it’s a, it is a big deal. I mean, this stuff. And you’re right. People just don’t take care of things that are not there sometimes, which segues a little bit into apartments to some degree, right? It’s not equity. It’s transient a bit, right? People rent apartments and stuff. Apartments are not a bad thing per se. It’s just if it’s done well. And two apartment zonings just came up, right? The Day building and the Da Vinci Court applications. And I was reading before I knew that they were both denied. I was reading a bit of the conditions on the Day building one, for example, that was proposed for 248 units with a minimum of like 3,000 square feet of commercial space still to be retained. And there was a bunch of really good, strong conditions on here about smart development, smart city developments, LED lights, license plate readers have to be there, security systems on the property, smart home technology within the residential units. It’s all like good stuff. Good, good, good.

00:25:30 – Brian Johnson

Well, Rico, I mean, you probably won’t toot your own horn, so I will. But, you know, some of those have been the result of previous conversations you and I have had on this very podcast. Where we’ve talked about are there things city can do when developers are coming in front of us wanting something to make it better. And my job as an application works through the process with the help of staff is to make a project as good as I can on the off chance that it’s approved. Even in instances where the recommendation from staff might be to deny for various reasons, my job is still, because I don’t know, you know, I don’t vote and council still has to vote. So I have to be prepared for either one. So, you know, even if in instances where we’ll recommend denial, we will still continue to put pressure on the applicant to agree to conditions to make the product the best we can. If, in fact, council says, yes, Mr. city manager we hear your recommendation but we like it we’re going to approve it then at least I know I did everything I could to make it the best. So that’s no different here I mean it didn’t get approved if it had been we made it as good of a product as we could have possibly made it.

00:27:02 – Rico Figliolini

And I agree and you guys have done a great job. And certainly through conversations, I mean, you’ve added things even beyond what I would like to see. But I’m glad that you’re also incorporating stuff like that because it’s, you know, being able to be a smart city and work these developments in a smart way makes sense to me, right? If we keep saying we’re a smart city, then we better be making sure that what comes to fruition addresses some of that, right? Because otherwise, what’s the point? And, you know, having, I mean, there was also, I think you guys came up with the participation of developments like this in the crime-free multifamily housing program, which I thought was great. The individually metered areas of apartment units. This way, at some point, could they be made into condo equity property? Yes, by doing that. Even putting that they have to put $20,000 worth of minimum value of public art in the lobby. Instead of this just being a cookie cutter, trying to let’s just fit 240 apartments on some hill, which is what the big building is essentially on. So I’m glad that you guys are doing that. But let’s get into why then, because DaVinci Core was another one that we applied for apartment development. I forget how many units. And this was basically using an empty parking space to a degree, I guess. I know there’s a moratorium that you all placed on the Central Business District. Did that run? That was for six months, right?

00:28:40 – Brian Johnson

It is. We’re currently in it. But these both, if somebody, an applicant had actually or a developer had dropped an application in even an hour before the moratorium starts, they got in the door. We can’t, you know, so these that they had been in the process for a while. I mean, as you know, these things really once the application is officially in our process, unless we push it along a little faster for other reasons, it’s generally 90 to 120 days before it is actually voted on. So it takes some time.

00:29:18 – Rico Figliolini

Well, I don’t know if we can say this, but the city council voted denial on both of these, 7-0 denial. One of them was, I don’t know if the other one was, the Day building was actually recommended for approval by the planning department, I believe, because it fits. Both of them were. But the city council representatives of the people decided seven to nothing that these should not move forward. Spirit of the moratorium or other reasons?

00:29:52 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, the moratorium didn’t really have anything to do with these two. So moratorium was really just to give us a brief period of time to take a closer look at a very specific part of the city, and in our case, Central Business District. And really even more granular than that, the office product within it, and drill down a little bit more on making sure that both we have some additional things that might protect us from having just more of a crush of these mixed-use developments that have aspects of it Council or the community doesn’t want. At the same time, maybe looking at certain areas where we might actually loosen the code to allow for some creative uses of underperforming office because you’ve got to be very careful. You know we are a, you know second largest municipality in Georgia with no city property tax. One of the reasons that’s the case, about 30% of our general fund budget is from business license revenue. So we’ve got to make sure we’re doing everything we can to ensure that businesses are healthy and they’re generating income in this city so that then we get business license revenue from it. And right now the office market is really soft. And there’s a lot of underperforming office buildings in which the owners are coming to us saying, oh, I can’t bill it. I’m underwater. Will you let me redevelop it into. Well, those are coming and we don’t get to choose what applicants come here. So everybody has a legal right to ultimately be heard by council with a vote of yes or no. So we’re trying to make, trying to tweak the comp plan section of the central business district. We’re thinking about breaking out the Town Center, Forum kind of that area right there that’s more retail centric and make that a little bit more unique from Tech Park. Right now they’re together as part of our central business district. And as you well know, our local economy is both. But Tech Park’s type of use is way different than a retail hub like Town Center.

00:32:28 – And the retail hub is part of the entertainment overlay.

00:32:44 – Brian Johnson

There’s an overlay over that to you where you can, do things like walk out of a restaurant with a beer and walk down the sidewalk, and window shop or go to the town, whatever. But yeah so, we’re trying to make that central business district break it down even into a more granular level. It might be able to allow us to, again, on one extreme, maybe protect ourselves from, you know, constantly getting stuff. So this will allow us to kind of forecast to people who are looking at it, what we may or may not, or council may or may not be open to. But also, you know, tweaking some things. I mean, you and I talked prior to the podcast about, you know, an existing office building that was very close to putting in pickleball inside of what was or actually still is a commercial office building broken up into offices for you know white collar administrative occupants. They were going to gut the whole thing and the reason is, is because right now there’s not a lot of people looking for office space. And the owner’s like I’m trying to get creative here, so we’ve got to be creative or make sure that our code for the right things in the right instances might allow for a little bit more creative things than our zoning code foresaw when it was written many, many decades ago. And so that’s why the moratorium exists. It did not have anything to do with council’s consideration of these two applications.

00:34:18 – Rico Figliolini

From what you heard from the council, is there opportunity for these to come back in different forms. Like, you know, obviously 248 units, studio, one, two bedroom, multifamily. I think that was, we were talking about stacked flats in the Day building rezoning. You know, no one’s saying that, you know, this is a MUD, multi-use development or mixed use development, right? Yeah. Mixed use. The problem with that is that these types of things, and I can see why the moratorium was put in place, because all these applications that are coming is like, we want to put these 250-plus apartments and we’ll keep 3,000 square feet or 2,500 feet or 1,200 feet as restaurant or breakfast place or something. So they’re trying to fit, they’re trying to say they’re mixed use when in reality it’s an apartment development. And there’s no mixed use really to it. Can this come back?

00:35:33 – Brian Johnson

We have had a few of those symbolic things but we amended our ordinance, I don’t know, a year ago. And now you know, you can’t have a use that exceeds, I can’t remember exactly, like maybe one use, exceed more than 60% of the 100%. So you can’t have 98% residential, 1% commercial, 1% retail. You can’t play that game and then call it mixed use.

00:35:57 – Rico Figliolini

Or is it a mixed formula of apartments and equity, like the stack flats? That would be considered equity, I guess?

00:36:00 – Brian Johnson

No, still residential.

00:36:02 – Rico Figliolini

It’s still residential.

00:36:04 – Brian Johnson

Remember, equity versus rental cannot be a consideration in and of itself of whether something is approved or not. A parcel, under the zoning procedures law, a parcel has to be considered whether a residential use is good for that parcel or not. You can’t end up saying, well, only if it’s equity or only if it’s age-restricted or only if it. Those things bubble up. Developers oftentimes will offer to do that in return for improving their odds. But that cannot be a consideration of something because you have to understand, you know, these denials, you know, when staff does a report, we have to objectively look at whether or not the application is in, you know, conflict with any local code law character area that kind of thin. If it meets all those criteria we’re not really these recommendations are not like I wake up one morning and I’m like yeah I think one go there, it’s the recommend approval because it meets all of the legal.

00:37:22 – Brian Johnson

Sure, sure.

00:37:25 – Brian Johnson

Now, that’s merely to say that. Council, each individual has to vote their own conscience, and they all have other considerations. So, you know, that’s not. But I bring that up to say, you just asked the question of could they come back. Anything can come back, but it can come back in various ways. An applicant can wait for the cooling off period and present the same exact thing. And timing sometimes matters. Those comments have come up about these two mixed-use development applications are very close to the Town Center, a Town Center in which there are two previously approved residential units that are not completed yet. One is under construction, Solis, there on the Town Center side, and then North American hasn’t started theirs yet. So there’s been talk about timing. But that’s one way to come back. Another way is is they could re-engage with the city and say hey maybe if we tweak the site plan to you know have this or whatever, the parcel that’s basically at the corner of Engineering and 141 right across on the west side of 141 from Racetrack and Peachtree Corners Liquor, they submitted a mixed use development that had 275 apartment units. Along with some other, you know, two other uses and that was denied. And then they came back and just made it a townhome and just had 75 townhomes.

00:39:06 – Rico Figliolini

Right. So they’ll probably sell for 750,000 or more.

00:39:11 – Brian Johnson

So that was a way for them to come back but it was a different product. The other way is you know also I have to understand in the case of the owner of the Da Vinci Court property they have filed a suit against us. So we will be in front of a judge at some point and if a judge finds that that the denial was not based on legally defensible reasons, the judge will kick it back and force Mayor and Council to consider that site again.

00:39:56 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. So that happened once before, or that happens all the time, actually. But even before the city was approved, it became a city. That happened where Town Center is, where the properties, Charlie Roberts, sued because he felt that it was not a good zoning. And in some ways, he probably was correct about where it was. So he got courts to go back.

00:40:30 – Brian Johnson

Yes, it forced the county to consider and they did approve. And then he came back to the city with a product and it was going to be, well, yeah, it was denied filed suit but then there was conversation amongst us and he withdrew that in return for coming back with what was ultimately the product that he sold it for. So it does happen and in instances, a judge could say, nope, mayor and council, you did not, that was a violation of that property owner’s right to their highest and best use. You did not meet zoning procedure law. Try again.

00:41:20 – Rico Figliolini

I can see that. I think if I don’t recall the exact details of the comprehensive plan, but I think, doesn’t that property, if you look at the comprehensive plan 2040, I guess, and you look at where that property backs up to or borders, is it other offices or is it the area of land that in the plan says could be multi-use family? You know I mean, he could come back and say.

00:41:51 – Brian Johnson

Yeah this is a good point. Our comp plan both of these mixed use applications were in the character area in which our comp plan said would be appropriate to have dense residential. You know, the density of residential is fitting in a town center, downtown area. So from that aspect, our comp plan does say that it was an appropriate use there. It doesn’t go any farther than to say dense residential, again, because you can’t solely based on what type of residential, don’t get into rental equity, age restricted or whatever. So it doesn’t say that, oh, it’s appropriate for equity dense residential. That can’t be in and of itself a consideration. But dense residential is an industry-accepted appropriate use in downtown areas. That one we didn’t make up. We’re not unique in that regard. Now, again, community may say we don’t care and put pressure on the elected officials. And, you know, we certainly are at a point, I will say, that we have a lot of, I mean, we have a significant enough of a resident base that moved here. You know, they oftentimes when they’re not happy with a decision council made or they’re wanting to get their comments and, you know, front of council before council is on something. Oftentimes I’ll start with a, I moved here in 1992 and oh the city has grown and traffic has gotten worse or whatever and I do not disagree. You know I have no doubt that those comments are true however we as a city as many people don’t realize, have a limitation to our ability to say no. A property owner who has a legal right to a highest and best use of their property. And when we are located in a growing metro area, there is a constant demand for residential. And then a property owner is like, I can get a higher and better use of my property with putting residential on it than I currently can get. It starts to get into a difficult area. And those who think that we can hit the pause button on growth, that is impossible. The city does not have the power to just indiscriminately say, nope, we’re done growing. We’re not going to need more people. And that’s where it gets, you know, again, it’s challenging. The most difficult decision I have to present to council for consideration are land use decisions. But again also just because property owners want to get more money there are certain things that if they don’t meet you’re kind of like, no I’m sorry. You know, I think. It could be Rico you’re like look I could get more money selling my house demoing it and constructing, I don’t know.

00:45:25 – Rico Figliolini

A duplex.

00:45:27 – Brian Johnson

Something like that. And then we say, no, it’s not appropriate because you are in a neighborhood that are single family detached residential. So it’s not appropriate. Those are easy. There’s always extreme. It’s where you get into where, you know you don’t have something that clear it’s right next to one that already is what they want.

00:45:50 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah it’s a, I can understand it’s a difficult thing.

00:45:52 – Brian Johnson

It is yeah. I’m trying to say that there’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer. I’m only just trying to make sure that people understand that the city is not lured over land use in such a way that Mayor and Council can literally just say no or yes indiscriminately. It has to be based on people’s principles.

00:46:17 – Rico Figliolini

But this is also why the comprehensive plan is there. And people should understand that next time it gets updated. What, in four years? I think it was just recently updated, right?

00:46:30 – Brian Johnson

Yeah, about four years from now or so, maybe it’ll be updated again. It gets updated every few years.

00:46:37 – Rico Figliolini

Right. So people should be aware of that because that is what guides a lot of this. Because they can point to that eventually and say, well, you denied me, but your plan shows I should be able to do this type of development. It doesn’t say specific, like you said, departments or equity, but does talk about density and stuff like that. And what you expect that the city, you know, how this will all pan out because in a controlled way, that’s what the plan is. The plan is to provide a controlled way of expansion of a city’s population that will naturally grow, and that’s what developers look at. And if the developer comes back and says, well, you know, this shows I should be able to do that, bought the land for that reason, or I own this and I can’t do the office building. I mean, I just saw Dell, I think, was trying to get all their employees back for full time in the office five days a week. And half their employees said, we’re not coming back. We could do hybrid two days a week, you know, at home, three days in, but we’re not coming back. So what do you do? Do you fire half your workforce because they’re refusing to come back? I mean, it’s such a changed world.

00:47:55 – Brian Johnson

And then, you know, even on things that the use itself isn’t necessarily controversial, it’s just the call it growth. You know you have some anti-growth people who it doesn’t matter what it is they don’t want it to change. You’ve got to be careful because when markets change properties go through you know phases. You know would we rather have an empty office building that’s in decay potentially dragging down the neighborhood lot? Or do we want to work with the property owner to try to find something that’s you know we got criticism on the property I mentioned earlier where they came in with 275 apartments denied and they came with 75 townhomes. So now those who only care about equity versus rental, they were kind of like, alright, they’re equity. We still had a contingent of residents who were like, I don’t know why you’re letting them do this. It’s going to increase traffic. Well, that’s potentially true if you consider that the office that was there at the big surface parking lot, it was completely vacant and the office building was no longer actually habitable because it had water damage. But there were people who would have rather that thing sit there like that because they didn’t want any more cars. And you’re just like, okay, you know. But that property is also not generating revenue for the city. And then it’s dragging property values down because appraisals are based on comparables. And it has a ripple effect that we as a city cannot ignore and that’s what makes these decisions really complicated and it is not and can never be as cut and dry as somebody who’s like we should just seal off the city to growth or we could never have any more apartments or we could never allow for that. We can’t do that legally and we shouldn’t be doing that functionally because our local economy is very nuanced and complicated and important. If we don’t want to have, levy a millage rate on residents of the city. Right now the business community is holding up, you know, that revenue stream. And you know the city’s not taking money from you and I, Rico, merely based on the value of our residential property we own.

00:50:30 – Rico Figliolini

Right, yes. Only the county does that.

00:50:31 – Brian Johnson

Right. But most cities do.

00:50:36 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. So we’ve, you know it’s good to have opposition because it provides creativity. It provides a way to make a project better. But, you know, I certainly disagree with those that feel that things should exactly stay the same. Like the Forum at one point. Well, why was that being changed and stuff? Because they would prefer having the 17 empty stores that were there at one point.

00:51:03 – Brian Johnson

And growing.

00:51:04 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. So, people, you know, obviously, you know, people, well, you know, the rent’s going up and they’re not letting people, you know, you don’t know other people’s businesses and what’s necessary to actually make that business work or what their cash flow is. Because maybe it’s not as good as you think, you know, because the market is not quite there. Or maybe they’re trying to make it a little different and stuff. So yeah, opposition is fine because that does help make projects better. But because we could go down this road forever, I mean, there’s things I’d like to see. There’s things that I’d like to see development come in and say, you know what, 30% of our apartments are going to be made and only rented to median income people. Really affordable versus, let’s say, our normal apartment rent is $2,500 for a two-bedroom. We’ll make these $1,400 for a two-bedroom. But you have to meet that median income that allowable and make it affordable. I mean, there’s all sorts of nuances.

00:52:03 – Brian Johnson

We’re working on that, Rico. We’re working on that very thing. Oh absolutely.

00:52:05 – Rico Figliolini

Are you working on that? I’d like to see affordable housing here. Yeah. Because, good.

00:52:09 – Brian Johnson

We are seeing if we can’t get, you know, call it, you know, starter home, you know, call it workforce housing, whatever. But yes, we are looking at maybe having a restriction on the title that the owner can’t sell it for a period of time into the future except to somebody who’s making a percentage of the area median income.

00:52:40 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. I mean, all those things. Other states are doing it. Other counties are doing that. I mean, I have friends whose kids can’t. They’re just saying, I can’t buy anything here in Peachtree Corners because there’s nothing. And I’m not making enough to do that purchase. You know, maybe they’re doing well. They’re doing a household income of $80,000 between two, a husband and wife, or $100,000, which sounds like a lot, but that’s not a lot when you’re dealing with buying a home and you have to put down a certain amount of money on it. So, yeah, I mean, we could keep talking about that. Maybe we should do a show on that, actually.

00:53:15 – Brian Johnson

Well, we should, definitely. I’ll tell you, you bring up a good point. Here’s something that many people don’t realize, because it’s only a phenomenon that’s happened over the last couple of years but for a long time and for legitimate reasons people were very protective of you know oftentimes we’ll just use Simpson Elementary School as an example. A very high performing elementary school that people wanted to get their kids into. And its performance made the area that fed into that more valuable. When I bought my home in the Simpson Elementary School District eight years ago, I could have taken my exact home, picked it up and dropped it into you know Berkeley Lake Elementary or something and I would have lost fifty thousand dollars of value. Same exact home, different school feeder. So people were always protective of oh we don’t want to overcrowd the schools we want it to be whatever. Do you know that Pinckneyville Middle School, both Peachtree Elementary and Simpson Elementary have had declining student populations over the last three years and are under enrolled? And the reason for that, take Simpson Elementary. Most, in fact, as it stands right this second, all of the residential units are zoned to be an ownership and equity product. There’s no apartments feeding it. The house values are so high that people who have elementary school age kids haven’t in their career made enough money to be able to afford a half a million dollar home in Simpson. So they can’t afford it. And of course, interest rates hurt. And then you also don’t have turnover from the people who are currently in them.

00:55:23 – Rico Figliolini

Oh, yeah. Who wants to sell at this point.

00:55:24 – Brian Johnson

6,000 square foot homes that are now empty nesters but they’re like we could get a good dollar amount for our home but then wherever we go we’re going to have to pay through the nose as well or the big one is I have a three percent interest rate or I don’t own it or I don’t have a mortgage at all and now if I want to buy I’ve got to pay 7% interest. I’m just going to stay in my home. So you don’t have homes becoming available and then you don’t have younger families able to afford it. So because of it, we don’t have the feeder for those. So Simpson Elementary is in danger of losing some of their paraprofessionals that are not teaching class, but they’re kind of supporting. Same with Pinckneyville Middle School, because their student population is down and they’re actually under-enrolled. We get comments as recent as the last couple of weeks. Oh, even on the last two rezonings. Oh, it’s going to overcrowd the schools.

00:56:29 – Rico Figliolini

No, that it’s not.

00:56:33 – Brian Johnson

The schools are down. But, you know, just people.

00:56:37 – Rico Figliolini

People don’t understand. It’s the headcount that funds the schools. They don’t have enough students. They’re not going to get that budget from the county.

00:56:47 – Brian Johnson

Budget goes down, teachers go down. But also, you know, right before our podcast, I just met with a number of residents who provided some really good recommendations on how we can improve the information about land use decisions the city is making, you know, about applications coming in. Making it easier to find the information, making it easier to understand the process, things we’re going to be adding to the website to make it better. Based on some of the recent public hearings and, you know, how people found out about it. So we’re always looking to improve as well and make sure that all of our residents, the more they know about the complications of this and understand what council is faced with, the more they’ll appreciate the challenging decision council made, but they did the best that they can. And the council did not make these decisions based on rolling up to the final meeting barely knowing what’s going on and at the end of the day kind of being like you know where’s the win although that way they spend time and we spend time with them educated on this and they do a great job of making decisions on really complicated land use development.

00:58:08 – Rico Figliolini

I think, you know, part of, I mean, this is good what we do. I think a lot of people listen to the podcast in a variety of ways, whether it’s audio or video on YouTube or Facebook and stuff. I think we’re going to try to make a better effort also in reporting some of the things coming up because we don’t always do that. We’re doing post coverage sometimes. We’re a feature magazine, so it’s a little different, right? But I think we’re going to start doing a little bit more of that coverage so that people can be aware of the things coming up also.

00:58:45 – Brian Johnson

I’ll offer you one other thing, Rico. I don’t know how resource intensive it is or if it’s advantageous for you, but as you know how to look, when we get applications in at a certain point, staff report’s done and we make it available to the public so they can see the application, they can see the staff assessment as it’s getting ready to go to planning commission. If you want to take individual, you know, land use cases, and do special podcasts to discuss those particular.

00:59:00 You could do that. Sure. Right on.

00:59:26 – Brian Johnson

I am myself available. A community development director would be happy to do it. We could do it together. You know, if you find value in doing that, and then you can push it out and say, hey, this is specific about, you know, this mixed-use development rezoning application that council’s going to hear and we can talk through.

00:59:47 – Rico Figliolini

You know what, that’s great. And on something like that, maybe we can even do it as a live thing and take questions from people. Okay. That’d be cool. We’ll work on that. So we’ll work on how we can, what that would look like. And I’ll get back to you. Appreciate you offering that. Cool. Everyone, thank you. You know, this was going to be a 30-minute podcast. It ends up being one hour. Sorry about keeping you like that, Brian.

01:00:15 – Brian Johnson

I was going to say, you and I, we always have the best intentions up front. But these are complicated but important things to discuss.

01:00:25 – Rico Figliolini

For sure. For sure. So thank you for more time than I asked for. Everyone, share this podcast. Rate us if you’re on Apple, IHeart, if you’re listening to this. Give us a rating on this podcast. Certainly share it to your friends, your HOA, whoever, you know, whoever you need to share this out to. Some good discussion here. And I think more to come for sure as we do every month. But thank you again and thank you to EV Remodeling, Inc. for being a sponsor, a corporate sponsor of our podcast and good supporter of our journalism. We appreciate that, Eli. So check them out at evremodelinginc.com and find out how they can help you remodel your home. Thanks again, Brian. Hang in there for a second. Thank you, everyone else. Appreciate it.