Exploring Land Use with Shaun Adams

Land use changes, business growth, and community engagement shape Peachtree Corners’ future. From revitalizing office spaces to innovative mixed-use developments, the city is working to attract investments and meet the needs of its residents.

Peachtree Corners Life’s host Rico Figliolini is joined by Shaun Adams, Community Development Director, to discuss how the city adapts to new trends, assesses vacancy rates, and gathers public input to guide its growth. Learn about the city’s plans, including focusing on office renovations and diverse housing options, and how the community can get involved in the upcoming public meeting on October 3rd.

Resources:
Peachtree Corners Website: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/
Community Development: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/190/Community-Development
October 3rd Community Engagement Meeting: https://www.peachtreecornersga.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=210

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Peachtree Corners Land Use Moratorium
00:01:58 – Revitalizing the Central Business District
00:04:53 – Public Engagement Meeting 
00:07:06 – Insights from Asset Inventory and Changing Business Trends
00:11:11 – Improving Office Amenities and Competitiveness in Tech Park
00:14:03 – Reinvestment in Aging Office Buildings
00:16:15 – Evolving Uses in Office and Mixed-Use Developments
00:19:51 – Attracting Diverse Businesses
00:24:00 – Exploring Mixed-Use and Diverse Housing Options
00:27:39 – Mixed-Use Development
00:29:42 – Efficient Residential Density Options
00:33:17 – Trail Connection Around Technology Park Lake
00:40:41 – Evolving City Management through Conferences and Collaboration
00:43:00 – Accessing City Development Information

Podcast Transcript

00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, Georgia. I’m here with our Community Development Director, Shaun Adams. Hey, Shaun. Thanks for joining us. Before we get started, and we’re going to be discussing the land use moratorium that’s been in effect for almost six months. But before that, I just want to say thank you to EV Remodeling Inc. for being a sponsor, not only of our magazines and our journalism, but these podcasts as well. So you should visit them. They’re a design build firm here in Peachtree Corners. Eli will take care of you. He’s a great guy. The company is called EV Remodeling, and you should go to evremodelinginc.com and visit them. Some great pictures of what he’s done over the past few months. You can browse right through there and then reach out to him. So let’s get right into it. The moratorium is just more than halfway through. It’s going to end November 3rd. And this is a moratorium on residential new application rezonings in a specific area in the central business district. So at some point, there were so many things coming in and so many applications coming in, so many people taking somewhat advantage of wanting to do what they want to do, that the city decided to stop and put a moratorium on new applications to say, well, I think we need to look at this, change a few things maybe, have some public hearings, focus groups, and come back and add to that land use plan, which is, I think, a great thing you all have done. That’s going to end November 3rd, and there’s a public hearing that’s going to be coming up for public comment, I think, Thursday, October 3rd, between 6 and 8 p.m. at City Hall. So we’ll get into that. But I want Shaun, Shaun, if you wouldn’t mind explaining a little bit about why the moratorium briefly was put in place and where you all you know where the city’s at what the timeline has been actually moving forward on that.

00:02:13 – Shaun Adams

Sure thing. So as you indicated you know the central business district just to help people out if you really think from Holcomb Bridge Road up 141 to into the Forum, Town Center. That’s kind of our central business district area. This plan within that is really going to focus on our commercial office portion of it. So Tech Park, Spalding Triangle, Corners Parkway, those areas up and around 141. And so about four months in and what we’ve kind of done so far, one of the biggest things that we’ve done is an asset inventory. We really took a look at our underutilized spaces, vacancy rates, condition assessments, what approvals or redevelopments have occurred so far, but maybe haven’t come out of the ground yet. Looked at our existing proposed trails. You know, we have a trail study. We have some that are already in design and underway or built but we have others proposed but those proposals are largely based off of where we kind of have a path of least resistance through properties or easements but as redevelopments come into play there could be opportunities to maybe realign the trail so it makes more sense based off what’s coming down in the future. And so the first couple months took a lot of time taking a look at that and understanding where we are. We looked at about 100 commercial office buildings. So that was good feedback to use for now and in the future. August, September, we had a couple of focus groups. One of the first ones we did was with a combination of some of our existing board members from Planning Commission and our two authorities, our Downtown Development Authority and our Redevelopment Authority. And what’s great about their feedback is not only do they have a level of industry expertise that runs the gambit from real estate to finance to development to engineering, but they’re all residents who care about seeing how our city moves forward. And so that was a good group. We had about 18 in total there, which for a focus group is a good size. Our consultants kind of ran that meeting. We showed them our map of the asset inventory that we did, kind of used that as a jumping off point. And then we turned around a few weeks later and did the same with some of our brokers and office owners in the area that do a lot of business here to help kind of learn what are they hearing, whether they’re a broker who’s representing a building for sale or they’re representing tenants looking to lease up. And understanding when they’re showing buildings with their tenants, why are they choosing here versus why are they going to Alpharetta or somewhere else? What’s missing? And so we got a lot of good feedback as a part of that focus group. And as you’ve mentioned, public engagement meeting, October 3rd, we’re going to take kind of what we have to date, bring that to them. It will be in council chambers from 6 to 8 p.m. It’s an open house style. And so just kind of help everybody out with that. We will have representatives check them in, kind of give them a one page, if you will, of what we have, what they’re going to see. Using council chambers will be great because we have the TVs down the sides where we’ll have that map up. So no matter where they are in the room, they can see the map. We’ll probably have four to six stations, each one kind of representing a different subsection, if you will, of the central business district. And we’ll have both staff and consultant representation at each of those so that people can come in, they can ask questions about what they’re seeing. We’ll have boards there. And if you remember during the comp plan update process about two years ago, or a little less than two years ago, people were able to put dots in, provide feedback based off a certain question. So one of the benefits of Kimley Horn being our consultant on the small area plan is they were also the consultants on the comp plan. So they have all of that data that the public gave previously. So one of the things we wanted to do is as a refresher as well, is say, here’s what you said 18 to 24 months ago as it relates to the central business district. Here is what the business community has said through our broker owner, Finkers groups or other Finkers groups we did this time. What do you see? What has changed for you in the last 18 to 24 months based off of the feedback provided? Or for those of you who weren’t either in the community at that time or for whatever reason weren’t able to be a part of those sessions, your input can come in as well. So this is building upon the input that we had and helping understand what’s changed. And by having that data there, I think it’s good for the community to see, oh yeah, this is what we thought back then. I agree with that still, or you know what, based off of, you know, XYZ, I think it should be something different and here’s my input. And so we can bring all that together. And then with that, we have a good six week time period before it would be set to go before planning commission in November and council in December. Both of those times, of course, will be public hearings where the community will be able to provide additional input as you would in a typical process.

00:07:19 – Rico Figliolini

Alright. So I have a couple of questions that pop up just because of the discussion here. Was there any surprises you found when your group did the asset inventory of 100 buildings? Because we all have an impression of what we think is going on. But were there any surprises that you found while you were doing that?

00:08:04 – Shaun Adams

You know, there’s quite a few things. That and the vacancy aspect of course. The trick is we’re using CoStar, which may not always be accurate, but kind of seeing the number of buildings that kind of blended together in terms of where we have needs for activation of underutilized space instead of it being just pockets here and there. It’s kind of Corner’s Parkway area, actually. You think about some of the properties over there, there’s a lot of small parking, building. So it’s kind of nice to see kind of how these nodes may have formed throughout that process. And you know another thing is how few properties it would take to connect key pieces of our trail and where some of our hubs are naturally already starting to take shape to say, okay, if a couple of things go in the right direction or we can time these right, then we can connect key stretches of trail through Tech Park that could allow people to run from office to the Forum or wherever to their home.

00:09:06 – Rico Figliolini

Did you find, as you were doing those asset inventories, I don’t know how detailed it was, but types of businesses in there, did you all notice any shift or difference over the, I don’t know even how you would quantify that necessarily without going back a few years, but seeing the turnover maybe would be, is probably the better question over the last five, six years, changes in the type of business in that inventory.

00:09:34 – Shaun Adams

So, I mean, one of the things we are seeing and matter of fact, I mean, it would jump ahead, but we had a recent rezoning, resolving a split zoning, and probably seen a couple of tax amendments for uses like fitness studios come in. But what we are seeing is that flex office is stronger than a lot of traditional office right now. So you have a lot of smaller businesses who need, they don’t need a whole lot of admin office space, you know, a couple of thousands per feet, but they might need a space to house excess inventory or supplies because they’re a service-oriented business that provides their service offsite, mechanical contractors, commercial janitor services, things like that. And an office institutional zoning doesn’t do well with that, but we’re seeing flex office spaces like a lot of our one-story buildings are, where they have that kind of mix of office and warehousing. That’s coming in more, it’s coming in stronger. And so making sure that our code aligns with that is something. And we’ve also heard from the brokers and owners that these are some of the uses that are coming in.

00:10:46 – Rico Figliolini

To go into the brokers and owners, or maybe just the brokers for the time being, or a mix of both, what are you hearing from them that we lack? Let’s start there first, from let’s say Alpharetta or Roswell. Alpharetta is like one of the biggest tech hubs north of Atlanta. Probably 700 companies, if that’s still a good number, there are startups and tech companies. Obviously, that’s a competitive space, right? A competition or rival for us, if you will. So what are we lacking? Have you heard anything specific?

00:11:22 – Shaun Adams

Some of what I’ve heard, I mean, I think you might have seen too in papers of race to quality. You’ve heard that a little bit. And so with a lot of our office stock, it was built in the eighties and those that have kind of redeveloped over time or, you know, reinvested into the office over time, they’re positioned even better, But, you know, having more of that activation and amenitizing of the surrounding. So as we talked earlier about green space, trail connectivity, having some retail or supporting service base in the studio or something like that, where they can work out during lunch and not have to go up to Town Center or somewhere else, but having something kind of central to Tech Park that they can easily get to, or if they want to walk the trail to get to it on lunch, just to clear their head for an hour. Having that is something that, you know, we’re hearing we could use and put us in better competition. But the other part of it is to some of the buildings and seeing them. Part of what we did is reassess the property by looking at the parking, the signs, the landscaping, and the building. Because we can understand based off of how each owner is investing in that building, you know, are they in ramp up mode of trying to pull tenants in or are they in maintenance mode? And being able to understand where that building is in its real estate life cycle or that property is can kind of help us better plan for how can we preserve it and enhance it and stabilize it for the long term.

00:13:03 – Rico Figliolini

So are you seeing, I’m thinking Intuitive Robotics, right? They’re moving along, their construction is being done. I think the parking deck is, I don’t know if it’s complete, but everything’s moving along there, for example. Modern, new looking. Some of the buildings are moving to renovate, right? At the outside of it, new monument signs also I’ve noticed as I drive through Tech Park and some of the other areas but so is that something that you’re seeing too like an outward visible change to the buildings? Because driving to work you know a lot of people were working remote, some people, a lot of people are working remote. A bunch of people are working. It’s hybrid also, and you want to enjoy where you’re working. Some of these old buildings are really old buildings, like you said, 80s and 70s. You feel like you’re going back in time almost in some of these buildings. Are you seeing a reinvestment, a larger reinvestment than you all thought coming in? Because that’s difficult. They’re not rezoning or filing an SUP or something. So they have to file a permit to do certain things. But are you seeing things more than you thought?

00:14:20 – Shaun Adams

We’re seeing some in various places. Again, I think the flex office building stock is doing it more and more. And so those office buildings that are one story, roll up doors in the back, they’re going well, they’re leasing up. Some of the mid-rise office, it’s really honestly a mix. Couple of corporate locations have come in recently, which has been good and has taken up some space in those areas. And that’s helpful. I would say it’s largely stagnant, but part of that right now was what the cost is to bring a building up. They’re having to get, some of what we’ve heard from brokers is, hey, if we’ve got to get a building and spend 100 plus a foot on it to get it to 200 a foot then it’s hard to get the rents to justify that cost and that’s kind of what puts it in maintenance mode. And so part of what we asked was okay, how can we amenitize around you, bring something in to make it easier to invest into that property so that you can justify the rents. Because if you have the amenities, then you can probably get the rents as well. And so that’s part of what we’re hoping to identify out of this plan is where we can, you know, make some of those adjustments. I’m also hoping that rate cuts make it easier for them to want to invest. So I feel like every other week we hear companies are bringing people back to the office. You know, remote work is here to stay. And I think until that pendulum kind of settles down in the middle, it’s just going to be a state of flux.

00:15:57 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Yeah, the rates, I mean, half point drop. Who knows if next year will be another half point drop next quarter or the quarter after. But yeah. And I think the market, I mean, from what I see anyway, from what I’m hearing, right, the market has accepted it already. I think they’ve already worked it in, but who’s an economist? The economists don’t even know sometimes what’s going on. It’s like the stock market. People say, well, drop 500 points. Why did it? It’s like no particular reason. People are covering shorts maybe you know it’s just like or whatever the new use is. I know that there’s, you were talking about like fitness places and stuff. Are you, what type of new uses are you seeing that the city has to sort of work into the into the regulations that don’t exist like that’s not enumerated out there? Are they specific?

00:16:55 – Shaun Adams

So using fitness studio as an example we have health and fitness centers in our code currently and they’re in C2 and that typically is your LA Fitnesses, things of that nature. And so when you think about Stretch Lab and Cryotherapy and Alloy Personal Training and some of those ones that you see in the Forum, they can go in under that already because it’s a C2 or it’s a mixed use development. But C2 uses are allowed in there. What we are finding is some of our buildings that are office buildings, how they’re zoned O&I or zoned M1, those uses aren’t contemplated because they tend to be retail heavy. But on a smaller scale, 4,000 square foot fitness studio or CrossFit box or something like that may be a good amenity to put in the main floor of an office building to support the tenants out of there. But our code wasn’t allowing for it. So as we identify some of those uses, we’re trying to make sure that, okay, we’re not opening a pandora’s box of allowing them to go somewhere where they don’t make sense. But as long as they’re an accessory and supporting to the overall office environment, then we want to allow that. So that’s one great example. And that’s why that one was put in there. The kind of social hobbyist clubs that you’ve seen, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about the car storage, car club. We’ve seen other, I’ve seen golf simulator clubs come in that kind of blend a business club environment, but have that simulator component to it. I’ve seen those in different jurisdictions and just wanting to make sure that if it’s something that fits in an office building as it currently stands and can be, you know, a supporting amenity and draw an attraction to the tenants there, then want to make sure our code, you know, allows for it because that’s only going to help them lease it up.

00:18:44 – Rico Figliolini

Right. I think we, at some point, talked about, I think Brian Johnson and I, at some point, talked about, or at least I brought it up, about use is a larger use, if you will. I’m always thinking that there’s 500 acres there. And like you said before, just because of the nature of the beast, some things evolve, these nodes are created and such. Is there even thought or discussion, have you heard from brokers, on bringing in larger campus-type development into an area? GSU, for example, has several satellite campuses throughout the city. One in Dunwoody, for example. Georgia Tech has done that, I think, or UGA in several ways, places. And that’s just education hubs like that. Has that ever come up? Or even has, because we’re autonomous vehicle and autonomous smart city focused, there’s also pharmaceutical biofabrication companies, those types of companies. You know, just a different, have you heard anything, or has anyone talked about that, like diversifying the type of businesses here in the city?

00:20:04 – Shaun Adams

From a development standpoint, our team is certainly looking out there and trying to attract, whether it’s suppliers to some of our existing companies that are here in the area, the Intuitives of the world, people of that nature, also life sciences, those types of groups, certainly wanting to try to attract them in where we can using Curiosity Lab and what we do there to maintain that technology focus of Tech Park. We don’t want to lose that where we are. So we’re hoping that by doing more and maybe even looking at opportunities for the testing that goes on at Curiosity Lab, thinking about it on a larger scale than a test track or a facility, but where our opportunities to partner with businesses within the area to test certain technologies, maybe on their property or around it, that type of thing. I mean, I’m not in the middle of that every day. That’s more kind of the ag dev side, but I certainly touch it and support it where I can. I haven’t had people kicking tires on it recently from that standpoint, but I think certainly I know Georgia Tech teaches some classes up here already, you know, any opportunity to bring institutional in that supports the businesses around or kind of supplier or accessory users to some of our larger corporations that are here. That’s definitely a focus of our economic development team.

00:21:35 – Rico Figliolini

 Okay. Moving away from that a little bit, did the moratorium include changing some regulations with regard to actual development, like the actual building of buildings or the actual renovation of buildings where we have an opportunity if someone comes in for a special use permit or for redevelopment to say, okay, I think we’ve learned something over the last two years. Maybe we want more. If there’s going to be a residential component to something, we want to make sure that, I don’t know, it’s LED certified or it’s individually wired units. I know that’s part of some of the zoning, but is any of that being revisited?

00:22:19 – Shaun Adams

Certainly. I mean, one of the things that, I mean, the small area plan itself is going to be focused on kind of the nodes and maybe what goes there, generally speaking. But what I’ve talked with the consultants about is as we identify gaps in our code to be able to achieve what we’re trying to do. The plan, recommendations for tax amendments in that regard is important as well. And that goes to the regulation just from the building side. I mean, one of the things, you know, I kind of intentionally did with a couple of the development proposals that came through recently was get a little more specific on the elevations and especially elevations that touch or have visibility to public right-of-way to ensure that we can as closely as we can get it to come out of the ground as it looks on paper you know we want to be able to do that because if you’re selling a vision we want that vision to be reality and not you know an alternate you know universe of it kind of thing. So I’ve done that by virtue of conditions where I can, because when you put it in code, right, you might find yourself in an unintended consequence of not having the flexibility. But we are intentional about that. I will say we’ll probably see a couple of new zoning districts come out of this to kind of help bring us up to what the market is really looking for. For example, we have one mixed use development in our code right now, and it’s three uses. It’s 32 plus units an acre. The way the uses are identified is office, residential, and retail. We’ve kind of interpreted public uses such as a trail as a use in previous districts. And that may make sense for a kind of downtown core where you need a ton of residential to support the retail because it’s a retail heavy center like Town Center and the Forum but it may not make sense in Tech Park where you’re activating a utilized space so looking at more of maybe say a commercial mixed use where it stays commercial heavy you’re preserving the office the redevelopment of any retail and or residential that exists is more supporting its accessory or you know and supporting to the commercial property creating an opportunity for that where it might make sense. And then also we don’t have a code that allows for a mix of housing types under one subdivision, if you will, or development. So, for instance, Gwinnett County has a traditional neighborhood development zoning district where you can have a mix of townhomes to three different lot size single family detached home under one development. And, you know, part of what we’re seeing now, we’re clamoring for built-for-equity products. We’re a redevelopment city. We don’t have big swaths of green space to be able to develop estate-sized subdivisions on anymore. So how can we be creative about the space that we have, the infill opportunities we have, to put developments on there that attract the buyers that we need. We need housing for seniors. We’ve heard them say, look, I want empty nester style housing, but I still want to own it. Okay. So we want to find that product type for you. I’ve heard a phrase, first stroller generation recently. So you’ve got young professionals, but then as they get married and they have that first baby to push that first stroller, their thoughts on what their home life is going to be is different than the young professional, and maybe it’s still single or married without kids. And so how do we create those opportunities for them at an attainable price point? And you have certain fixed costs in construction that you can’t control. And so one way you can control it is being creative about setbacks, lot sizes, density, and things of that nature. And so looking for opportunities to allow for that. So we don’t have just a bunch of townhomes either coming in. How can we mix product types into smaller infill developments, getting the density that somebody may need to justify the product or the project while providing a product that the market’s actually looking for.

00:26:32 – Rico Figliolini

Obviously, that makes sense to me. There’s different needs, right? Different age groups have different needs, like you said. And some of them may not want the large land, but they may want. I’ve seen developments like, for example, I think it was Trellith, Georgia. That’s where the big studio is. And some other places similar to that where you do have some mix of housing where it’s townhomes. It’s sort of single family also on a really small plot of land, but big enough for a family, but it’s still separate, right, separate pieces. Some people might say it’s on postage-size land, but they have a backyard, and they might have even four bedrooms in that house, or five even, with a nice deck, let’s say. I know it was in Canada. It was the same way. It was this development where it was mixed use, and I walked into this house. And it seemed small in the front. It was a one-car a two-car garage, with a side entrance. But it was a five-bedroom, three stories, beautiful house, the small deck on back. And then a really nice backyard also. But small, nicely done, craftsman style and stuff. I don’t know what that would cost here in the States, but over there, it wasn’t too bad. So, but space. Maybe within that development, you know, Pocket Park or whatever. I mean, are you thinking along those lines? I mean, Medlock Bridge Road, for example, is full of houses on one side that are these big lot houses. At some point, those may change. I mean, those are, I don’t know if they’re one acre or two acre lots. I mean, they may, you know, over the next 10, 20 years, change and become something else. High density. Are you looking at that? Is that some of the, because that’s within the Central Business District map, I think.

00:28:36 – Shaun Adams

So actually after the hexagon building going down Medlock, I think in the 2045 update, some of that has been dubbed village residential to create that transitional density coming off of Town Center and going towards Spalding, South Peachtree. Because you have a mix of towns and smaller lots, single family subdivisions there now. And so acknowledging the fact that those one and a half, two acre older homes may at some point in time be sought for redevelopment. How do we want that to look and how can it assimilate, you know, bring those two character areas and planning nodes together in a logical flow. And so that has been contemplated there, but I’ve also seen some of these developments occur on 12 to 18 acre sites. So you don’t need 40 acres, 30 acres to do it. And so being able to create that opportunity and in reality, you know, I hate to say high density in that regard because people assume, you know, multifamily or something, you know, like that. In most cases, those developments can do it at 10 units an acre or less, which is really more of a townhome density, you know, just like a bunch of townhomes. And so to me, there’s as much of an architectural benefit and design benefit to that because you’re seeing differing product types. Some people don’t want their wall to be shared with another family. So even if it’s a five-foot setback, side setback, that alone, it’s effectively a townhome, but that alone to them feels different.

00:30:07 – Rico Figliolini

For sure. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I’ve seen that. Anything else that’s with the moratorium that we should bring up or discuss? Otherwise, I’d like to move on maybe to some of the stuff that’s going on as well.

00:30:21 – Shaun Adams

Sure. The only other thing that I would say that was probably the biggest, a surprise for me was the request by, especially the broker owners on where we can coordinate with the County, especially with fire and things of that nature. So most people don’t realize that since we don’t have fire inspection, fire marshal and house of the city, that still goes to the county as well as anything water sewer related and so you know they can work in parallel with permitting and things of that nature but we are actively working with our building side to create better coordination with Gwinnett. But hearing that it’s at a point where sometimes it impacts a tenant coming in because they have a tight timeline and when they need to be up and operational was something that I thought was great feedback. That’s a process thing that we can work on and kind of push Gwinnett on for really is what it is. Pushing Gwinnett on more and seeing how we can help them turn around their inspections faster and keep things moving within the permitting side of the house.

00:31:27 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, that is great for you. I never thought about that. You’re right. I mean, it’s just like that’s outside the city’s responsibility at this point, but cutting the red tape would be good. Any other surprising stuff that you found?

00:31:44 – Shaun Adams

In the realm of surprising, not really. I think there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve heard more and just getting more of that kind of consensus within that kind of helps understand the direction of where we want to go. But I think it’s shaping out nicely. I think the community will – I look forward to more of their feedback and really, if anything, being able, since I wasn’t on staff when the update happened two years ago, but being a resident, I attended a couple of those myself. I really look forward to seeing to the extent that there are changes in the thought process just in the last two years, you know, from the update to now, I’m really looking forward to that feedback and seeing how we can implement it into this proposal and make this time well worth it.

00:32:28 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, interesting. I’m sure there will be more unique feedback. I mean, there’s a lot more people that have come in over the last two years. So it will be interesting. Moving away from this for a little bit, what are the developments or what other things are coming up that people should be aware of over the next two months besides this that you’re aware of?

00:32:54 – Shaun Adams

So on the new front, I mean, I guess one last thing I would say that kind of transitioned us is, you know, I know we’ve talked about 25 Tech Park South before the 13 condos, but as a part of that, they’re agreeing to create, provide the easement for a trail connection around that lake. So we already have existing trail around the Ashrae site. We already have agreement and principle from other office owners to extend it through them, which will now connect to this. So this gets us mostly around Technology Park Lake with that trail. So just an example of when a redevelopment opportunity comes in being able to partner with them to get those other public facing amenities and make it happen faster than what it would if we had to just pick you know go piece by piece on our own ground. So that has been approved and so we would expect to see that you know take. That is a conversion. But outside of that, we don’t have any residential developments or anything right now in the pipeline. What is upcoming on council next week is a second read on a text amendment for the townhome district, the RTH, residential townhome district. The townhome the residential townhome currently the density on it is eight district units an acre. RTH, district, we’re proposing to go to 10 units an acre, which is consistent with what Gwinnett County does and they’ve done for a few years. We’ve seen it in other jurisdictions. And, you know, it’s an up to. So it’s a situation where we’re in a position where we need housing stock where we can. We’re clamoring for bill for equity housing stock where we can. So in certain situations where if a couple extra units an acre make the difference from a developer saying this site only works if it’s multifamily versus this site could work as townhomes. Then, you know, or a bill for equity product, then we want to provide that opportunity to consider it. Just because it says 10 units an acre, though, doesn’t mean council has to thumbs up 10 units an acre. They can say, well, on this particular property, eight units an acre makes sense. So it’s a tool in the toolbox that can be used. So that’s coming before them. We have a pawn shop SUP, which will be located. It’s the same plaza as Tortuga’s on Holcomb Bridge, just north of Crooked Creek. And so that’s an SUP for that. They’ve been in, they have a business existing in Tucker. They’ve been in operation there for 10 years. No issues. Had no reports a predominantly a jewelry reseller really when you listen to kind of the product of what they’re looking to do. The applicant even indicated the planning commission when questions about you know crime and concerns that came up to say that they made a decision a long time ago not to accept tools or anything like that because it’s really hard to track and to ensure that it’s legitimately brought in. And so they limit themselves predominantly to nicer jewelry, stones, things of that nature. And so they’re coming before us for that SUP, where council planning commission had recommended approval. And then we had planning commission last month, we had an in-home daycare SUP. And so that’ll be first read next week in council, and it’ll go before on a second reading public hearing in October.

00:36:23 – Rico Figliolini

So in-home daycare?

00:36:25 – Shaun Adams

Yes.

00:36:26 – Rico Figliolini

Like a daycare or a children’s daycare?

00:36:30 – Shaun Adams

It’s a children’s daycare, but they’re capped at up to six kids. And so, and it’s kind of, you know, I have a quick PSA opportunity on this. Really the SUP is an SUP for customary home occupation. So section 607 of our code is for customary home occupations. And most people don’t realize this, but the way it’s set up is any home-based business that provides a service on or adjacent to the premises or conducts a sale transaction on the premises has to have an SGP. And all of them are technically limited to trip counts of up to six per day so that’s really what this is an SUP for. It’s for a customary home occupation it’s just that the occupation is an in home daycare so they’re only going to have this.

00:37:19 – Rico Figliolini

Okay so similar if it was a hair salon, if you will. Someone was doing hair salon type work, if you will, in a home. Because I’ve seen that sometimes on through Gwinnett County. Yeah. So, okay. So that makes sense.

00:37:36 – Shaun Adams

Hair salons, music teachers who give their lessons on property. If you’re an accountant and you have people meet in your home, that is a service. Your consulting service is being provided on site. Therefore, technically, you should have an SEP. So we know that this probably goes on a lot undetected, unfortunately. But that is kind of where we are with it. And so that’s why they’re there before us. There was an in-home daycare in the same neighborhood recently where that person stopped doing it and this one’s kind of picking it up they’re doing it on their right from the start and so that one prior to actually didn’t have an SUP came in before that was a requirement and so it was kind of grandfathered in if you will. So they’re following the process and going through that so we will see that in October. It will be first next week. And then the last thing is actually not as much zoning, but it’s zoning adjacent, which is the social recreation facility. So if you remember, we had that. I’m going to go through in April on the zoning side, where it’s kind of dealing with the racing simulators, any type of business like that. So adding that to the alcohol ordinance so that it aligns with the zoning code so people will see that ordinance first read next week and public hearing on it in October.

00:38:57 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. But that includes stuff like, well, I mean, VR stuff and that type of stuff, laser tag or escape rooms, I guess. Because there’s no particular zoning for that, I don’t think. Would that work with that?

00:39:15 – Shaun Adams

Correct. So right now, what you see most commonly is indoor recreation facility. But the way that is commonly defined is that the food and beverage is clearly incidental to the rec facility. So when Nitrozone was here, or when you go to a Top Golf or Mario Andretti Racing, that type of thing, the facility is taken up so much by the rec aspect that the food is smaller. But you’re seeing post-COVID response again. You’re seeing more businesses doing smaller footprints. By virtue of that, their alcohol sales might be more than the 20-30% you typically see in code for the bigger ones, but they don’t go over 50%, which is usually that kind of big line. Our code not only didn’t contemplate it in zoning, but also didn’t contemplate the license for it in alcohol. The alcohol portion of it’s now coming through, which aligns with the zoning that was adopted back in, I think, April.

00:40:10 – Rico Figliolini

All right, cool. So it’s never ending. The city has to constantly keep evolving and working and finding new things that they have to attend to, right?

00:40:21 – Shaun Adams

We actually are maintaining a list. As we come across things, we maintain a list of text amendments to take a look at. And then ultimately what we do is we research them, compare them to other jurisdictions to make sure that before we bring it forward, it truly aligns with where we’re trying to go as a city and doesn’t have an unintended consequence. But it’s definitely a revolving situation.

00:40:44 – Rico Figliolini

I’m curious. Every industry has a conference or trade show. Do cities’ management have trade shows where they can go to and find out what other cities are doing across the country? Is there such a thing that you do comparatively? You might find new things that you never thought about even.

00:41:08 – Shaun Adams

So I would say yes, by department. And so actually last week, I was at the City County Institute for Georgia, which is where we get our CLEs. And we get everything there from the do’s and don’ts of what other jurisdictions have experienced, recent case law decisions, the impact of that on our jurisdiction, ordinance amendments, the do’s and don’ts of that. So we get it from that’s the legal side of what I do as well. But we have Planners Association. We have city county managers, both at the state and federal level. So we certainly have opportunities. If anything, you almost have to be strategic about the ones you do attend because you can get to have too many. And so we really try to look at that to make sure that it’s giving a good return on investment when we do go.

00:41:56 – Rico Figliolini

For sure. I mean, there’s a lot of cities around here, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell, that are doing a lot of different things also. They’re all trying to figure out, like we are, right? Trying to figure out what’s best for the city, for who we are and stuff. So interesting process. So let’s not forget that October then Thursday, October 3rd, 6 to 8 at City Hall is the public meeting about the changes to the land use plan for the Central Business District. If you have any questions, I’m sure Shaun Adams would love to handle some of those. So you can put comments as you watch this into Facebook or YouTube, wherever you’re at, and I’ll make sure that Shaun gets those. We’ll have links in the show notes as well on the website to some of these meeting agendas that you all can look at. Anything else, Shaun, before we wrap up that you’d like to share?

00:42:56 – Shaun Adams

The only other thing that I would encourage everybody to do is go take a look at our website on the community development side. We’ve made some changes recently, and happy to get those over to you so that you can share them. But we have now all of our current land uses are on the page and pretty much anybody, you can get to that page from anywhere, whether it’s the agenda site on our main page or the button. So you can, when you go into current land use pages, you can see the application, you can see a site plan if one was needed, elevations, if it’s a redevelopment you can see the staff report once it’s posted. And then once it’s adopted it goes to an archived section on that same page where you can get, you have the ordinance as well. Anyway this process wheel if you will it’s pretty cool take a look at that so you can understand how development gets through. And at the bottom of that page, we have a couple of different flow charts. So depending on how you like to take in information, I think we pretty well run the gambit on that for you.

00:43:57          Rico Figliolini

I think we have an article on LivinginPeachtreeCorners.com. So if you all visit that, you’ll see that as well. And I’ll have links to that. So it’s a great site. I mean, way, way more, not that it wasn’t transparent before, but way more, much easier to find everything all in one place. So check that out. Shaun, hang in there with me for a second. I just want to say thank you to everyone for joining us. EV Remodeling Inc. is our sponsor of these podcasts and our publications. So go visit them, find out a little bit more about what they do in their remodeling services, renovation work here in the city of Peachtree Corners, or wherever you’re living within the metro area. Their website is evremodelinginc.com. And obviously the city is PeachtreeCornersGA.gov. So go visit them as well. And you can find way more information out there than you need probably. It is a portal of information. So you can get lost in there and find stuff, but check out definitely from that homepage. You’ll see the land use stuff. So check that out, but thank you all for being with us. Appreciate it. Thank you, Shaun.

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.