How Georgia State legislation affects local cities, self-taxing districts, medical cannabis and more [Podcast]

How does 5G technology and public safety work? Explore the creation of self-taxing Community Improvement Districts and how they help a city. Urban development, changing cityscapes, new zoning for medical cannabis, and smart city planning—all this and more in the latest episode of Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager Brian Johnson and host Rico Figliolini.

Resources:

State of Georgia Legislative information on the CID
Medical Cannabis Information

Timestamp:

00:00:00 – City Manager Brian’s 5G Initiatives at Curiosity Lab
00:04:34 – Public Safety Initiatives and Legislative Defense
00:09:16 – Exploring the Creation of Community Improvement Districts
00:14:21 – Funding and Benefits of a Community Improvement District
00:16:54 – Upcoming Town Center Improvements and Openings
00:22:26 – New Obstacle Course and Memorial Day Plans
00:28:16 – April City Council Meeting on Development
00:31:06 – Urban Growth and the Limits of City Authority
00:34:37 – Urban Development and Changing Cityscapes
00:37:45 – Navigating City Growth and Zoning Changes
00:41:52 – Planning Zoning for Medical Cannabis in Georgia
00:44:56 – Regulating Dispensary Locations and Processes
00:47:00 – Anticipating Zoning Requests and Smart City Planning

Podcast Transcript:

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. And today, Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager. Hey, Brian, how are you?

Brian Johnson 0:00:09

Good. Rico, how are you?

Rico Figliolini 0:00:10

Good. Good. It’s a beautiful day, actually, when we’re recording this remotely, but we have a lot of things we’re going to be talking about. But before we get into that, I do want to say thank you to our corporate sponsor, EV Remodeling, Inc. Eli, who lives here in Peachtree Corners, where the company is based, is a great guy doing great work, from buildouts to whole house remodels. So check them out at evremodelinginc.com. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. So now let’s talk a little bit about Brian. I know you’ve been busy. You’ve been going out doing speaking engagements. I want to mention one that you’re going to be going to at some point, which is next month, ISC West 2024, which is a conference trade show in the security, public safety realm. You’re going to be talking to them about what we’re doing here. Why don’t you give us just a three minute thing on that, again that’s happening in April. Tell us, what’s the plan?

Brian Johnson 0:01:09

So I was asked to speak at that conference specifically about how we’re using 5g within the curiosity lab testing environment to help enhance and scale certain products in certain areas. This conference specifically is interested in cybersecurity, then some autonomous vehicle and then public safety, like drone, or as our marshals have stood up, body cam testing and using 5g as a way to make those products better or to be able to scale them. An example of that would be if you get a 5g environment to be able to get to where all the law enforcement officers within that environment that are wearing body cameras when they’re turned on, the 5g environment is robust enough that it could actually stream live back to maybe real time crime center. Or they can download video of an engagement where they turn the camera on because they don’t have it on all the time. There are certain times you gotta turn it on. But currently, police officers end up at the end of their shift. They go back to the station and they’ve got to take out the memory chip and put it into a computer and download it directly. That way, just because it’s so much video data really takes a lot of space. And that would be huge if they could both stream it live back to command center, where you have other people watching and be able to download it live and not have to go back to the station. It’ll just be an example where 5G can be used to deal with. So I’m going to be talking about, I was asked to talk about some of those applications that we’re using 5G to help do research and development on.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:09

Which is great because most of these conferences that you all go to, both here in the states and overseas, like Israel and european countries, they end up actually bringing sometimes companies to our city that want to do work here.

Brian Johnson 0:03:24

So good economic impact, just conference speaking engagements. It used to be to where we were always having to make our case as to why we’re interesting enough to speak at them. And it’s kind of, we get reached out to, but we don’t generally go to conferences. And it’s just conference where you’re like walking a showroom floor handing out business cards. We usually use this as, call it an excuse to line up meetings with companies that are in the area, that are in certain sectors that we want to make them aware of curiosity lab and its capabilities as a way to get them to be like, oh, wow, I didn’t know that that existed. And you don’t charge to use it and you have all these cool toys and infrastructure we can use. So we turn down a lot of these things if they don’t correspond to us being able to meet with other companies at the same time. So this is a space that with the Marshall stood up public safety space has certainly expanded. And so it’s more of interest to us than it hasn’t been in the past. So we’ve been asked to speak of this before, but this time we accept it just because we have more public safety r d going on here than we have.

Rico Figliolini 0:04:55

Right. Cool. So let’s bring this back a little closer to home. Now, actually, Atlanta under the gold dome, because there’s a legislative session going on. There’s legislation in there particularly that would affect the city of peace for corners that you all have been working on. So tell us a little bit about that and what impact that will bring to the city.

Brian Johnson 0:05:15

Well, I’ll start with legislative sessions are 95% defense and 5% offense. So as usual, our legislative affairs people, lobbyists that we use and in some internal staff, we’ve ended up playing defense on bills that could hurt us in some way, shape or form. We’ve talked about this before in years past, or I’ve used as an example. But yet again, there was another bill that was introduced that would prohibit property tax bills from having anything other than the one property tax line item.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:58

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:05:59

For municipalities that either don’t have property tax or have a lot of additional fees that they charge residents and don’t want to stand up a billing department or don’t want to have a bill that only has fees on it, it would be significantly negative for us because our collection. So we use Gwinnett County’s property tax bill for us to put on solid waste. So your trash collection is billed annually. Your stormwater user fee is billed annually. And for some locations that have street lights that are assessed based on the frontage of their property that’s on there, our collection rate is 99% because it’s on a property tax bill. And if you don’t pay the whole bill, technically speaking, at some point you can find your property being auctioned off on the courthouse steps.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:01

True.

Brian Johnson 0:07:02

So people pay it. But if you removed it and we had to invoice, just say solid waste and stormwater, our collection rate, for the nationally of cities that do that, their collection rate is about 65%. It’s crazy because a lot of people think, for instance, they don’t pay their trash collection, and then they’re kind of like, whatever.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:31

There’S no recourse doing it.

Brian Johnson 0:07:33

I’m going to dump my trash in a vacant lot. I’m going to do whatever. I’ve abandoned the property. I mean, just a lot of different things. Water, they’re like, what are they going to do to me if I don’t? Drainage. So just bad bills like that. We try to do what we can to make our state legislators know that it could harm municipalities. We also fight a lot of bills that would remove our decision making at the local level and move it to the state level where cities are generally posed to, because we feel like the best decisions are made by elected officials closest to the area that’s affected.

Rico Figliolini 0:08:23

Agreed. I think some of that was dealing with at one point with building materials, whether it was steel or wood, for three story or higher buildings.

Brian Johnson 0:08:34

Rico. So there the state decided that in their wisdom, they would prevent cities from having any kind of requirements of building material that commercial office buildings are built. And this stemmed from some cities saying that if you hit four stories or more, it had to be structural steel. There are wood products out there that allow you to go up to that height or more that are a wood product that has the same, I guess, structural strength as steel. And the state said, no, we’re not going to let you decide at the local level. Those are ones that know, no offense, but a state legislator from Rabin county or Chatham county is not necessarily the best position to know what is best for Peachtree corners. But anyway, there’s a long way of saying, play a lot of defense. This year, we did have a little bit of offense. We decided to take advantage of this session to do something that we’ve been thinking about doing and may do in the near future. We don’t have it exactly set at our level to execute quite yet, but it’s around the creation of community improvement districts, or CID, as they’re called. Probably the closest one to us here is Gateway 85 CID, correct?

Rico Figliolini 0:10:11

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:10:12

It is an area of city or county in which the businesses inside of this defined CID agree to voluntarily tax themselves at an additional rate. And that additional rate creates resources that have to go back into this particular area to improve it in various things. We’ve kicked around a couple of locations where that might be of value at some point in the future. But in order to do it, you have to have legislation allowing that local government to create it. So we decided this session to go ahead and have that legislation created so that in the future it only requires two things. One is a certain percentage of, again, the property owners within the area that you want to do this, they have to agree to do it and then has to agree, and both of those entities have to match up. But what this local legislation does is at least removes us having to go back to the general assembly. This removes that. So it’s kind of the first step of a three step process, and we just wanted to do it. And that bill is moving along. I have every indication to think that it’ll pass this session, and then in the future, it could be the near future, it could be a long time, it may never happen, but at least if the decision was made that there’s a certain area that it makes sense to do, there would have to be a campaign and lots of meetings with all those property owners to get them up to speed on the value. And then you basically have a mini referendum, and if you get the required number of votes that’s presented to city council, and the last step is city council to say, yes, the id is created.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:13

I’m assuming the. Let’s not assume it would be votes of people within a defined district, that you all would draw the boundaries around and it would be commercial and residential or just commercial.

Brian Johnson 0:12:26

Well, it’s kind of property owner, so it can be residential if residents are in there. But there’s an equation. It’s got to be a certain percentage of property owners and then also got to be a certain percentage of the taxable value of the property contained. So, for instance, if you had an area in which there was this big Goliath corporate tenant there, and they were significant part of it, you a don’t want them to be singularly able to say yes or no. But then conversely, you don’t want a bunch of small, little property owners to be able to do something that ends up putting a huge burden on this big goliath. So it’s a combination of both that has to weigh in, and all those requirements are laid out in state law that we don’t get to choose our choices, but we just have to have legislation allowing city council to create CIDs if these other votes are.

Rico Figliolini 0:13:38

And Cids for those that aren’t aware. I mean, the one that you mentioned before covers, I think, Jimmy Carter, 85, Gwinnett Place mall. That whole area over there, Gwinnett Place.

Brian Johnson 0:13:51

Mallette Place is Gwinnett Place. CID is another CID.

Rico Figliolini 0:13:56

Okay.

Brian Johnson 0:13:57

Gateway 85 does not cover that. Gateway 85 is more like Jimmy Carter on both sides of 85. It’s kind of a corridor.

Rico Figliolini 0:14:09

That’s right. It’s more of a corridor.

Brian Johnson 0:14:11

Place CID is its own CID of what was or is the Gwinnett Place mall itself and some of the surrounding businesses that are kind of in that.

Rico Figliolini 0:14:22

So what does it fund, generally? What does a CID fund, they’d want to know?

Brian Johnson 0:14:30

Could be public safety aspect. Could be additional streetlights, it could be cameras, it could be off duty police officers. There could be infrastructure improvements. You could improve roads, signage, facade improvements to businesses. It’s really whatever that CID, because if a CID is created, a board has to be created to govern it. And the board’s composition also is stipulated. You have to have a certain number of board members have to come from property owners, and a certain number are appointed by city council. You just have board composition. And so that board decides the rate which is capped. There’s a cap to decide the rate. They decide what it’s going to go to. They manage. But gateway 85 has done a lot of flock and video cameras. They pay for off duty police protection. They’ve done street lighting. I’m not sure if they’ve done any actual physical infrastructure, but that’s kind of the type of thing, I’ve seen it where facade improvements, where businesses could come in and actually give a refresh to their building through collected there. So the theory is if this defined area kind of rising tide lifts all boats, then that also feeds itself, because then that means the tax value of the properties go up, which means there’s more money collected even without changing the amount because the value is more. So that’s even more money in there. And it just self fulfills.

Rico Figliolini 0:16:18

And it doesn’t regulate anything, usage or anything within that CRD.

Brian Johnson 0:16:25

No, that’s why it’s just community improvement district. It’s just to improve that community through some of those things I said. But no, every business still operates the same. He’s still the regulatory agency for that. You get your business license. If you meet zoning restrictions, you can do whatever you want. Still America, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:16:51

All right, so let’s move on to. Let’s talk a little bit about town center improvements. I know most of it’s coming to a head shortly as far as grand openings and things coming to fruition. So give us a rundown of what’s actually going to be opening soon and where we are.

Brian Johnson 0:17:11

Yes, we got a bunch of the improvements around the town green that are kind of going to be finishing up here in the next month or two. First one is going to be the dog park. The dog park is essentially done. The video cameras over the dog park are getting installed on Monday, which is important because we both know that it’s probably day two. We’re going to get some dog fight, and somebody’s going to reach out to the city to say, I want that video because that dog attacked my dog and they should pay my bills. So we wanted to make sure we had video surveillance. And then Friday, March 15, at 04:00 p.m. Is the grand opening of the dog park. If you bring your dog, we have some peach tree corners, chopskis that are dog related. We’re going to give out. Yes. And the dog park will be open. So that’s the first one.

Rico Figliolini 0:18:23

Before we leave that one. What was it called? The bar or the concession? The bone bar. Is that going to be open, too?

Brian Johnson 0:18:33

It will not be open quite yet. We still have three or four weeks before that’ll be done. But yes, there will be a small, not a shed, but a small little bar that it’s going to look like Snoopy’s dog house. And it’ll have a window that will open into the fenced area of the dog park and also outside. So you actually, when we do, we’ll have to end up bidding out the contract to be able to use that. We haven’t quite decided on hours and whatever, but we’ll bid it out. Somebody will win the bid and then they’ll be able to open up and have some sort of beverage component that you have access to. So before too long, you could take your dog to the dog park and while you’re there, go get a drink of some kind, alcoholic or non alcoholic, and then chill out on the benches there. We got some shade structures that are there, so shaded part. Half of the dog park is artificial turf and then half of it is natural wooded area. Then we have a small dog and a big dog component to the dog park. So it’ll be for dog owners who want to go there. And maybe it’s even in the morning where there’s coffee served out of there. Not sure, but it’ll be used, hopefully to provide a value to the dog owners who are thirsty, cool and town green.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:20

I know they’re getting sod, not sod. Well, sod. Yeah, I guess that’s going to be finished soon, too.

Brian Johnson 0:20:27

Yes. We removed all the old sod and dug down like, I don’t know, 3ft and removed all the old Georgia clay out of me. And we put in a drainage system and good soil backfilled. And we are ready to start laying sod late next week. And we’re wanting to lay it in as soon as possible. It’ll still be off limits for use because we need the sod to take.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:56

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:20:57

And in preparation for our May concert, our first concert in May, which I believe is the Taylor Swift cover, I can assure you herself, I doubt, but it’s a, you know, entertainer. And so as a result, there could be certainly a significant amount of people who go to that concert, and we don’t want the sod to be walked on too early. So anyway, that’ll happen. Then. The tot lot, the smaller kid playground, the mat install around the playground equipment is starting next week, and it’ll be the end of this month at some point, I believe. Lewis Svela, my communication director, is trying to come up with the best date. But it’ll be the end of this month. We’ll have a grand opening of that. And so then that lot, that little kitty playground will be open.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:05

Right?

Brian Johnson 0:22:06

So that’ll be good. And then the end of this month, we should have the towers placed on what was the old fitness trail area. It’s really become an obstacle course now. And just why we’re having to secure it like we are. But the towers are going to make it look like a frontier fort.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:31

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:22:33

Then we’ll have some signage on what age people can use it, because we certainly run into people who have no business being on it unsupervised. It’s just an insurance nightmare potentially for us, but that’ll be good. So I would say beginning of April, everything except Middletown Green itself will be open, fully used, and then by the may concert we’ll essentially be done with all of the upgrades that ring the town green and it’s off to the races.

Rico Figliolini 0:23:14

It’s amazing. It’s just going to be amazing. Especially with the concerts coming in and Peachtree Corners festival happening later. It’s all cool. Can’t wait for that all to be complete.

Brian Johnson 0:23:27

Rico, one thing we didn’t talk about prior to the show that maybe talk about now, the obstacle course presented an opportunity that the Peachtree Corners Veterans association is going to potentially take advantage of, and that is on Memorial Day. As you know, the festival or the Peace Street Corners Veterans association organizes an event for Memorial Day and Veterans day out at the Veterans monument. And the Veterans association is essentially going to have an obstacle course competition aimed at young people, like middle and high school age kids that’ll be supervised, but for the purpose of maybe instilling a greater value to military service than the military right now is getting from young people, recruiting his way down. This might be a way to get some kids excited. So we’ll have the different stations, the ones that we think are good ones to use, and we’ll have them in sequence, and we’ll have the kids go through and see which ones can get through all of them properly in the shortest amount of time, all while followed with a veteran who can both provide them guidance on how to do it and as a safety monitor, if you will. So we’ll have prizes and that’ll be in the morning, I think around from like nine to 1030. And then at eleven, the Memorial day event will take place right there at the Veterans monument. So it’ll kind of be a little bit more of a half a day type of thing. So more to follow on that. But the association is looking and discussed with the city this. And so I think it could be kind of a cool thing for some kids who maybe was there or haven’t been shown some of the best ways to do it, or these are ones. I have a 15 year old son who thinks he’s 10ft tall and bulletproof and he can do all of those things better than most, or at least better than his old man, which I don’t know, I think I can still take him. So we’ll see.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:11

Yes, you’re a vet yourself, so that would be cool. Great. Going to have to check with Lewis on details then. Before we go to press on the next issue. All right, so why don’t we also, there’s a couple more things I want to talk quickly about. One is Da Vinci court in that development that’s happening in pretty much the unused parking area. So that was approved or working through or. How is that working? What’s the details on that insurer?

Brian Johnson 0:26:42

Well, yeah, first I want to say it’s not a development that’s happening. It’s just a property owner who is wanting to do something, but the city hasn’t given them permission to do yet. Da Vinci Court is the name of the road that enters into an area that has a couple of class A, four, maybe five story office buildings. And when we’re built, as is often the case, they put a lot more parking than they need. They really had more parking than they need even before COVID but certainly after Covid with that. And so they have been wanting to do something with the unused parking areas, and they have submitted an application to the city for a mixed use development there on that site. And so it’s headed to city council? It has. I think the March Planning commission meeting is when they’ll present their case to planning commission. It’ll have its first read at the March city council meeting, and then it’ll be the April city council meeting where it’ll be officially considered.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:05

Gotcha. Okay. Because development doesn’t stop in the city. Peaceful corners. There’s always someone that wants to do something. I know the day building is one of those buildings that are being looked at that’s on Peachtree Corner Circle. So there’s always someone looking to develop. So it’s good to have some guidance.

Brian Johnson 0:28:25

It’s probably important for me to bring up. When you say that is, we do get. We’re not immune to this. Probably all cities get this right.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:33

Sure.

Brian Johnson 0:28:34

Some people who end up basically wanting the city to not approve anything, they’re not even getting into, whether it’s equity or rental or anything, they’re just like, we moved to the city back in 91 and it was a certain way, and all this development is happening, and we don’t like it. We get it. I mean, the city gets it. The city is not necessarily, in fact, I would say it’s single digits. The percentage of land use considerations that the city even has anything to do with initiating 90 plus percent of it is the private sector property owner wanting to do something with their property. We don’t have. Cities and counties don’t have the legal authority to just say no. If somebody wants to develop their property, they have property owners. Property rights in America are very strong. Property owners have a legal right to the highest and best use for the property. Now where the city comes in is it can regulate some of it if it doesn’t keep into keeping with the character area of certain place. Or there could be certain things like it would add density that would overwhelm the public, say, transportation infrastructure in the area. Those are reasons we can say no. Or if the zoning. It’s currently zoned a certain way and they want it to do something that they’re not zoned. In some cases, you can just say no, but not in all cases. We can’t just indiscriminately say for the sole reason of it’s adding people, we don’t want to approve it. That was the only reason. And there was public infrastructure that could support additional density, and it met the zoning. He couldn’t just say no. So I bring that up to say growth is inevitable. In a metro area like this. Getting more dense is almost inevitable, because may not be only in residential, it could be other things. But there’s many times where we don’t have the ability to say no. Even know behind closed doors. We’re kind of like, would rather not that happen. But some of it is even a use by. Right. The one that you brought up earlier that was just approved, Dr. Horton on engineering drive came in and got approved for a little over 70 townhomes, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:31:33

75 units.

Brian Johnson 0:31:35

How many?

Rico Figliolini 0:31:36

75 units?

Brian Johnson 0:31:40

That property owner came to the city in the fall of last year, late summer, fall of last year, with like a 225 to 250 unit. Remember that development? And the city denied it. And we had reasons. We were able to deny it. Property owner came back to city staff, myself and staff, and said, well, what? We really want to do something. The building is uninhabitable. The old office building. We want to do something with it. What can we do? And we said, look, why don’t you decrease the density? Equity is always more palatable. So they went from like 250 apartment units down to 75 equity townhome units. And even then, we had residents who at the city council meeting were angry that we were letting anything happen. And that really was a good news story. The city ended up decreasing the density. It’s an equity product. We even had a complaint about the condition where we said no more than 15% of the equity townhomes could ever be rented. And that would be enforced by the Hoa, which we required them to set up.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:03

Right.

Brian Johnson 0:33:04

A complaint that we were even allowing 15%. And the complaint was you should have said 0% rental. That’s another example where legally we can’t do that because there are lots of instances, including even in covenant protected single family detached subdivision, you could have somebody who lives in Riverfield or Neely Farm or Wellington Lake in a house that’s 5000 sqft. They may want to rent the house out or they may be in a financial position where they can’t sell it or they would be underwater or whatever. We can’t just say no, never. We can put some.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:51

Limits to it.

Brian Johnson 0:33:53

On it and even then. But sometimes those are the things that residents don’t oftentimes understand, that government in our country especially was set up to only have certain authorities and that’s what the city has. And so it’s not always exactly what we want. But in this case, we got a much better product than what was originally submitted to the city.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:17

Yeah. Interestingly enough, I mean, that piece of property is on Peachtree Parkway, I think, right?

Brian Johnson 0:34:22

No, it’s on engineering drive. It’s one parcel in from engineering and Peachtree Parkway.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:30

That’s what I mean.

Brian Johnson 0:34:31

It’s east side of where the liquor store is. Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:34

Right. So the point is that there’s no residential around it. It’s not like butting up to residential. It’s not making intensity change to, let’s say an r 100 and that you’re putting townhomes next to it. The interesting part is that cities have comprehensive plans. Right? I think, wasn’t it the 2040 plan that was just recently approved?

Brian Johnson 0:34:57

Last year we just did a rewrite of ours.

Rico Figliolini 0:35:00

So that comprehensive plan actually spells out where development can go, what densities are possible in certain areas that may not have already that density. But being the way the city is growing, cities take into account through public meetings and input where there might be more density allowed, even though it might already be single family homes. Like Medlock Bridge Road, for example, I point out, because single family homes along the way. But the comprehensive plan looks at that and says because of this corridor, because of development around it, this actually could be multi use, could be apartments or equity, larger density. So there are plans out there. So it’s not like the city’s just making things up.

Brian Johnson 0:35:45

No, even that in our comp plan, there was an AJC article about it like two days ago about technology, parks and what needing to do to stay healthy. And it was that they’re becoming mixed use areas in and of themselves. It’s not just big office parks and office parks only now they’re intermixing different types of use, residential, food and beverage. Our comp plan calls that out. That tech park Atlanta needs to have pockets of residential. In this particular case, it had a three story office building on it that probably, I don’t know, was probably 100 and 2550 thousand square feet. I guarantee when that office was occupied, there was more than 75 employees that went to that building. Now only going to have 75 townhomes. The traffic will be less than it was when that office building was fully open. And it adds some pocket of residential intermixed with the office building. So we’re kind of diversifying the uses. So it even called it out. So it was in keeping with it. But it just goes to show you that, again, some people wish that we could hit the freeze button and just we look like we did in 1981.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:14

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 0:37:15

And it won’t be that way for that to happen. Our job at the city is to regulate that inevitable growth and try to make sure that it happens in a healthy way. But we just can’t stop. It’s like trying to stop water from going somewhere. You just direct it where you want it to go.

Rico Figliolini 0:37:38

Same people that would look at the forum back several years ago and note that there was 16. I would drive through there and count how many storefronts were empty. One point, I think it was about 16 storefronts empty. And people were like upset with nap buying it. There were some people upset with it because they wanted to bring more density to it and they want to adjust the way it was, adjust the feel and look of the place. And they’re doing a great job. And there’s some disruption now, but the fruits of that will show over the next year or two. But things like that have to change, otherwise things go sideways, and then there’ll be people complaining about that. And since we’re talking about use and such, there were two new rezonings, actually, that the city also has developed one dealing when we were talking ahead of the podcast, social recreation and social hobbyist, if you will, and what the difference would be with like a social and pickle if that was based in pastry corners, because is it a restaurant? Is it recreation? So what fermented this discussion in making these changes?

Brian Johnson 0:38:47

So what we’re doing is we’re looking to add two zoning categories, use categories. As a result of some developers, property owners in the city, coming to us with ideas in which they’re mixing things that are oftentimes regulated separately. You use pickle and social, or chicken and pickle. If anybody’s ever been to those, it’s almost like Topgolf. Topgolf will be another one. Is that a recreational use? Golf? Is it a restaurant? Because of the food? Is it a bar? Because it has a bar and it serves alcoholic beverages, they mix it all together. So what category do you put that under? We’re getting a lot of unique type of things. Virtual reality racing simulators that have a membership component and may end up having food and beverage, car, antique car storage, car, club, lounge, all under one roof where you’ve got memberships and you could go there for food and beverage. Pickleball here, another one where there’s some even.

Brian Johnson 0:40:11

We’ve had model railroad, where they want to model railroaders looking at an office building where they were going to not only meet on a regular basis, but build out one of those big areas where you could walk amongst all the paper machete mountains and tracks, but they want to also have it where the club can meet there. There can be drinks. What is it? Is it a hobby? Is it a club? Is it a bar? And we’re getting more of this as office space is such a. There’s so little demand for commercial office space right now with the work from home component that office building owners are looking to fill their space with unique uses. And so we’re trying to get ahead of these things that I just threw out to you, which are, to a degree, just ideas that property owners have come to us with saying, hey, we’re looking to maybe do this if we wanted to. What are our restrictions? What could we do? And at the end of it, we’re kind of like, we don’t really have somewhere where this fits right now, before we get an official request by any of them, we’re wanting to create a zoning classification for them. So that’ll be discussed over the next month or two to create these so that we get ahead of it. These are good things. Those are uses that could be, you add to a particular area, but we got to regulate it.

Rico Figliolini 0:42:00

Most people don’t know. I guess most average citizen might not realize there’s a zoning for everything. Zoning for restaurant, a bar, and regulations that go with those particular zonings and things that have to be done with those zonings. So this is good. I mean, this is what a city does, right? It anticipates things that are going to be going on, development that’s going on, and you have to be ahead of that curve. This way you can know what you’re doing and being ahead of another curve. The last thing on our discussion, if you will, medical cannabis has been made legal in the state of Georgia. We’re not talking recreational cannabis, we’re talking medical cannabis. And in fact, there’s only, I forget what the number is, 15 or 16 approved uses for medical cannabis. And you can find them on. I’ll have a link in the show notes about this. Where can it be sold and how it can be sold in the city of Peace recorder. So you all are going to take that up. I think specifically every city can do mean there’s state legislation that regulates to a degree, but there’s enough leeway in there that each city can adjust particular rules about it.

Rico Figliolini 0:43:18

So tell us a little bit what the city is looking to do on.

Brian Johnson 0:43:21

This a little bit also to get ahead of something that we foresee is going to be an official request is if the city is wanting to facilitate this, because there are instances in which it could happen without the city saying yes or no, because it’s regulated by the state. But there are certain things the city can get involved in, like whether we want to vary on distances between schools or churches, whether we want. I think it’s like 1000ft, the state law says, but there’s a component where the city could issue a variance, so it could be to where somebody’s like 995ft from a school or a church. Do we want to be able to vary or just say no? Also, what distance might we want to have between. If there were two of them that wanted to come into the city, we can kind of draw a circle and say, in Peace street corners, you can’t have them closer than 5 miles or 1 mile or whatever. And then what process would it be for this to happen? Again, these are dispensing locations which are essentially pharmacies, right?

Rico Figliolini 0:44:53

They have to be independent pharmacies, I believe.

Brian Johnson 0:44:56

Yes, independent compounding pharmacies. And they have some extra training I go to. And then these are people who have a note from a doctor and a card, right. That’s essentially when they get it, they get their card scanned so the state knows who’s getting it and they can’t get it more often, and it can be for only those uses. You said, do we want to create a process to where. I don’t want to say encouraging it, but facilitating it in areas where it might require it might be just a little bit closer than 1000 ft to a location?

Rico Figliolini 0:45:43

Well, the way it’s measured, right. I mean, it could be 1000ft door to door. It could be 1000ft property line to property line, right. Different municipalities and counties, you bring up.

Brian Johnson 0:45:54

Some good alcohol is measured door to door as a person would walk or drive, and so you could actually be closer than, say, 1000ft property line. But if you go out one door and then you go in the front door of the other, it would be farther. The way this was written, medical cannabis is property line, right? So you may have cases where the property lines adjoin, but there’s no risk of there being interaction between the two users of the properties because that’s another consideration. The city. So we just got to talk through it and then make sure that we have our own additional guardrails beyond what the state already put in state law. And it’s to do it in preparation for what we foresee as an official request of the city for this here in the near future.

Rico Figliolini 0:47:00

City has done that a lot over the past few years, always ahead of anticipating zoning requests and variances and stuff. So it’s good to see that the city is working the way it should be working. It’s a smart city. We need to be working smartly, right?

Brian Johnson 0:47:17

Yeah, we certainly try. We don’t always get it all right, but we are certainly doing the best we can. That’s kind of a lot of land use as usual going on and other stuff. So I wish there were some days in which we were a little bit sleepier than we are because I’d like to end the day having accomplished everything I wanted to, but it also keeps us young and motivated. When you got a lot of stuff going on, you got to keep your energy up. So good.

Rico Figliolini 0:47:50

Sure. For sure. I want to thank you, Brian, for being with us, for walking through a lot of this stuff. Also want to tell everyone, latest issue of Southwest Gwinnett magazine is out talking about food trucks as our cover story. But a lot of other things going on in the city of Norcross, Peachtree Corners and Duluth. Just lots of stuff going on. So you should be getting that in the mail. If not, pick it up at the local restaurant or place in your community. We’re working on the next issue of Peachtree Corners magazine. Lots going on there, too. It’s going to be a good, really packed issue of things happening, covering people that are retiring, new developments, new businesses coming into Peachtree Corners. Great stories to be told there. If you’re looking for more information. Every day, every other day we’re publishing to livinginpeachtreecorners.com. You could check that out. Certainly check out our podcast. Like this one, UrbanEbb is another one that I do, talking on a wider reach of different cities and things happening in the urban and suburban environments. Want to thank EV Remodeling, Inc. For being a great sponsor of ours. Corporate sponsor. Check them out. Evremodelinginc.com. Thank you, Eli and his family, and thank you, everyone, for listening. Check the show notes for any relevant links. Appreciate you being with us. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Johnson 0:49:16

Yep.

Rico Figliolini 0:49:17

Bye, guys.