By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | As suburbs move toward maturity, they change, in that they are more welcoming to multi-family housing.
This comes about for several reasons. First, as communities have more people in single family houses, land becomes more eaten up and therefore more valuable, since there is less open land in those communities. As more jobs open up in suburban areas, more people want to live in those communities to be close to their work. Too, it’s more economical per unit to build multi-family housing.
And soon, these emerging work forces include many more young people, who suddenly find it frustrating to commute in traffic from the inner city to their jobs in a suburban community. So they seek housing, and for the younger set, it usually begins as multi-family housing.
These days we find more Gwinnett cities “maturing” as living centers. However, some Gwinnett cities seem to be stagnant when it comes to multi-family housing. Some seem to resist town houses, condominiums and apartments.
Calling on a possibly inadequate memory, it appears to us that the City of Suwanee was the first city in Gwinnett to embrace with open-arms people living close together. You may remember that when the Suwanee City Hall was built in 2009, the area closely around the City Hall was zoned for apartments, town homes and condos. Some of the plan was to have retail activities on the street level, and living facilities above. And the town homes were required to provide parking for its residents.
Today that area not only has a thriving downtown area with shops and open space, it is the center of the town activity. And more closely-packed living is coming, as a new multi-unit complex is now rising just south of the original Town Center area.
Perhaps the town most active in providing multi-family living today is Duluth, with its massive District at Duluth (371 units) project well underway and slated to be open in June, 2018. Not only that, but in the area west of the city Hall and Festival Center, new town homes and single family homes are rising. Altogether, there will soon be more than 131 housing units adjacent to the City Hall and Festival Center.
Those changes in Duluth didn’t just happen by accident. The City conducted an extensive planning effort, and came up with what they called a 10-10-10 plan about 2013. The city wanted to make sure that the soon-to-develop downtown area had 10 places to eat, 10 places to shop, and 10 things to do after 5 p.m. This came from a study of 400 most successful communities in Canada and America, which indicated this formula would produce a sustainable area.
What a terrific plan! You can see in downtown Duluth these days that it is working. There is terrific excitement in Duluth today, with new retail outlets and restaurants opening.
There’s new multi-family activities in several other Gwinnett cities, particularly in Peachtree Corners, Sugar Hill, Lilburn and in Lawrenceville.
At one time, people in Peachtree Corners were resisting more apartments. However, in the new Town Center, there are over 70 upscale town homes under construction, anticipated to be open by December. However, adjacent is another project of 169 luxury apartments, plus a boutique hotel of 100 rooms, plus more retail activity.
In unincorporated Gwinnett, apartments have always been in the housing mix. However, in recent years many of the new multi-family construction have activity been concentrated in the cities. There’s something about having a “walkable downtown” that seems to appeal to development people.
That’s some of the activities going on in some of the incorporated cities of the county, making for still more changes in Gwinnett.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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