The building when first erected. File.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
OCT. 8, 2021 | The five-story stately building housing the Georgia Baptist Missions and Ministry Center at 6405 Sugarloaf Parkway may eventually be destroyed, as a developer wants to purchase the 43 acre property. However, for this to happen, the property must be rezoned. The property is now zoned for residential, office and general business use.
JLB Partners of Dallas, Tex. hopes to develop 585 apartments on the site, which is across Sugarloaf Parkway from the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and the Gas South District arena. In a second phase of development, the Toll Brothers of Fort Washington, Penn. plan to erect 122 townhouses, priced at $400,000, at the entrance to the property. Toll Brothers is also building more than 700 apartments currently in DeKalb County.
The project is undergoing a regional impact study by the Department of Community Affairs to determine infrastructure and traffic aspects of the project. After that study, before it is developed, Gwinnett County would have to rezone the property for mixed-use.
Back in April, 2021, the Baptist Missions and Ministry Center announced that a contract had been signed to sell the property. That called for the closing on the sale before April 14, 2022, Thomas Hammond, the Center’s executive director, has said.
The idea of selling the Baptist Missions Center was announced nine years ago. Back on March 20,2012, the building which was then the headquarters of the Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC), was being offered for sale, along with its prime real estate. The building was built for $22 million in 2005 and occupied by the GBC.
Former GBC Executive Director J. Robert White, who lives in Duluth, said he originally had interests from private entities to explore the sale. White is quoted then as saying: “The building and its location speaks for itself so we have no reason to list it,” White said. “The property is highly desirable and interest grows on a regular basis.” This week White said that several groups looked at the building interest over the years, “but never came up with the money needed.”
The Georgia Baptist Convention had moved to the site from its own building on the Mercer University campus on Flowers Road in Atlanta. Initially, the Sugarloaf site was fully utilized. However, at the recession of 2008, White said, “Money got tight in churches, and they were hurting financially. Churches had to redirect to meet church operations, and everything slowed down. Nobody did well, and we had some reduction in receipts of the convention. We were really pleased we continued to stay afloat.” He also added in 2012: “We are not bankrupt and we are up to date on all our financial obligations.”
The Convention had a staff of over 100 working at the building, but had a layoff in 2009-10, leaving space unoccupied in the building. There were other layoffs, and today less than half of the building is occupied.
White retired from the GBC on Dec. 31, 2018. Immediately afterward, he was elected president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation, a post he held for two years.
Over the years, Georgia Baptists have been selling many of their properties. In 1997, downtown Atlanta’s nearly 100-year old Georgia Baptist Hospital was sold to Tenet Healthcare of Dallas, Tex. for approximately $200 million and changed its name to Atlanta Medical Center. Effective March 31, 2016, the hospital (and four more in Atlanta) was sold for $575 million to Wellstar Health System, which operates them today.
In 2002, Northside Hospital purchased for $121.5 million the Baptist Medical Center in Cumming and renamed it Northside Hospital-Forsyth.
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