By REBECCA McCARTHY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/16/05

Norcross resident Judy Naylor remembers riding her bike as a child from her home on South Peachtree Street to downtown Norcross, two blocks away. She would pedal to school, the pharmacy or the hardware store.

At 22, she and her husband, Wayne, moved to a historic house on Cemetery Street, also only two blocks from downtown and a block from Buford Highway — then a two-lane road. They worked for Gwinnett County Public Schools, reared two sons and renovated their house.

In the next few months, the Naylors will be moving. When Judy, 50, retires from Norcross High School this year, she and Wayne will relocate to their mountain home in North Carolina.

They hope their Norcross house will be relocated, too. The current site is scheduled to undergo some big changes.

A mixed-use complex of street-level shops, lofts and live/work town homes is slated for Cemetery and College streets, including the Naylors’ lot. It’s just one of several projects that could transform downtown Norcross from quiet and quaint to bigger and bustling.

New lofts will overlook the city’s baseball field.A 20,000-square-foot cultural arts center will be built at the end of Jones Street. There’s an ambitious housing development going up on land that belonged to manufacturer Rock-Tenn. And another housing community, Lum Howell Park, is to be built on 5 acres along West Peachtree, Lake and Autry streets.

All of the projects have zoning approval. And all of them, city leaders hope, will help make Norcross a more vibrant and viable place to live.

Many of the projects — at least the concepts behind them — were a part of the city’s Town Center study. The 2001 study was funded by the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Cities Initiative and reflects long- and short-term improvement goals.

These goals include providing house opportunities downtown; encouraging mixed-use development; expanding retail opportunities; increasing the city’s sense of place and community identity; expanding sidewalks and improving pedestrian safety; and planning for future transit, commuter rail and parking needs.

A “beautiful and critical piece of the puzzle” is a 20,000-square-foot cultural arts center, said Johnny Lawler, Norcross’ director of community development. Working with consultant Kevin McOmber of Clark Patterson Associates, a 15-member committee is figuring out the community’s needs and desires for the facility, which backs up to the city’s baseball field.

Two priorities are a theater and a senior citizens center. Meeting rooms, exhibit space and a baseball museum also are being considered. City Councilman Josh Bare says he hopes for a prominent display on the city’s history.

The city budgeted $3.5 million in special purpose local option sales tax funds to pay for the cultural arts center, designed to resemble the old Norcross school. An additional $400,000 will come from federal funds.

But the Town Center plan encompasses private as well as public development.

On the north side of the railroad tracks, two residential developments are taking shape, both within walking distance of downtown.

Norcross architect Robert Forro is building Lum Howell Park, the single-family home complex. It’s near one of his earlier residential projects, Col. Jones Park. Finished in 2000, that development features 22 new craftsman-style homes with front porches and rear garages. Two historic homes also were saved and incorporated into the mix.

The 24 houses in Lum Howell Park — named for a Norcross blacksmith — will present their porches to the existing streets and their back garages on a common park about the size of a football field, Forro says.

Large, mature trees, walking trails and a meadow will be in the park. The houses will sell from $380,000 to $450,000 and will range from 2,400 to 3,500 square feet.

“I think of downtown Norcross as beachfront property,” says Forro, an advocate of New Urbanism principles of in-fill development, connectivity, pedestrian accessibility and an orientation toward the street. “It increases the value of your home to be close to it. This development will offer easy access to downtown.”

On Thrasher Street, demolition of an 85,000-square-foot building once belonging to Rock-Tenn has begun, the first step in a 12-acre development walking distance from downtown.

Cumming-based Hedgewood Properties, Professional Builder magazine’s 2003 Builder of the Year, plans to construct 23 detached homes, 95 town homes and 42 condominiums in three buildings. Development partner David M. Smith said the goal is to provide a wide array of home prices, ranging from $200,000 for the condos to as much as $600,000 for the larger houses.

There will be six or seven parks and, for homeowners, a swimming pool and possibly a tennis court. The company hopes to start building in four to six months.

Smith says Hedgewood officials are excited about working in Norcross.

Hedgewood looks for ways to reduce driving for residents of its developments. With employment and shopping close by, and an intact downtown, Norcross fit that bill.

Forro is also the man behind the shops, lofts and town homes on College and Cemetery streets and the ballpark condos. He hopes to begin marketing the mixed-use and live/work projects soon.

It’s enough to make Judy Naylor wonder how her town will look in a few years.

“Things have changed a lot in Norcross over the years,” she said, “and we’re really excited about the changes coming to town.”

By YOLANDA RODRÍGUEZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/01/05

Rather than turning over some dirt with a ceremonial shovel, the developers of Cobb’s newest project opted for something louder Wednesday — County Commissioner Joe Thompson on a bulldozer knocking the corner out of a former crack house.

It was a symbolic fresh start for a run-down area that has become one of the hottest places to be in Cobb — South Atlanta Road, near I-285.

“To sit and do nothing and not to be progressive, you end up with run-down communities in the long run,” said Thompson, who represents the southeast Cobb area.

At just over 50 acres, West Village is designed as a live-work-play community. It is also Cobb’s largest redevelopment project to date, said County Chairman Sam Olens. With metro Atlanta continuing to grow, the project is an example of what can be done to prepare for the people heading this way, he said.

“We need for the first time to try and plan for that growth, to manage that growth rather than to make believe that it’s not coming,” Olens said during the groundbreaking.

A small-town feel

Highlands Companies President Chris Cassidy, a partner in the venture, said the project is designed to create a sense of place, reminiscent of small towns with gathering places and shops all within a few minutes walk of homes.

The project is a major move away from suburban strip shopping centers, said Nicholas Telesca, president of Branch Properties, another partner.

Woody Snell, a partner in the Pacific Group, which assembled the property, said the area had become so run-down that police shut down a meth lab in the woods only a few weeks before the groundbreaking. The area was thick with trees and a tree service company located there dumped its stumps on the property. Squatters had settled in abandoned wood-frame houses, he said.

But by Wednesday much of the area had been cleared of trees and abandoned houses. Only a small warehouse company remains on what will become the village area.

Atlanta Road provides a direct line into the west side of Atlanta. Once the road crosses into Fulton County, it becomes Marietta Boulevard, where M West, a loft townhome development, is 60 percent sold even before it is completed. Prices there started at $179,000 and now peak at $400,000.

Critics hit density

But some longtime residents in the area adjacent to West Village are concerned about its size. Mary Rose Barnes, who lives on Oakdale Road, where older homes are on large lots, said the neighborhood is being swallowed up by high-density projects.

She doubted that it will ever be a true live-work-play community because employees at the restaurants and shops likely will not be able to afford to buy homes there.

“It’s going to be live and traffic,” said Barnes, president of the Oakdale Community Association.

The area is rich in history, which some fear will get forgotten with every turn of dirt.

In the 19th century, the area was mostly rolling farmland, said Harold Smith, director of the Smyrna Museum and a member of the Cobb Historic Preservation Commission.

“It was just a typical small rural area down there,” said Smith, a former Smyrna mayor whose great-great-great-grandfather, Hosea Maner, was an early settler. “People grew a lot of vegetables. . . . Nothing really took place down there.”

Smith said during Union Gen. William Sherman’s 1864 Atlanta Campaign in the Civil War, the area just south of the West Village development was fortified by small triangular fortifications made out of wood called shoupades, named after Brig. Gen. F.A. Shoup, who designed the structures.

As Union troops headed south from Kennesaw Mountain toward Atlanta, “the Confederates were so well-fortified the Yankees went around them,” Smith said.

White flight from Atlanta in the 1950s brought more white families to the area, Smith said. The opening of I-285 brought even more people. Apartment complexes came in the 1970s, he said.

Now development is all over the place. Prominent metro Atlanta builder John Wieland has two projects in the area, Ivy Walk and Olde Ovy, and rezoning hearings for three properties on or near Atlanta Road are scheduled for Tuesday before the Cobb County Planning Commission.

“I don’t know where they are coming from now,” Smith said. “I would prefer something other than high-density development.”