Soviet
central planning of restaurant locations does not work in Dunwoody GA. The
introduction of mixed development of housing, office and retail living together
has struggled and failed in Metro Atlanta, especially when city and county
governments were involved and the entire business plan was flawed. Development
done solely by experienced owners rarely fails, because they do their own
research and are spending their own money. The best use
of any available land in Dunwoody is single family housing for homeowners who
want access to both east and west Atlanta Metro. Choosing
locations for restaurants and other retail has long been known to depend on
proximity and ease of entry from main roads with shopping, commuter and lunch
traffic. But the “Master Plan” for the Georgetown area in Dunwoody is flawed.
Commercial development works best in the private sector with minimal government
involvement.
This
particular development is not in a viable commercial area, but might end up as
another townhouse development. The site is near Chamblee Dunwoody Road between
I-285 and Peeler Road.
Like most
other Soviet plans, this one requires an additional ordinance that requires
Dunwoody residents to visit these “planned” restaurants at appointed times each
year of face a $1000 fine. See below.
Developers
back out of Dunwoody Green food hall concept, by Dyana Bagby, 9/19/19, Dunwoody
Reporter.
A
proposed food hall for the Dunwoody Green site in Georgetown is no more after
developers could not find tenants, forcing city officials to rethink a site
where a distinctive restaurant hub was once envisioned.
Whatever
the future is, the city says it plans to move forward in locating restaurant
and retail on the property despite more than a year of unsuccessful attempts to
do so. The food hall proposal was believed to be the answer to filling the
space rather than the original concept of constructing up to six individual
restaurants on the small plot.
“We’ve been pushing
uphill [to make this] a restaurant site, because we thought with the park [in
the center of the project] we could create a unique hub of restaurants,” city
Economic Development Director Michael Starling said.
“We still believe that,
but it’s tough to convince restaurants to move when they see [other sites] on
high-traffic roads,” he said. “We’ve always known this was a secondary [or]
tertiary site for retail and restaurants because of low traffic counts.”
Owned by the city’s
Urban Redevelopment Agency, the parcel is part of the larger public-private
Project Renaissance, a plan dating back to 2012 to revitalize the Georgetown
area with green space, trails, single-family residential housing and commercial
uses. Developing Dunwoody Green, adjacent to Georgetown Park, as a commercial
site is the last piece of the Project Renaissance puzzle.
Crim & Associates
and their partner Ed Hall of Capital Properties Group in May pitched the idea of building a
20,000-square-foot food hall facility with
several small restaurants and retail businesses located inside, similar to
Ponce City Market in Atlanta.
But last month Crim said
the deal was a no-go, leaving the city to start over from scratch. A major
issue with the site is that it is not on a high-traffic road, a key factor many
restauranteurs consider when opening a new business.
Crim entered into an agreement in February
2018 with the URA to
purchase Dunwoody Green at 4600 North Shallowford Road for $900,000. The
agreement gave Crim time to finalize its plans before closing on the property.
But since that time, Crim has had a difficult time finding tenants and asked
for and received several contract extensions from the URA board, including an
extension to pursue the food hall concept.
Original site plans for
Dunwoody Green included five or six restaurants and retail space with a small
park at the center. City officials at one time boasted the area
would be the location of “chef-driven” restaurants that many Dunwoody residents have
been clamoring for. But after no luck finding individual tenants, Crim teamed
up with Hall and Capital Properties Group to propose a food hall. That idea did
not pan out, either.
“The food hall looked
very promising, but then they came back and said no,” URA Board Chair Ken
Wright said.
The URA and Crim
mutually agreed to end their contract and the URA is now ready to start anew,
he added.
“Which honestly I’m
thrilled about,” Wright said. “I think Crim did everything they could, and they
were a good partner. They certainly saw the vision. But they just couldn’t pull
the pieces together.”
Wright said board
members are considering scaling the project back to much smaller than 20,000
square feet and perhaps reaching out individually to one or two restaurant
owners who prefer owner-operated businesses rather than leasing through a
developer.
“We know this site is
challenging, as is the area,” Wright said. “Traffic numbers are terrible on
that road … It’s a corner pocket, and then there is parking.”
But just down the road a
bit, at the North Shallowford Plaza at 4630 North Shallowford Road, such small
restaurants as Simply Thai, Sababa and Bay Leaf are thriving.“They are killing
it night and day. There is a draw over there,” Wright said.
Starling said the city
believes Dunwoody Green is still viable as a retail and restaurant site, but
plans are to go back to residents living in the area to hear more about what
they would like to see. There are no plans to sell the property to a developer
because the city wants to control what is built on the site, Starling added.
Wright said the board
and city staff plan to keep studying and thinking about what to do at Dunwoody
Green until the right development is found that fits in with Georgetown and
Dunwoody’s comprehensive plans.
“I believe in
Georgetown,” he said. “No matter what, we’re not going to flip it and have
something that’s not good for the community,” he said. That includes no
apartments and no banks, he said.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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