Mixed-Use Plan Presented for Norcross Industrial Site

At yesterday’s Gwinnett Village CID board meeting, an early concept plan was unveiled for a $500 million to $1 billion potential development in Norcross at the sight of the OFS fiber optics manufacturing facility. The plans include “mixed-use” buildings with office, retail and residential under one roof as well as a towering hotel, all nestled around a central green space.

The sprawling OFS campus is off I-85, south of Jimmy Carter Boulevard at 6305 Crescent Avenue.  “This area is 175 acres in the heart of the CID. (The development) has the ability to transform the area,” said consultant Scott Ball from the Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, who put together the plans after OFS approached the CID.

It calls for 1.3 million square feet of office space, 850,000 square feet of retail, 1,000 new apartments, 800 hotel rooms, 25 town homes and 4.8 acres of green space, according to the Conceptual Master Plan. Studies on I-85 Corridor Light Rail have included a stop on the site, potentially creating demand for smaller-scale neighborhood amenities and town homes in a later phase. 

“It is not a monolithic business park but more of a mixed-use type development,” said Ball to the CID board. “That’s very important for getting business in there.” He said he sees the development as a “destination” that people would go out of their way to get to—hopefully creating a vibrant “street life." 

“A dense employment center on this site would bolster the local economy and bring a greater variety jobs closer to Gwinnett’s neighborhoods,” the concept study stated, alleviating some of the corridor’s traffic and bringing quality jobs closer to where people live. This begs the question: Can we change suburbia to fit our purposes? 

Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs” and planning professor at Georgia Tech, documents developments like the OFS site around the country. She said there are definite reasons for urbanizing nodes in Atlanta’s suburbs, particularly in those first-rung suburbs, like Norcross.

She sees a shift in the demographics of suburbs to include more young professionals and empty nesters—people who want public transportation and walkability. We think of suburbs as family places but that is not the case anymore, she argues. “Two-thirds of household in the suburbs now do not have kids in them,” Dunham-Jones said.

She says these types of repurposing developments are necessary with aging areas, and even necessary.  

The height of the development would allow for cityscape views from the hotel, since it would be on the Eastern Continental Divide. The highest point on the Divide currently houses Gwinnett Police’s westside precinct, though the consultants prefer the station be moved for a “higher and better” use of the site.

A redevelopment of an unsightly industrial “brownfield” this is not. The OFS site is home to new, state-of-the art warehouses with millions pumped into them.

But the question of how to build a palatable and inviting community around an area that is zoned heavy industrial is a real one. “The good thing about fiber optics manufacturing is that it isn’t noisy, doesn’t smell and you can’t hear it,” said Chuck Warbington, Executive Director of the Gwinnett Village CID. “They are actually a good neighbor,” he said of OFS.

The entire facility, including a tower, would remain functioning if the site is developed. Warbington has faith in the creative appropriation of the tower into the site design. A previous firm had even toyed with the idea of turning the tower into a Times Square-type center, with lit up screens on the tower, he said.   

The tower is the least of Warbington’s concerns. In his opinion, securing the financing may be the most challenging prospect.

He remembers a day when a bank would dole out a loan for 90 percent of a project, but now multiple investors and more upfront capital are the reality. He said he could see a public-private partnership or other type of group investment working.  

“Getting funding is extremely difficult right now,” said Dunham-Jones, the mixed-use expert. “It is easy to just build a strip mall, there’s a formula for that. We’ve had 50 years of that. Those are identifiable products.” She says in the years since mixed-use has been around, funding has been tough because banks don’t have a category for it. “Banks don’t like uncertainty,” she said.

The site sits squarely inside an Opportunity Zone and Tax Allocation District, which the CID hopes would provide some enticement as well. 

The vision is certainly not for a Perimeter Center or other high-rise complex. Ball said that he sees the density and height of the structures to be similar to other Atlanta neighborhoods that were built around the train, like Little Five Points and Ormewood Park. The plan includes buildings up to six stories, but it could always change. 

This plan, the consultant emphasized, is extremely preliminary.