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Wisteria Square on Hold, AJC Reports
By Jerry | October 24, 2007
For more information on my views and opinions on our Downtown Development, click here for my blog entry Quality Development: Why Not in Snellville?
The following is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 24, 2007:
City centerpiece project on hold
By D. AILEEN DODD
adodd@ajc.com
Just as downtown Snellville was celebrating its latest makeover — the sprawling new lawn that has brought curb appeal to City Hall— the sluggish housing market has revealed a blemish.
It seems that Snellville’s city center is not yet the magnet that officials were hoping for.
The sales trailer for Wisteria Square in downtown Snellville has been removed. Its absence has neighbors concerned about what the future holds for the $140 million upscale community.
The development, which boasts plans for an ampitheatre, condos, retail units and office space, was once billed as the future focal point of Snellville’s city center. Despite a groundbreaking ceremony in 2005, the Wisteria Drive development got off to a slow start. No units have been built. And now, the sales office is gone.
“It looks like he pulled up and left,” neighbor Dennis Lawton said Tuesday. He frequents the area where Wisteria Square is being built. “It makes you wonder.”
Lawton brought his concerns to the Snellville City Council meeting Monday, but city leaders were unaware of the matter.
City Manager Jim Brooks checked in with developer Doug Spohn on Tuesday to find out what is happening with the property.
“He is still interested,” said Brooks. “He wants to have a certain percentage of it pre-sold prior to coming out of the ground.”
Spohn said the sales trailer will be back on the property when the housing market improves. He has plans to begin construction on a four-story, 70,000-square-foot building in January.
“I’m not in trouble,” said Spohn, who built the town center in Duluth. “I’m financially strong enough to sit with the property for 20 years if I have to, but that is not necessary. … My feeling is that the market will bottom sometime in the second quarter of 2008 and start on its way back up.”
By that time, Spohn said, he hopes to be finished with retail units in the first building for Wisteria Square and have residents lined up to move into condos on the upper floors. In the meantime, Spohn said he refunded the deposits of several neighbors who were hoping to move in sooner.
Spohn said he has had trouble attracting upscale restaurants and shops to the property because of the city’s ordinance preventing liquor sales on Sunday. A deal with an upscale boutique hotel fell through because the owners wanted to have the option of serving alcohol on Sunday at wedding receptions or meetings in its banquet facilities.
“It’s made it tougher” to sell the property to clients, Spohn said.
Topics: Miscellany |
October 24th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
It is very elementary…more like elementary school. Too bad Garraway got his degrees from non-accredited universities…I think I can do the same online for $19.95. I think I will be a Doctor today!
Since it wasn’t Clower or Garraway’s idea for a town center, then they will oppose anything associated. Sounds childish, well it is and expect nothing else from the old guard. Politics even if it sets Snellville back 100 years and costs Snellville taxpayes millions. Make major decison based upon a few and ignore what is good for the sum of Snellville.