GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Community members said Gwinnett Place Mall needs to be revitalized.
“This center is the voice of the community and what they want to see,” Gwinnett County Chairwoman Nicole Hendrickson said.
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With that in mind, Gwinnett commissioners asked a consultant group to question residents and come up with this redevelopment plan with equity in mind.
“This site will be the new downtown for Gwinnett County and the county should be in preparation for that. The county needs to preserve the diversity around the neighborhood,” consultant Geon Woo Lee said.
The draft offers 16 strategies including affordable housing, and neighborhood services on site. along with loan programs for smaller businesses and jobs for locals.
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“We’ve heard loud and clear that housing affordability remains one of the most central challenges for people around the area,” consultant Eri Furusawa said.
Gwinnett County bought this mostly shuttered property for $23 million, hoping to guide the redevelopment of what used to be the heartbeat of Gwinnett.
It’s now ghostly quiet with only a three anchor stores open.
The local community improvement district has zeroed in on this draft plan for the area.
This includes a cultural center, a central park, 3,800 units of mixed-rate housing, 100,000 square feet of retail and 50,000 square feet of office space.
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The two plans will be brought together in the coming months.
“We see it as a dynamic space that is open that has housing, affordable housing,” consultant Andrea Batista Schlesinger said.
“This is a different way that we looked at redevelopment. In the past we have allowed developers to propose ideas to us, but we took the reverse step and had the residents propose ideas and what they want in the site,” Hendrickson said.
The Board of Commissioners will evaluate themes from the Reclaim Gwinnett Place Mall Project and outcomes from the Gwinnett Place Livable Centers Initiative study and use the findings from both plans to prepare a Request for Information to solicit proposals for the redevelopment of Gwinnett Place Mall, officials said.
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