New Development around Perimeter Center

Woodstock

861 Society Court

$145,000

• Almost new town home – offered at less than $10K of new construction!
• In the heart of Woodstock’s biggest mixed use development!
• Act now and be rewarded with great appreciation!
• Great 3 bedroom/2.5 bath town home with basement
• Foyer and kitchen boast hardwood floors
• Kitchen has maple cabinets, stainless appliances and breakfast bar
• Family room has inviting stacked stone fireplace
• This home has more upgrades for less money than the new!
• Plus a 2 car garage – must see today!
• View the property at www.castlesbychrissy.com

****If you know a friend, family member, or coworker who would like their home featured as the "Tuesday Tour" email the details to chrissy@castlesbychrissy.com****

Tuesday’s Tip

Target: Live, work, play
Lower priced, single-family housing deemed essential to easing traffic in the Perimeter Center. 

As millions of dollars pour into transit and development in the Perimeter Center area, DeKalb County officials are urging metro Atlanta's richest business corridor to offer moderately priced housing.

At a County Commission meeting last week, DeKalb officials expressed concern that many lower-wage earners in the Perimeter corridor can't afford to live close to their jobs, which would also meet the goal of reducing commuter traffic.

Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones raised the possibility of requiring affordable housing in projects that come to the commission for approval.

"A lot of people work in the area and have become the engine of the work force. . . . It's almost like redlining to shut out individuals," Jones said, referring to the discriminatory practice of withholding home loans or insurance from those living in poor and minority neighborhoods. "That doesn't sit well with me personally."

The Perimeter work force of about 115,000 is projected to balloon to 213,000 in the next several years. As the growth continues, one proposal for reducing traffic gridlock is "work force" housing to keep the area's employees off the roads.

Overall, the corridor is transforming from a suburban office park to a denser and more urban center. The process is led by the Perimeter Community Improvement District, a private nonprofit made up of surrounding corporations that has secured about $400 million in mostly public money for dozens of road upgrades and development projects.

The backbone of the effort is the upgrading of area roads. The Atlanta Regional Commission administers the Livable Centers Initiative, guiding federal funds to holistic growth projects that balance office, retail and residential spaces with transit or road improvements. The approach is widely referred to as "live, work, play."

Under the ARC's program, the Perimeter CID has been awarded $6.5 million in grants for two projects: the Perimeter Center Parkway streetscape, which began last year, and the Peachtree Dunwoody Road streetscape. A separate grant will fund a study for development around the Sandy Springs MARTA station.

The $1.8 million streetscape of Perimeter Center Parkway, the portion that runs behind Perimeter Mall, is scheduled to begin this year. Plans include wider sidewalks, landscaping, better lighting and median landscaping from Hammond Drive to Perimeter Center West.

Funding also has been secured for the $4.7 million streetscape of Peachtree Dunwoody Road, which will be completed in two phases.

Community improvement districts were established under state law as self-taxing agencies -- collecting property taxes from businesses located within a geographic boundary -- that fund improvements to the district. The Perimeter CID operates in DeKalb and Fulton counties.

The member corporations in the Perimeter CID are some of the largest in the state, including Cingular Wireless, Cox Enterprises, Hewlett Packard and UPS.

Some of the Perimeter CID businesses and residents in the surrounding Dunwoody neighborhoods prefer homeownership to rentals for lower-income workers.

"It'd be nice to build condos and townhouses that they can own so they take stock and take ownership in their community," said Dunwoody activist Bob Lundsten. "The impact of apartments on the schools is overcrowding, and it's the transient nature of the apartments.

"One of the advantages Perimeter has is that it can capture a lot of workers who [commute] to the area every day, but many of those workers have a certain income range," said Stan Harvey of Urban Collage, the designers of the Perimeter CID's redevelopment plans. "What we've been trying to do is work with DeKalb County to encourage incentives for work force housing, such as density bonuses."

Commissioner Kathie Gannon, who represents the area, said affordable housing must be part of plans for the Perimeter and also a provision in the county's drafting of a transit-oriented development ordinance, which is intended to encourage mixed-use projects around transit such as MARTA stations.

"The big, huge apartment complex/housing projects get run-down; they're not taken care of. They get isolated, and they're not a part of a community," Gannon said. "I think that's what people see when they hear 'affordable housing.' But if it's done right, that is the kind of thing you have to have in there. . . . [Lower-wage earners] are spending half their paychecks and half their day trying to get to work."

BYLINE:    COREY DADE
DATE: April 14, 2005
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: City Life Midtown
PAGE: JN5

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE PROPERTY LISTED ABOVE OR THE TIP PROVIDED
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL CHRISSY@CASTLESBYCHRISSY.COM OR CALL ME AT 404.925.5335

Chrissy Neumann "Making You Feel At Home" www.CastlesByChrissy.com
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