143,000 square feet of retail coming to Smyrna!
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Browns Farm
5394 Owl Creek Pointe
6 bedroom 5.5 bath
$500,000.00
Vinings Voice with a Shout of Smyrna!
Groundbreaking held for mammoth project
Rather than turning over some dirt with a ceremonial shovel, the developers of Cobb's newest project opted for something louder Wednesday -- County Commissioner Joe Thompson on a bulldozer knocking the corner out of a former crack house.
It was a symbolic fresh start for a run-down area that has become one of the hottest places to be in Cobb -- South Atlanta Road, near I-285.
"To sit and do nothing and not to be progressive, you end up with run-down communities in the long run," said Thompson, who represents the southeast Cobb area.
At just over 50 acres, West Village is designed as a live-work-play community. It is also Cobb's largest redevelopment project to date, said County Chairman Sam Olens. With metro Atlanta continuing to grow, the project is an example of what can be done to prepare for the people heading this way, he said.
"We need for the first time to try and plan for that growth, to manage that growth rather than to make believe that it's not coming," Olens said during the groundbreaking.
A small-town feel
Highlands Companies President Chris Cassidy, a partner in the venture, said the project is designed to create a sense of place, reminiscent of small towns with gathering places and shops all within a few minutes walk of homes.
The project is a major move away from suburban strip shopping centers, said Nicholas Telesca, president of Branch Properties, another partner.
Woody Snell, a partner in the Pacific Group, which assembled the property, said the area had become so run-down that police shut down a meth lab in the woods only a few weeks before the groundbreaking. The area was thick with trees and a tree service company located there dumped its stumps on the property. Squatters had settled in abandoned wood-frame houses, he said.
But by Wednesday much of the area had been cleared of trees and abandoned houses. Only a small warehouse company remains on what will become the village area.
Atlanta Road provides a direct line into the west side of Atlanta. Once the road crosses into Fulton County, it becomes Marietta Boulevard, where M West, a loft townhome development, is 60 percent sold even before it is completed. Prices there started at $179,000 and now peak at $400,000.
Critics hit density
But some longtime residents in the area adjacent to West Village are concerned about its size. Mary Rose Barnes, who lives on Oakdale Road, where older homes are on large lots, said the neighborhood is being swallowed up by high-density projects.
She doubted that it will ever be a true live-work-play community because employees at the restaurants and shops likely will not be able to afford to buy homes there.
"It's going to be live and traffic," said Barnes, president of the Oakdale Community Association.
The area is rich in history, which some fear will get forgotten with every turn of dirt.
In the 19th century, the area was mostly rolling farmland, said Harold Smith, director of the Smyrna Museum and a member of the Cobb Historic Preservation Commission.
"It was just a typical small rural area down there," said Smith, a former Smyrna mayor whose great-great-great-grandfather, Hosea Maner, was an early settler. "People grew a lot of vegetables. . . . Nothing really took place down there."
Smith said during Union Gen. William Sherman's 1864 Atlanta Campaign in the Civil War, the area just south of the West Village development was fortified by small triangular fortifications made out of wood called shoupades, named after Brig. Gen. F.A. Shoup, who designed the structures.
As Union troops headed south from Kennesaw Mountain toward Atlanta, "the Confederates were so well-fortified the Yankees went around them," Smith said.
White flight from Atlanta in the 1950s brought more white families to the area, Smith said. The opening of I-285 brought even more people. Apartment complexes came in the 1970s, he said.
Now development is all over the place. Prominent metro Atlanta builder John Wieland has two projects in the area, Ivy Walk and Olde Ovy, and rezoning hearings for three properties on or near Atlanta Road are scheduled for Tuesday before the Cobb County Planning Commission.
"I don't know where they are coming from now," Smith said. "I would prefer something other than high-density development."
-- Staff writer David Pendered contributed to this article.
ABOUT WEST VILLAGE
• West Village will be built in three phases. Phase 1 will have 63,000 square feet of retail on 44 acres plus 550 residences of condos, townhouses and detached single-family homes. Phase 2, consisting of 400 condos near I-285, will be built as market demands. Phase 3 will consist of 20 townhouses and 80,000 square feet of retail.
• Partners are the Pacific Group of Atlanta, which negotiated with 46 property owners to assemble the tract; Branch Properties of Atlanta; and the Highlands Companies of Alpharetta.
• Developers spent $1 million on demolition and site cleanup and plan to spend $1.3 million on landscaping.
• Starting prices are $200,000 for condos, $400,000 for townhomes and $600,000 for detached homes.
• Cobb County waived $800,000 in permitting fees as an incentive. It will get $300,000 in fees.
BYLINE: YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ
DATE: May 1, 2005
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)
EDITION: Home; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SECTION: NorthSide
PAGE: ZG5
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
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