Fuqua Development’s proposal for a mixed-use complex at the former Olympic tennis center site in southern Gwinnett County has generated an outpouring of divided community feedback.
The firm’s recent application to the county shows a development anchored by a “warehouse club” store widely believed to be a Costco. The proposed development also includes three restaurants with drive-through lanes, one of which appears to be a Whataburger.
The residential component consists of four apartment buildings with a total of 255 units, which Principal Jeff Fuqua described as luxury apartments. The plans also set aside an acre for a park.
Online and at a recent jam-packed community meeting in the Mountain Park neighborhood, some area residents praised the proposal as one that would breathe life into a site that has sat blighted for decades. Opponents, however, contrasted it with more upscale developments in other parts of Gwinnett.
Fuqua in 2020 proposed a development comparable to his Peachtree Corners Town Center, which includes a town green, Sprouts Farmers Market and local sit-down restaurants.
Fuqua, one of the region’s leading retail mixed-use development firms, also built The Exchange at Gwinnett near Buford and the retail portion of The Battery at Truist Park. Jeff Fuqua said his company talked to every retailer they knew, including tenants in their other developments, and almost all turned down the tennis center site, comprised of 31 acres just east of Stone Mountain Park.
“We had a terrible time getting retailers to come to this site,” Fuqua told a crowd of nearly 100 people last week in the Mountain Park Activity Building. “There’s something about this side of (U.S.) 78 that retailers don’t do well. It’s not in the natural flow of traffic and other things.”
Fuqua said many of the retailers cited a failed Super Target whose parking lot would become part of the proposed development.
Gwinnett County spent nearly $1.2 million in a 2016 land swap with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to acquire 24 acres that included the facility where the 1996 Olympic tennis tournament was held. The tennis facility soon after was demolished. If the county approves the request to rezone the site from general business to mixed-use, Fuqua told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he would buy the county land and the former Target parking lot. He declined to say how much he would spend on the land.
Fuqua said the development would cost about $125 million to build, not including interior work. He said construction could begin early next year. The retail would take about a year to construct and the apartment buildings would take 18 months, he said.
The site lies within the boundaries of the Park Place Tax Allocation District, where property taxes that would go to Gwinnett County are used instead for community improvements.
Fuqua declined to say which retailers would come to the site given the uncertain status of the rezoning application, which the Gwinnett County Planning Commission tabled until next month. Renderings submitted to the county show the design and color scheme of a Costco. At the community meeting, consultant Tyrone Rachal praised Costco’s employee pay and benefits.
Kimberly Branch, a real estate agent who lives nearby, thanked Fuqua and county officials at the community meeting.
“I’m a Costco member,” she said. “I have to drive all the way to Duluth. ...We could either have no traffic and be unprogressive and remain stagnant or we could have a little more traffic, work with leaders in the community like you all and progress.”
Wendy Lynch, who lives in Mountain Park, cited census data that shows the area’s median household income is higher than that of Peachtree Corners. She said the county was missing an opportunity to build restaurants that would attract Stone Mountain tourists.
“Sit-down, nice restaurants, that’s what creates a sense of community and a sense of place,” Lynch said. ”It’s not Whataburger and Costco.”
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