Snellville food hall underway at new town center
Construction is starting on the brick centerpiece of The Grove at Towne Center, a major redevelopment project aimed at creating a downtown environment in Snellville. A two-story food and entertainment hall known as The Market is now underway. The 24,000-square-foot building will be one of the final pieces of the town center, which will comprise of a library, shops, restaurants, apartments, public space and other uses. In 2019, Snellville tapped CASTO and MidCity Real Estate Partners to develop the town center near U.S. 78. City leaders have spent decades pushing for the creation of a de facto downtown, an effort sweeping through Atlanta’s suburbs. Doraville and Johns Creek are a few of the other communities in the midst of adding similar projects. “Being in the retail business, you see the decline of malls, where people used to spend a lot of their time,” said Shannon Dixon, executive vice president of asset management, development and leasing at CASTO. “Now, people want to be able to shop, go to a brewery, be outside, work and live in the same place.” The Market is expected to reach completion in spring 2024, Dixon said, with a goal of attracting local and regional tenants. It will be built in front of The Grove Commons, a I-acre greenspace for events. The grass is already laid, while a stage with a tree-shaped canopy is now under construction. A shared parking deck with 750 spaces opened last year, followed by the completion of a mid-rise apartment building called The Tomlin. The units are nearing 95% occupancy after opening to residents in December. An additional 26 apartments will be available for move-in later this year. A collection of six buildings with shops, restaurants and other businesses are expected to be completed by the end of this year. Great American Cookie, Marble Slab Creamery, restaurant Parkside District and nail spa The Solan are among the first tenants to claim retail space. Gwinnett County Public Library is opening a new branch beside the future home of The Market. THRIVE Coworking is filling the top floor with 26 private offices, three conference rooms and phone booths. The rest of the library will be filled with meeting and collaboration rooms, learning labs, computer stations and study rooms. On the opposite side of Wisteria Drive from The Grove, Northside Hospital is close to wrapping up construction on a medical office building with an ambulatory surgery center, urgent care and other outpatient facilities. It plans to start assisting patients in November. Snellville is located 30 miles to the east of Atlanta. The Grove serves as an homage to the city’s history, as it bears the same name of a gathering spot for travelers and traders during the early 20th century. “It checked all the boxes for us as far as everything it could offer a community,” Dixon said. “It’s within 20 minutes of Atlanta, yet it’s close to scenic areas such as Stone Mountain.” This article first appeared in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Aug 2, 2023 by Tyler Wilkins. To see the original article, click...
read moreMidCity Real Estate Partners Celebrates 14-Year Anniversary
ATLANTA, GA (July 3, 2023) – MidCity Real Estate Partners celebrated its 14-year anniversary on July 1, 2023. “We started July 1, 2009, at the depth of the Great Recession, hard to believe 14 years has gone by. I want to thank my team and partners for our continued success to deliver high quality projects” said MidCity’s President and Founder Kirk Demetrops. About MidCity Real Estate Partners MidCity Real Estate Partners invests/develops/redevelops Commercial, Residential and Mixed-Use Properties. Projects range from Award Winning Public-Private Town Centers to Vacant Office Buildings. MidCity excels at Value Creation through each phase of the CRE Business Cycle MidCity was founded in 2009 by Kirk S Demetrops, as successor company to The Griffin Company, a 35-year-old full service commercial real estate development and construction company where Mr. Demetrops was President. With a combined 80 years of experience, MidCity offers a full range of expertise including: Acquisition/Disposition, Development and Construction Management, Master Developer, Marketing/Sales/Leasing, Asset Management and Advisory Services. Current projects include The Grove at Towne Center (Snellville, GA), 5616 Peachtree (Chamblee, GA) and NorthPlace (Sandy Springs, GA). Previous projects include Alpharetta City Center, Focus Brands Headquarters, JAS Worldwide Headquarters, & Hammond 400 Office Park. ### If you would like more information about this topic, please call MidCity at...
read moreSome Atlanta Suburbs Craving Walkability Are Coming Around On Apartments
Density is still a dirty word in many suburban cities and towns throughout Georgia. But some cities in Atlanta’s belt of northern suburbs are starting to embrace larger developments with apartments and a mix of commercial units, at times defying NIMBYism, developers said during Bisnow’s Atlanta State of the Market event last week. “Suburban and municipal governments in every northern arc city and county in Metro Atlanta has been afraid of density, afraid of multifamily residential, afraid of anything that threatens their life behind the gates of their golf course communities,” said Toro Development Co. founder Mark Toro, who developed Avalon in Alpharetta while at North American Properties, one of the region’s first urban-like dense mixed-use developments to sprout up in suburban Atlanta. Avalon has more than 500 apartment units, an aspect of the project that was met with pushback during its municipal approval process. But Toro and other panelists at the event, held at The Ritz-Carlton Atlanta, said apartment dwellers are critical to the health of the retail and commercial aspects of these popular projects, which rely on sales to survive. “Those sales are driven by density,” Toro said. “If you’re going to fuel downtown, town center districts, you better have a lot of people.” Despite the need for customers — and the ongoing housing crisis in the region — anti-apartment attitudes remain strong in many suburban cities and counties in Metro Atlanta, with a handful of districts imposing new moratoriums on multifamily over the past year. Since 2022, Henry County and the cities of Marietta and Roswell have enacted moratoriums on new apartment development. Stockbridge also blocked accepting applications for any new rental units, including build-to-rent homes, in 2021. Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul vowed to block new apartment applications within the city’s borders for three years during a Bisnow event last summer. But other city leaders have sought out developers willing to build apartments to transform their town centers. Despite some initial pushback, the city of Snellville, 25 miles northeast of Downtown Atlanta, entered into a public-private partnership to create the Grove, an $85M mixed-use city center that includes 250 apartments. The success of the Grove has helped to ease some attitudes toward multifamily in other suburban cities of Gwinnett County, Smallwood principal Greg Bennett said. Duluth, Lawrenceville, Sugar Hill and Peachtree Corners also have approved multifamily within mixed-use projects in recent years. “I think the success of that project is a testament to the sort of breaking the logjam” against multifamily, Bennett said. “People realize they want convenience, they want walkability, they want connectivity. And as long as you provide it, that’s kind of, sort of, what the secret is.” North American Properties received approval last year to develop more than 600 apartment units across two properties in Peachtree Corners, including more than 300 units as part of its revamp of the Forum on Peachtree Parkway shopping center. That approval was not unanimous among all city council members and area residents. North American Properties Managing Partner Tim Perry said apartment dwellers are critical to fueling sales in the retail tenants in these projects, which in turn help to generate more tax revenues to support more infrastructure and school spending, particularly in traditional suburban bedroom communities. “All of these single-family subdivisions don’t pay for themselves. They don’t pay for the wear and tear on the roads, schools or anything else,” Perry said. “It comes down to me on leadership … within these municipalities. They either accept the burden of their elected position and understand that they need to make decisions for the citizens years down the...
read moreAtlanta Office Leasing Picks Up Speed, But Sublease Availability Is Growing Faster
Companies offering their space for lease to other businesses are an increasingly large factor in the Atlanta office market. There was 7.7M SF of office space on the sublease market in Atlanta at the end of the first quarter, 34% more than a year ago and a new all-time high for the region, according to Avison Young’s quarterly report. Roughly 2.1M SF of that availability is currently vacant, while the majority of the sublease space is being occupied but marketed nonetheless, said Sara Barnes, the director of insight for Avison Young’s Southern region. But the 5.6M SF of office space on the sublease market is raising alarms for the health of the office market overall and exemplifies the continued uncertainty companies have with just how much office space will be enough at a time when hybrid work has become the norm, Barnes said. Four of the top 20 leases signed in the first quarter were sublease deals, including Procure Advisors’ 44K SF sublease at One Overton Park in the Cumberland/Galleria area, Colliers said in its quarterly report. Chronic uncertainty on office space needs can easily turn to actual vacancies once company leases run out. “Less space is the ultimate need of most companies,” said Kirk Demetrops, the founder of MidCity Real Estate Partners, a firm that has developed a number of corporate offices in Atlanta, including buildings for JAS Corp. in Central Perimeter and DataScan’s headquarters in Alpharetta City Center. “[Sublease space] is going to be a competitor in the marketplace.” As companies continue to gravitate toward newer offices in their efforts to recruit and retain workers, subleases are becoming a more viable option. With some subleases being offered with furnishings, taking over the space of another company is allowing corporate executives to tamp down on real estate expenses, Demetrops said. More offices were emptied than filled in the first quarter, with Metro Atlanta’s absorption turning a negative 42K SF, keeping the overall vacancy rate at 22.7%, according to Avison Young. While the 1.3M SF leasing activity was up by 1.7% over the fourth quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield, much of that activity was dominated by companies renewing their leases. Some of the largest renewals this past quarter included Q2 Solutions’ 81K SF lease at 1600 Terrell Mill Road in Marietta and Paradies Lagardere’s 47K SF renewal at Overlook I in Cumberland/Galleria, according to Avison Young. “The day Covid hit in March ’20, the fate of our space has been debated in the newspapers,” Demetrops said. “Right now, it appears that it’s not coming back in the old form.” This article first appeared on the site Bisnow.com on April 24, 2023 by Jarred Schenke. To see the original article, click...
read moreSandy Springs nears plan for city center expansion
Sandy Springs is keen on a southern expansion of City Springs, a project aimed at creating a downtown environment in the North Fulton suburb. Local leaders recently agreed to consider selecting a master developer for the 4-acre expansion, which would take shape along Mount Vernon Highway and Hildebrand Drive near Sandy Springs Circle. The city will choose between five real estate companies, mostly comprised of Atlanta-based firms with experience creating mixed-use projects in the metro area. These are the firms considered for the project: The Atlantic Cos. MidCity Real Estate Partners with ASD|SKY Mill Creek Residential Trust with Westbridge Regent Partners with Morris and Fellows RocaPoint Partners and The Georgetown Co. The expansion involves redeveloping city-owned buildings — including a fleet facility for vehicles and gym used by Sandy Springs Police Department — and 108 surface parking spaces. The site is located to the south of the existing City Springs campus, a 14-acre project anchored by a five-story city hall, performing arts center, town green, shops, restaurants and apartments. In recent years, Atlanta’s suburbs have embraced the concept of creating city centers or vibrant downtowns. Suwanee, Woodstock and Duluth have all centered residential units, shops and restaurants around public space. Mixed-use developments such as Avalon in Alpharetta or Halcyon in Forsyth County serve a similar purpose for those communities. Johns Creek recently tapped Toro Development Co. to transform an empty State Farm office campus into a mixed-use destination with apartments, shops, restaurants, townhomes, offices and ample public space. A town center built from scratch is also underway in Snellville. Peachtree Corners, Avondale Estates, Tucker and Roswell are a few of other cities in the midst of expanding their downtown areas. The five firms will now pitch development proposals to Sandy Springs with the projected financial performance of their plans, said Mayor Rusty Paul at a late January meeting. Sandy Springs expects to select a master developer and award a contract by April, added City Manager Eden Freeman. A concept plan for the 4-acre expansion depicts a 120-room boutique hotel, 56,000 square feet of offices, 27,000 square feet of retail space, 149 residential units and 750 private and shared parking spaces. The final project approved by the city could deviate from the preliminary ideas for the site. This article first appeared in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on February 8th, 2023 by Tyler Wilkins. To see the original article, click...
read moreVenice Crossing Annexation / Zoning Approval Granted
ATLANTA, GA (January 24, 2023) – The Venice, FL City Council has approved the annexation of 20+ acres into the City of Venice. Adjacent to the “Hurt Parcel”, the annexation of five (5) properties brings together 82 contiguous acres zoned CG (commercial, general district). The property has over 2,500 linear feet of frontage on Laurel Road East and is within ¼ mile of the new Sarasota Memorial Hospital adjacent to I-75. In addition to commercial uses, the project will have a multi-family component. Construction is projected to begin in 2024. About MidCity Real Estate Partners MidCity Real Estate Partners invests/develops/redevelops Commercial, Residential and Mixed-Use Properties. Projects range from Award Winning Public-Private Town Centers to Vacant Office Buildings. MidCity excels at Value Creation through each phase of the CRE Business Cycle MidCity was founded in 2009 by Kirk S Demetrops, as successor company to The Griffin Company, a 35-year-old full service commercial real estate development and construction company where Mr. Demetrops was President. With a combined 80 years of experience, MidCity offers a full range of expertise including: Acquisition/Disposition, Development and Construction Management, Master Developer, Marketing/Sales/Leasing, Asset Management and Advisory Services. Current projects include The Grove at Towne Center (Snellville, GA), 5616 Peachtree (Chamblee, GA) and NorthPlace (Sandy Springs, GA). Previous projects include Alpharetta City Center, Focus Brands Headquarters, JAS Worldwide Headquarters, & Hammond 400 Office Park. ### If you would like more information about this topic, please call MidCity at...
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