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Suwanee’s emerging Town Center is quickly becoming the physical and symbolic heart of our community. This mixed-use area, anchored by a 10-acre urban-style park, embodies Suwanee’s vision for “live…work…play…shop.” It is the place that comes to mind when you think of Suwanee, offering a sense of community…a sense of belonging…a sense of home.
 Located at the intersection of Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road and Buford Highway, two of Suwanee’s busiest roadways, Town Center represents a bold and innovative response to two distinct community goals: to preserve open space and create more parks and to assemble a stand-out-in-the-crowd, energetic, and aesthetically appealing downtown and primary community gathering place.
 Suwanee’s award-winning Town Center project is a public-private partnership that envelopes more than 63 acres, including a 40-acre privately developed traditional neighborhood (Shadowbrook at Town Center). The Town Center mixed-use project includes commercial/retail space, office/professional uses, and residential units. All of these uses are designed to be functionally integrated. Street-level retail creates a walking/shopping experience. Office uses provide employment and customer activity. Residences provide homes for workers and “built-in consumers” for Town Center’s other functions. The park imparts a sense of place and offers a place to relax and to gather both as families (small groups) and as a community.
The Town Center development, in part a response to growing concern about urban sprawl and sustainability, demonstrates the City of Suwanee’s leadership in growing carefully and responsibly in a region where small-town Georgia is rapidly disappearing.
Suwanee’s ‘front yard’
Photo by M. Michael Farr |
Opened in December 2003, Town Center Park functions as Suwanee’s “front yard” and primary gathering place. Its classic and attractive design, which features three interlinking walkways, the largest interactive fountain in Gwinnett County, large open areas, huge planter boxes and steps that serve to separate the park from the nearby busy roadways, and a performance stage with a 1,000- seat terraced amphitheater seating area, make Town Center Park idealfor communitygatherings. The park also is a great place to meet afriend or two for a walk or jog or for some unstructured play time—splashing in the fountain, flying kites, riding a bike or pushing a scooter, throwing a Frisbee, or kicking a ball.
 Town CenterPark is where Suwanee gathers for community events. People from throughout metro Atlanta have come to the park to catch musical performances by regional and national favorites. Town Center Park has successfully hosted intimate events for only a few hundred as well as rock concerts with nearly15,000 in attendance. The annual “celebration of community,” Suwanee Day, brings about 40,000 people to the park the third Saturday in September each year.
A place to live…work…shop
 By selecting a very valuable commercial property at the intersection of two regional arteries as the site for a public park, Suwanee created an automatic incentive for private development around the park.
At the same time that it purchased the 10 acres for Town Center Park using voter-approved bond funds, the City of Suwanee, using a low-cost urban redevelopment loan, purchased an adjacent 13-acre parcel.
 Suwanee has since divided that original 13-acre tract into five parcels, offering four for sale for development in accordance with the Town Center Master Plan. Each of those parcels has been claimed. Through the sale of the first two parcels, Suwanee was able to pay off—eight years early—the original loan secured for the purchase of the property.
 To date, two mixed-use developments have been completed at Town Center. The Main Street Corners building, which is the one closest to Buford Highway, includes 42,000 square feet of retail, office, and restaurant space. The second mixed-use development, Madison Park, is actually two buildings totaling 84,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and residential space on a 2.2-acre site at the corner of Town Center Avenue and Charleston Market Street. It was constructed by Madison Retail, LLC, which also will develop the remaining two Town Center tracts, with construction slated to begin soon.
The first businesses opened at Town Center in April 2006 and the first full-service restaurants opened in January 2007.
Coming soon…City Hall
 Town Center also will be a place for local government services and civic functions with the addition of Suwanee’s new City Hall. Construction of the new City Hall, which was designed and is being constructed as a green/LEED-certified building, is underway. The new City Hall is expected to open in 2009.
BRPH of Marietta was selected through a design competition to create Suwanee’s new City Hall. The design presented by BRPH reflects the importance of transportation in Suwanee’s history and growth. The company proposed a two-story building that harkens to an oversized transportation center with a 95-foot multipurpose clock tower. The curved shape of the building’s roof resembles the roofline on the Town Center amphitheater stage, and the landscaping completes the east-west ellipse at Town Center Park. The design includes a glass front, grand foyer, colored marble panels for the facade, and glass-enclosed Council chambers on the second floor.
People are lining up to live
in Shadowbrook at Town Center
When the first homes at Shadowbrook at Town Center were offered in August 2004, some buyers waited in line overnight. The initial offering garnered so much attention that it warranted a front-page feature in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The City of Suwanee worked proactively to include a creative residential project in its Town Center Master Plan. This cooperative effort with Bowen Family Homes has resulted in a range of different housing types within the 40-acre, privately developed traditional neighborhood, all in a framework of streets that emphasize open space preservation and walkability. When completed, Shadowbrook at Town Center will include 85 single-family homes and 116 townhomes.
How did we get there?
The road to Town Center
went through community planning
As a result of citizen input obtained and goals identified through the City’s Comprehensive Planning process, undertaken in 1999, Suwanee embarked on two additional studies: a Recreation & Open Space Needs Assessment in 2001 and the Old Town Master Plan in 2002.
The open space assessment urged the City to acquire undeveloped land for preservation and the creation of parks. In November 2001, Suwanee residents voted, in record numbers and with their hearts and their eyes on the future, to approve a $17.7 million bond referendum to purchase undeveloped properties and create parks. Since obtaining its bonds in March 2002, Suwanee has acquired more than 225 acres of open space and created four new parks, including the 10-acre park at Town Center.
In an outcome that originally was unanticipated, the Old Town Master Plan, following up on a bold suggestions first put forward by University of Georgia design students, recommended protecting, rather than revitalizing, the existing small-scale country charm and character of Suwanee’s historic area, Old Town, and finding instead a space nearby for a new “Main Street”/focal point that would serve Suwanee’s rapidly growing population well into the 21st century. The resulting centerpiece of the 2002 Old Town Master Plan is today’s approximately 23-acre Town Center in progress.
Where do we go from here?
 A key principle of the Old Town Master Plan is interconnectivity. The City of Suwanee has completed a pedestrian sidewalk/bridge that now connects the Shadowbrook neighborhood and Town Center area with the nearby four-mile Suwanee Creek Greenway, a popular multipurpose path that meanders through woods, wetlands, and wildlife habitats.
In addition, the City is working to connect the new Town Center with the historic Old Town area and the super playground, businesses, and Gwinnett County Public Library branch there. Suwanee has received a nearly $1 million implementation grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission, through its Livable Centers Initiative, to design and construct a pedestrian underpass beneath the railroad track that separates the two areas. Work on the underpass is expected to begin in spring 2008. |
