Will Massive Gwinnett Project Get Approval?

The massive mixed-use "Gateway to Gwinnett" is coming before county planners next month. (Give your kids a real educational vacation by rounding them up in the station wagon and bringing them to the September commissioners meeting.)

Gwinnett County Commissioners will have their say on whether Walton Development and Management can go forward on a 160-acre mixed-use project at the intersection of University Parkway and Winder Highway. As we first reported, the project, called Sugarloaf Crossing and described as the Gateway to Gwinnett, will encompass 1.1M SF of Class-A office and 275k SF of retail space, down from the initial DRI filing seeking twice the amount of office and far less—20k SF—retail, along with apartments. The multifamily aspect is not mentioned in the commission agenda package for its September meeting.

The docs filed by Walton officials shed some light on the project: "Building types, range of uses, massing and architectural detail are varied throughout the development...that includes abundant open space.” While Walton is known for assembling and entitling mega-sites to parcel out to other developers, the firm's Frederic Shmurak previously told us the company could move forward on its own. The time frame, if approved, for the park's rollout was over a 10-year period, according to docs.

Walton Development & Management—a division of a Canadian conglomerate led by Edward Fleming (here)—has been active along the 316 corridor. Last year, the firm purchased an 86-acre tract off University Parkway in Statham, about 20 miles north of the Sugarloaf site. The parcel is part of a larger 360-acre tract that the Georgia Department of Economic Development designated as a Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development (GRAD) site in 2010, and Walton could develop a mix of office, residential and retail there as well, according to the Athens Banner-Herald. Frederic previously told us that Walton sees a “natural progression of growth moving down Highway 316.”