Alpharetta approved a 52-acre mixed-use development that’s expected to bring a walkable community of new office, restaurants and retail to Windward Parkway, and draw 5,000 additional employees to the property.
City Council approved rezoning Monday for Continuum, a project by California-based Southwest Value Partners.
The redevelopment property at 5555 Windward Parkway is home to Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Mayor Jim Gilvin says office workers there are overdue for new restaurants and amenities they can easily walk to instead of having to cross the six-lane road.
Southwest Value Partners plans to renovate 517,000 square feet of existing office space and add 808,000 square feet of new office space in multiple buildings. In addition, the builder plans to construct nearly 74,000-square-feet of restaurant and retail space as well as 280 apartments and up to 98 townhomes.
Joe Bucher, Southwest Value Partners’ director of Strategic Design, said office developments need the added elements of commercial and residential to succeed in today’s workplace.
Such projects are anchored by walkable residential living, he said.
Alpharetta’s comprehensive land use plan requires 68% of housing in the city to be owner occupied and officials have been stern with developers in maintaining that requirement, and also strategic in where new mixed-use is located.
The city’s Alpha Loop multi-use trail connects Avalon, a crown jewel for the city, to Alpharetta City Center mixed-use district and North Point, where mall owner New York Life wants to redevelop and add mixed-use on 83 acres.
Gilvin praised the new Continuum project adding that Avalon “sets the bar for what we can have in the Southeast … We can’t have a lot of Avalons close together.”
Julie Sellers, attorney for Southwest Value Partners, said the developer’s project will compliment Alpharetta’s existing developments. Continuum’s commercial space of 74,000 square feet will be significantly less than Avalon’s 500,000, she pointed out.
“We are not competing with Avalon,” Sellers said. “We are not trying to be a second Avalon. Avalon stands alone and is great.”
