Sandy Springs gave its blessing to a $120 million private development project it says will upgrade one of its major corridors now riddled with aged apartments.
The 5-1 vote by the City Council on Tuesday adds momentum to a massive revitalization effort on Roswell Road that has already received tens of millions of dollars of city funding.
JLB Realty’s Gateway Project, just north of Buckhead, will bring 630 high-end apartments, upscale retail and restaurants and office space to an area now occupied by two apartment complexes built in the 1960s. The timetable for the project has not been announced yet.
City leaders made clear Tuesday night they are committed to recasting Sandy Springs’ image as a repository for unbridled apartment development, a perception it endured for years before the Fulton County area incorporated in 2005. Sandy Springs has already committed more than $30 million into a City Center project farther north on Roswell Road.
City Councilman Gabriel Sterling said apartment redevelopment is fundamental to the city’s future.
“These are some of our oldest apartments,” he said. “They have a very high crime rate; even in the past four months, we’ve had a murder and a kidnapping in these places.”
But many of the more than 100 residents who attended the council meeting said they felt city leaders are betraying another commitment: to protect and preserve neighborhoods.
Close to a dozen opponents who live near the site spoke about a potential traffic bottleneck near their homes, citing a Georgia Regional Transportation Authority study that predicts the Gateway will increase traffic on Roswell Road by close to 9,000 vehicles a day. That’s on top of the 35,000 that now use the commuter artery.
Moreover, they said, many homeowners will lose part of their backyards to a companion project — the realignment of Windsor Parkway, which GRTA is requiring to accommodate traffic for the development. City leaders settled on the least expensive of three options for the reconfiguration, a $3.7 million plan that will bring the street from its current angle junction into a T-cross with Roswell Road.
“Do we want to be branded as a city that takes property away from its citizens when there are better long-term alternatives?” resident Jennifer Rangel asked.
Other opponents, including Gordon Certain, president of the North Buckhead Civic Association, said the project will encourage traffic cut-throughs in surrounding neighborhoods.
City Councilwoman Karen McEnerny, the lone dissenter on the Gateway and road realignment, said the city is compromising its standards, replacing one set of apartments with even more apartments.
But Councilman Chip Collins said the Gateway brings “something of high quality that’s unique and reflective of what this city is and also what we want it to be.”
Two neighboring homeowners’ groups, including the massive High Point Civic Association, endorsed the plan after months of negotiations with the developer.
Hudson Hooks, regional partner for JLB, expressed his relief after the vote.
“I’m glad it’s over with,” he said. “It’s been a hard-fought zoning.”
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