Clayton County commissioners on Tuesday said that despite repeated requests, backers of a proposed futuristic $800 million mixed-use development for Lake City have kept officials in the dark about its progress for months and that the lack of communication from developers has cast doubt on the proposal.
Frustrated board members told Invest Clayton Executive Director Larry Vincent that Roman United, an upstart development firm of which Vincent has vouched, has not met deadlines on the project. Nor has Roman United given updates on how the company is spending $559,000 the county provided to build a $4 million business incubator on the site.
What’s more, commissioners said, Ed Walls, a financial advisor to the county, expressed concerns early on about the project. Walls told officials in an email in 2021, before the deal became publicly known, that the county needed to get a letter of credit from Roman, Clayton Commissioner Alieka Anderson said. It is unclear if the request was heeded.
He “didn’t seem like he was much in favor of the project,” Anderson said of Walls.
Commissioner Felicia Franklin said had board members known the developers would not be forthcoming on the project once given the greenlight, they would have received a very different response from the county.
“If you only have pieces of a puzzle, then how can you make up your mind about what we’re going to do,” Franklin said. “We did make up our minds, but it was absent of that information. I can tell you that me for one, my vote would have been quite different if I had info.”
She added that she was disappointed that commissioners had not seen a feasibility study on the development, a standard procedure in big projects.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The project, dubbed The Roman, was unveiled last summer during a ceremony lavished with food, music and hobnobbing officials. Roman United proposed building a mega project of several high rises, including offices, luxury condos and a 7,500-seat amphitheater on the site of a dying shopping center in Lake City.
The project was ambitious for Clayton County, which, while home to the world’s busiest airport, lags economically compared to most metro Atlanta counties and has never pulled off a proposal of this magnitude.
Roman set an aggressive timeline to complete the first phase of the project in a year, something experts raised doubts about. He had yet to seek permits or regional reviews customary for megaprojects and did not divulge specifics about financing.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation in September found Jacques Roman had limited experience as a developer and his company website’s portfolio page included misattributed project descriptions and pictures. The portfolio, which has since been removed, included projects that did not exist and featured stock images of a German mall, a UNESCO world heritage site and Harvard University.
The newspaper also found records showing that Roman was evicted from his Dunwoody apartment in 2019 for failing to pay more than $2,700 in rent and utilities.
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
The AJC last month was the first to report that Clayton officials were considering finding new partners for the $4 million business incubator because they had not heard from Roman about the project.
Neither Vincent nor officials with Roman United, including its leader Jacques Roman, returned repeated calls for comment about the county’s move.
Clayton officials said Tuesday the decision came after Roman missed several December deadlines on actions necessary to move forward with the incubator as spelled out in an agreement with the county. They included securing a construction contract, completing permits and obtaining a construction loan with an approved lender.
“When that did not occur, we sent a letter to Roman United on January 4 alerting them that they had not done that,” county attorney Charles Reed said. “Right now, they are still working on putting together this building, so we’ll continue to monitor how the project moves forward before we look into how we get any money that has been spent for the business incubator returned to the county.”
Vincent, in a presentation to the board, said nothing was being done in secret, “under the table or anything.”
He said he was unaware that there was a breakdown in communications and that he would do better.
“Let me apologize,” he said. “I know what to do now, I’ll just copy everybody that y’all think need to get it.”
But Franklin pushed back.
“With all respect, you and I had that conversation several times before,” she said.
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Vincent said that Roman is in the process of securing an agreement with a general contractor and that it was in the process of completing a development of regional impact assessment, a state infrastructure report for large projects.
Roman officials had said in September that they were close to filing a DRI then.
Vincent said that Roman emailed several updates on the project between September and November, including a development plan review, design notebook on the incubator and design packages sent to county Chief Operating Officer Detrick Stanford, Lake City Mayor Ron Dodson and the Development Authority of Clayton County. He said the developers have not received responses on the updates from any of the officials.
“If this doesn’t go through we realize we’ll have to make a decision,” he said. “We’ll go to plan B. And plan B will go in another direction.”
