Two blue Adirondack chairs sit outside the small white storefront on Lilburn’s Main Street. In the windows of Citizen Exchange, signs advertise LOCAL ARTISTS POTTERY PRINTS & MORE and COLD DRINKS SNACKS DOG TREATS.
Amy Barker started the art collective in this Gwinnett County city late last year as a way to add character and create community in the city she has come to love.
Given that effort, Barker, like others in this southern Gwinnett town of 13,000, was distressed to learn that Lilburn public officials were accused of defrauding the city to line their own pockets. The former assistant city manager, the former head of the Downtown Development Authority and a broker who worked with the pair were indicted in January on bribery charges — 16 among them.
They’re accused of profiting through two schemes. In one, the group bought land the city or its Downtown Development Authority was interested in purchasing, then resold it on the same day for a profit. In the other, the broker allegedly paid kickbacks to the city officials on projects being considered by the Development Authority.
“Of course there’s going to be distrust, especially in this moment,” Barker said of city government. “They’re going to have to earn the trust back.”
Residents in Lilburn have been working hard to build community — especially this year, as the coronavirus pandemic has isolated people and community connections are all the more precious.
Nicole Cannata lives outside the city limits, but she’s behind a push to make the town a “community of kindness.”
Sitting in one of the blue chairs outside Citizen Exchange, just a few doors down from a martial arts studio and a flower shop, Cannata insists that the alleged criminal scheme won’t define Lilburn for long.
“We can choose the narrative that comes out of this,” Cannata said. “While disappointing, I don’t think it impacts who Lilburn is. ... It was a shocker, but it didn’t overtake what was happening in Lilburn.”
Her first reaction, Cannata said, was to ask what the community can do to heal.
But not everyone is ready for that.
“I’ve continually watched Lilburn do things that don’t make sense for the community,” said Amber McGrath, who lives near Lawrenceville now but who is a third generation Lilburn native, and still has family in the area. “This is how Lilburn has been run for years.”
McGrath recalled another former Lilburn leader, one-time mayor Charles Bannister, had also been part of a land-use scandal more than a decade ago, when he was chair of the Gwinnett County commission.
Bannister resigned rather than face a perjury indictment stemming from a grand jury investigation of dubious land deals similar to those that are currently under investigation in the city.
Then, McGrath said, Bannister’s actions were “gossip for weeks and weeks.” But now, those allegations have largely been forgotten.
Two scandals in a decade doesn’t make a crime spree, but McGrath said she thinks the city needs to hire someone outside to investigate any other potential wrongdoing and ease residents’ minds.
Diane Bannister, Charles’ sister-in-law, lives outside the city limits but has called herself a resident for nearly 50 years. While Diane Bannister defended the former county chairman, she said the current direction of the city “really makes me sick.”
“I hope this isn’t the end of the investigation,” she said.
Diane Bannister fears news about government wrongdoing might keep people from coming to Lilburn, a quaint city with Old Town flags on light poles, brick-accented sidewalks, a tree-lined Main Street and planters offsetting outdoor seating at downtown restaurants.
“It puts a bad, very ugly cloud over the whole city,” Diane Bannister said. “It reflects badly on everyone in city-level government.”
It’s made it particularly hard for people like Betsey Dahlberg and Paul Allen, the owners of Hope Springs Distillery. Down a pocked Railroad Avenue, they sat on the loading dock one afternoon, distilling tanks behind them and an abandoned partial printing press shoved to the side.
Both said they trusted Doug Stacks, the former assistant city manager who was indicted along with former Downtown Development Authority chair Norman Nash and broker David Clenton Kennedy.
“There’s this feeling we’ve been stabbed in the back by some of our own,” Dahlberg said. “It was actually painful. I was sick to my stomach.”
At Agavero Cantina Parkside, a Mexican restaurant across the street from Citizen Exchange, owner Carlos Castrejon sat on the bright patio and said he felt a similar sense of betrayal.
Stacks used to come in two or three times a week, Castrejon said, and approached him with the idea of using the double-decker bus on the edge of the city park to open another location for his restaurant.
Castrejon called Stacks a good customer. But said he hasn’t seen Stacks in months, since he left his job with the city.
Most customers aren’t talking about the city scandal, Castrejon said, though he at first worried that Agavero — whose landlord is the Downtown Development Authority — would be caught up in the investigation. Castrejon said Lilburn can’t let the greed of a few people subsume the hard work that he and others are doing to make the city a destination.
But Carrie Wisniewski, who’s trying to sell her Main Street office building, worries it already has. She said the city’s current issues are “horrifying” to her.
“In Lilburn, I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them,” said Wisniewski, who lives in Norcross. “If you’re going to move into Lilburn to run a business — nobody in their right mind would do it. There’s just too much at stake.”
Matthew Curtis said he thinks the allegations will be a “black eye” for the town.
On top of that, Lilburn could use the money the group is accused of taking to pay for parkland, public works services and police, Curtis said.
While the indictment shows profits of more than $228,000 for Stacks, Nash and Kennedy, an AJC investigation shows that number could be upwards of $640,000.
Curtis said he hopes the allegations are an impetus for residents to get more involved in local government.
“I need to keep a sharper eye, a better eye on local matters,” he said. “I think this will cause me to pay a lot more attention to local developments and officials.”
Still, many people likely aren’t familiar with the accusations, or don’t pay them much mind. On a sunny weekday, the city park was crowded with people watching children on the playground or walking a loop around a green field past Agavero Cantina Parkside.
Julie Ashey said with so much news about the coronavirus, vaccines and the federal government, she didn’t think people would focus on her small town.
Megan Flowers also thinks people will be quick to move on.
The in-home childcare business Flowers runs is just a mile from Lilburn’s downtown, and her husband’s family has been in the city for generations. Flowers said the news about officials was “a hard pill to swallow.” But she said there’s a lot of good in the city, too, and that will win out.
“One thing this town definitely has is grit and resolve and kindness,” she said. “We know Lilburn, we know the heart of Lilburn, and this is not it.”
The Lilburn indictments
Three people have been indicted as part of an alleged scheme that defrauded Lilburn city government. A 16-count indictment named former assistant city manager, Doug Stacks; former chairman of the Downtown Development Authority, Norman Nash; and a real estate broker the pair worked with, David Clenton Kennedy.
The indictment lays out nine bribes between November 2014 and December 2018 that total more than $228,000. Reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found the group may have netted more than $640,000 through land deals, much of it at the city’s expense.
Many details about the payments aren’t clear, including why they were made. The AJC was able to piece together some additional information.
Bedrock Investments, formed by Nash in March 2015, paid $815,000 on Sept. 8, 2015 for land that became the city’s new police headquarters, according to property records. The same day, Bedrock Investments sold it to the city for $1 million.
On April 12, 2016 a group called Cross Road Investment Services — formed by Kennedy March 23 of that year — paid $180,000 for land at 147 and 157 Main St. The same day, property records show, Cross Road sold it to the Lilburn DDA for $380,000.
From the indictment:
Nov. 14, 2014: Property at 190 Parkview Trace and Arcado Road. Norman Nash allegedly paid Doug Stacks $8,833.33
Sept. 25, 2015: 9.7 acres at 4572 Lawrenceville Hwy. Site of the city’s new police station. Stacks allegedly received $56,538.33 and Nash paid more than $40,000.
April 13, 2016: 147 and 157 Main Street. Kennedy allegedly paid Stacks and Nash each $8,372.44. Johnsa said the group also bought this land through a shell company before selling it to the city.
July 8, 2016: 4.76 acres known as the Enclave Townhomes. Nash and Kennedy allegedly paid Stacks $31,051.13.
July 28, 2017: 5.2 acres at Luxomni Point. Details of the transactions were not available.
July - December 2017: Noble Village. Kennedy allegedly paid both Stacks and Nash more than $65,000.
June 19, 2018: Indian Trail Distribution Center. Kennedy allegedly paid Stacks and Nash more than $5,000.
Dec. 5, 2018: 3 acres known as The Preserve at Killian Hill. Details of the transactions were not available.
Other Gwinnett County indictments
More than a decade ago, a similar land-deal scandal shook Gwinnett. Then, three county commissioners resigned as part of separate investigations.
Commission Chairman Charles Bannister resigned in October 2010 to avoid a perjury charge after he purportedly lied to a grand jury investigating questionable land deals.
Commissioner Shirley Lasseter in 2012 was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison after she pleaded guilty to taking $36,500 from an undercover FBI agent who purported to be a businessman who wanted her vote on a real estate project.
County Commissioner Kevin Kenerly, who was accused of taking $1 million in bribes related to the county’s purchase of potential parkland, was sentenced to 10 years’ probation in 2014. He had suspended himself from the Board of Commissioners in November 2010 and did not seek reelection. His term ended Jan. 1, 2011.
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