The buildings at Simpsonwood are coming down.
Gwinnett commissioners on Tuesday approved a request to spend more than $900,000 to demolish the swimming pool and pool house, tennis courts and several buildings at the newest Gwinnett County park.
Angelia Parham, Gwinnett’s director of Support Services, said it would be at least a month before the demolition began, and it would last into the fall.
The county will keep the maintenance building and the restrooms at the main entrance, but will remove the Brooks Complex, Gibson Lodge, Hagan Lodge, McDavid Lodge and Rollins Center, Parham said. The total cost is expected to be $922,500.
A chapel on the site will be moved.
Gwinnett County bought the 227-acre park from the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church for $14 million, and the city of Peachtree Corners paid an additional $2 million. The purchase closed in March.
The land was bequeathed to the church in 1973 by Norcross teacher Ludie Simpson with understanding that it would not be "chopped into smaller parcels or exploited or despoiled." But for more than a decade, the church had lost as much as $750,000 annually to maintain a conference center on the land.
Residents protested the church’s planned sale, potentially to developers. That prospect prompted lawsuits by residents who wanted to preserve the greenspace.
A master plan for the park will start late this year or early next year, Parham said. Lynette Howard, a county commissioners who represents the area where Simpsonwood is, said it would have cost more than $3 million to get the buildings up to code.
“Sections were rotted, there were trees growing out of the gutters, there was water damage,” she said.
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