For nearly 50 years, Corley Insurance Agency operated out of a small building on Buford Highway when Michael Corley decided to move the business to downtown Duluth three years ago.
But last year, Corley bought and renovated an old home and returned his business to Buford Highway in August. In the time he was downtown, Corley said, little changed along the highway in Gwinnett County.
"I'm probably the only one who's redone anything on Buford Highway in the last five years ," Corley said. "I'd love to see more development along here."
Corley's not alone. Local efforts to revive the artery that shoots through the heart of Norcross, Duluth, Suwanee and Buford, along with unincorporated areas of Gwinnett, date back at least a decade. As recently as 2008, the mayors of Norcross, Duluth and Suwanee discussed transforming more than eight incorporated miles of a 16-mile stretch of Buford Highway from the DeKalb County line to the city of Suwanee.
Those plans were set aside due to diminished funding sources and changing budgetary priorities brought on by the economic crisis.
However, Suwanee in November managed to secure a $3.3 million federal grant to reconstruct part of Buford Highway. The grant, which came through the Atlanta Regional Commission's Livable Centers Initiative, calls for the highway to "safely accommodate multiple modes of transportation and help connect residents and visitors to a variety of activity centers," according to the city.
A study to determine the scope of the project is underway and city officials expect construction to begin in 2014. It's the tentative start of a number of new proposals to tackle some of Buford Highway's longtime transportation, safety and zoning issues.
"We’re hoping that if this project is successful, it can be the beginning for other cities," said Matthew Dickison, planning division director for Suwanee.
Also known as state Route 13, Buford Highway handles about 38,000 vehicles on average through parts of the corridor each day. In recent years, the highway has become a destination for much of metro Atlanta's international community, with Vietnamese noodle shops sitting beside Mexican taquerias, Korean video stores and Chinese grocers.
It’s where cars can crawl from traffic light to traffic light, where pedestrians try to dash across six lanes of traffic to cross the street, where aging strip malls neighbor industrial warehouses and town homes and discount gas stations.
"It's one of the four or five major corridors in Gwinnett County," said Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District. "It's absolutely critical."
As a result, millions of dollars have been targeted for improvements to the highway. In particular, more than $47 million is slated for a minimum of three different projects on the highway through the metro Atlanta transportation referendum, which will be held July 31.
The projects include plans to widen the highway from two to four lanes between Old Peachtree Road and Sugarloaf Parkway and Sawnee Avenue and state Road 347 in Hall County, and Suwanee's proposal to keep Buford Highway a two-lane road with the addition of sidewalks, multi-use trails and landscaped medians, among other things.
In Suwanee, city officials said they prefer to keep the highway from expanding to protect their pedestrian-friendly downtown area and to connect the historic area to the Town Center.
Widening Buford Highway "would dramatically alter mobility for pedestrians and bicyclists," Dickison said. "Buford Highway is more of a local-serving road here. We need to keep it to two lanes."
Further down the road in Duluth, Planning Director Glenn Coyne said the city plans to work off the city's own Buford Highway master plan. That includes streetscaping improvements, new sidewalks and a landscaped median in the stretch of highway from Davenport Road and Duluth Highway.
Coyne said the plan is still going through the approval process with the state Department of Transportation. Construction might not start for at least 18 months.
Other beautification efforts along the highway have been hampered, Duluth Mayor Nancy Harris said, because many business and property owners simply don't have the money to make big changes.
"Everyone is frustrated with the economy," she said. "We’re trying to make it look better without spending a lot of money."
Norcross officials are also working with the Atlanta Regional Commission, hoping to implement improvements similar to Duluth and Suwanee. They're also coming up with a few more of their own: pedestrian crossings, improved bus stop locations and seeking out developers who can bundle together commercial properties to limit the number of access points to the highway.
"Nothing is going to happen fast," said Chris McCrary, community development director for Norcross. "But something has to be done."
Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson, who chaired the round table that approved the list of regional transportation projects, said the cities along Buford Highway may not be directly working together but they're all seeking the same goal: a better, safer highway.
"We have competitive cooperation," Johnson said. "We're also trying to do things better and faster than Duluth and Suwanee. But we celebrate with them when they get a win."
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