It’s a brisk December afternoon and Judy Jordan Johnson has just finished having her picture taken by a newspaper photographer.
Johnson, the soon-to-be-retired mayor of Lawrenceville, is walking back into the warmth of City Hall when she’s stopped by a woman in a fur coat. Johnson, the woman says, taught her daughter at Central Gwinnett High School.
“This lady,” Ljerka Brkic says. “She is the best.”
The encounter leaves Johnson a bit flustered but appreciative. It’s the type of thing that happens fairly regularly — the type of thing that happens when you grow up somewhere, teach children there for 30 years, join the city council and then, like your father, become mayor.
It’s the type of thing that happens when you’re everywhere at once, when you’re active in your church and volunteer at the hospital and the co-op. The type of thing that happens when you do things as small as send handwritten thank you notes and things as big as help revitalize your hometown’s downtown.
It’s the type of thing that happens when you’re Judy Jordan Johnson.
“She’s a very special kind of person,” said Gwinnett Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash.
A few minutes after the encounter outside City Hall, Johnson is behind the desk in the fourth-floor office she’s occupied since 2011, when she became Lawrenceville’s first woman mayor. It’s a room with a view that she cherishes.
In the distance Johnson can see the Old Historic Courthouse at the center of downtown Lawrenceville. A little closer in the foreground, the steeple of her beloved Lawrenceville First Baptist Church pokes out. And just below the window, construction crews work on a sprawling new residential development that the city sees as a final, sustaining piece of its years-long revitalization efforts.
This day marks a week before Dec. 11, when Johnson will preside over her final city council meeting as mayor (and receive a standing ovation before departing). She announced her retirement well in advance of last month's elections and will be succeeded by Councilman David Still.
“I remember when I was elected in this office, I wanted Lawrenceville to be the buzzword,” Johnson says. “When you say ‘what do you want to do on Friday night,’ I say ‘let’s go to Lawrenceville.’ That’s what I wanted it to be. And I think that’s becoming the trend, if it’s not already there.”
‘The best ambassador’
Lawrenceville has indeed seen a resurgence in the last decade or so.
The award-winning Aurora Theatre routinely draws big crowds to the downtown area and is part of a new $31 million arts center that's currently under construction.
Unique restaurants like Local Republic, Strange Taco and Foggy Bottom BBQ have become local hotspots. When it opened in 2017, Slow Pour Brewing Company became an instant destination.
Just south of downtown, the sizable park and event space known as the Lawrenceville Lawn regularly hosts well-attended concerts.
Then there's the SouthLawn project, the $200-million development that Johnson can see from her office window. The wooden skeleton of some 600 residences, a mix of apartments, townhomes and traditional single-family homes, has already emerged from the dirt.
Johnson often wonders what her father would think of it all.
H. Rhodes Jordan was an attorney and state legislator who served as Lawrenceville’s mayor on multiple occasions between 1963 and 1988. He has both a local park and a local middle school named after him.
The elder Jordan’s old downtown law office is now a Mexican restaurant, and his daughter admits he would probably raise an eyebrow at the expense associated with some of Lawrenceville’s recent projects. But she also believes he’d be happy to see the hustle and bustle that’s returned to the city.
“You have to embrace growth, because you want the city to still be here 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road,” Johnson said. “And thriving.”
On Jan. 31, the Gwinnett Chamber will honor Judy Jordan Johnson with its prestigious citizen of the year award. Chamber CEO Nick Masino called her an “incredible public servant” and “the definition of ubiquitous.”
"She is everywhere," Masino said. "If someone could put a 25th hour in a day, it would be her."
That’s probably true. Johnson is rarely anywhere in spirit because she’s always there in person — Chamber breakfasts and ribbon-cuttings and county meetings and city events and just about every performance ever held at the Aurora Theatre, where she frequently addresses the crowd and thanks them for their support.
Johnson describes her retirement plans as pretty dull: more volunteering, more tutoring, more opportunities to watch her husband, Allan, play his senior league basketball games. She’ll largely keep doing what she’s always done, only without a title.
“We’ll miss her as mayor,” said Aurora Theatre co-founder Anthony Rodriguez, “but I know she’ll still be in the audience.”
The new mayor, Still, perhaps best sums up what Johnson means to the city.
“I think she has been the best ambassador Lawrenceville has ever had,” he said.
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