The Green Corners Shopping Center once boasted a thriving Kmart and movie theater, followed by a large international farmer’s market, and then a smattering of smaller retail outlets.
Almost 30 years later, the once-popular plaza at Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Rockbridge Road is nearly empty and plagued by crime, which has created the rare opportunity for a Wal-Mart store to move into a neighborhood without resistance.
Wal-Mart plans to build a 151,000-square-foot shopping center on the site, a project that has united local officials, law enforcement officers and residents who are weary of the current eyesore.
“You can’t ask for a better opportunity to spur economic activity in an area that is sorely in need of it,” said Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village CID, which worked with Wal-Mart on its plans. “People are embracing it.”
This is a welcome development for Wal-Mart, which often has been greeted with public apathy or opposition when it opens in a new area. When another Wal-Mart store was proposed in Gwinnett County, nearly 100 people came to Snellville City Hall to protest the plan. Council members approved that request 4-2 over the loud complaints of residents.
Wal-Mart had no such trouble with the Green Corners site at a county commissioners’ business meeting in early October. The commissioners unanimously approved the company’s request, and only one person voiced concerns about the proposal.
“It’s a market that we haven’t been serving as well as we want to,” said Glen Wilkins, a local Wal-Mart spokesman. “So it’s an opportunity to hopefully reinvigorate the community and help draw additional businesses in that area.”
Warbington said Wal-Mart started looking at sites four years ago but backed off when the economy drooped. The retailer renewed the search a year ago, bouncing ideas off the CID about a possible location.
The new store and a sprawling parking lot means much, if not all, of the strip mall will be torn down early next year. That will spell the end for a pair of nightclubs that have been the source of numerous complaints, authorities and residents say.
“It’s not the way that you keep a community vital,” said County Commissioner Lynette Howard, whose district includes the shopping center. “It has not been pretty over there in quite some time.”
Warbington said: “It’s been a disaster.”
In 1983, the Green Corners shopping center was a bustling center in a mostly isolated area. Shoppers came from across metro Atlanta to patronize the K-Mart and the movie theater.
Things changed when the former Western Electric complex at I-85 and Jimmy Carter Boulevard downsized operations, Warbington said. The company once employed 5,000 people; the since renamed Optical Fiber Solutions has 170 employees.
“It was a drain on the entire community,” Warbington said. “It’s like losing a military base. That’s why we’ve been pushing for redevelopment out there.”
A few blocks down the street at Greens Corners, the only business currently operating is Rainbow, a small clothing and apparel store.
“It does feel like anything could happen back here and nobody would know,” said Bridget Williams, a Rainbow employee. “The only time we see people over here is Friday or Saturday night.”
Crime stats show the area, which sits near the center of Gwinnett police’s west precinct, has been filled with crime in recent years.
“It’s in our busiest precinct and it’s our smallest geographic precinct by about half,” Gwinnett police spokesman Cpl. Jacob Smith said. “It is very, very busy.”
Things could change when the new Wal-Mart opens, most likely in the first quarter of 2013.
Residents whose homes border the shopping center are eager to see things change, even if it means more traffic and noise.
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