Written by 
GwinnettCitizen.com

Duluth - The time is here! One of the City’s most frequently asked questions, when will something be done with Proctor Square? has been answered!
On Tuesday, July 19th at 11:30 a.m., a ceremonial demolition gathering will be held on site at Proctor Square located behind 3116 Buford Highway. The downtown revitalization is now reaching across Buford Highway as Duluth continues its transformation! 

After 43 years of retail service the Proctor Square complex and associated outparcels at the corner of Duluth Highway and Buford Highway are slated for demolition beginning next week.  

The Dunwoody based developer Residential Group, LLC has acquired Proctor Square along with outparcels consisting of Duluth Corners, Georgia Cremation, and FM Appliance.   The eight-acre assemblage will become The Village in Duluth, a 375 multi-family rental unit complex with 11 retail/office store fronts with connected living space above and two corner restaurant sites.  

The development will feature a wrapped parking deck accessible to the public on the first two levels, tree lined boulevard with parallel parking, sidewalks, and public art sites.  The urban style units will be split 50/50 between one room and two bedroom units.  The project is expected to take 24 months to complete. Estimated construction cost is $64,000,000.

Proctor Square was first constructed in the late 60’s on one of the highest points in Duluth.  It was the first true shopping center in Duluth and served the community well as it evolved over time.  

The community is invited to attend and take a ceremonial sledgehammer swing at the property before demolition crews mobilize. To attend the event please turn off Buford Hwy onto Fox Street and enter the Proctor Square site at the gate opening. Parking is available on that end of the site (see map).

Written by 
David Allison
Atlanta Business Chronicle

A new $64 million redevelopment of downtown Duluth, Ga., has begun with the demolition of an old grocery store.
The 43-year-old Proctor Square shopping center will become an 8-acre redevelopment with a 375-unit apartment complex and 11 retail and office store fronts, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported. Read the story and check out a rendering here.The project is expected to take two years to finish.

Atlanta Business Chronicle reported in March about another project in Duluth. Fabric Developers and Vantage Realty Partners broke ground on the redevelopment of seven historic downtown Duluth buildings, making room for up to seven new restaurants. The $7 million project could open its first restaurants by January.
The roughly 40,000-square-foot project, called The Block at Parson’s Alley, is drawing inspiration from Decatur, a model of downtown revitalization.

Keith Farmer
Gwinnett Daily Post

Rita Bowens remembers the excitement of the arrival of Winn-Dixie more than three decades ago because as a Duluth native, it meant she and her family no longer had to drive to Doraville or beyond for shopping.
Her mother loved Parsons, the original general store shopping destination in Duluth that “had everything.”
But Bowens, 61, admitted she was a bit melancholy last week as she stood at the corner of Buford Highway and Duluth Highway and watched heavy excavator construction equipment demolish the vacant building at Proctor Square.
“It is part of my history, my parents are no longer living so representing them and knowing that for them to be able to see the change,” Bowens said. “I see the change for them. … I think it’s a good change for the city because change is everywhere. You can’t stay stagnant.”
Born and raised in Duluth, Bowens remembers the Proctor Square heyday in the 1970s and ’80s and when Gwinnett Place Mall opened and pulled customers from the Winn-Dixie, a five and dime store called Elmore’s and Western Auto.
While the property had stores as recently as a few years ago, questions about the property have buzzed around the city for the last decade, and were one of the first things asked of Mayor Nancy Harris when she began to campaign 10 years ago.
Once home to the Rexall Grill before it moved across the street, Proctor Square had 43 years of retail service before a developer from Dunwoody, Residential Group, acquired Proctor Square along with Duluth Corners, Georgia Cremation, and FM Appliance.
The expected $64 million project across eight acres will become a 375 unit rental complex with 11 retail and office store fronts with connected living space above and two corner restaurant sites. The development will feature a wrapped parking deck accessible to the public on the first two levels, tree-lined boulevard with parallel parking, sidewalks and public art sites.
It’s expected to take two years to finish.
“The whole design of the building is kind of an early industrial design,” developer Kurt Alexander said. “It kind of ties back into the railroad, early city of Duluth, and if you look at a lot of the architecture, signage, buildings in place, we’re pulling off of those ideas and bringing it into our project. It is a new property, but it does reach back to the history of Duluth and what’s existing now.”
He added that it’s an urban project in a suburban location that offers urban amenities with restaurants and outdoor space.
As she spoke to a gathered crowd in the parking lot, Harris said she expects this to be a catalyst for further development. The brick, wrought iron and public art is also designed to mix old and new, like the remade downtown area that has a late 1800 design.

“Yes, we’re getting rid of something really old, but it had no use,” said Harris, a former Winn-Dixie cashier. “… We feel like by doing this, that place is going to get better, and that place is going to get better, and the place down the road is going to get better. We just feel like it’s really going to be a trigger for economic growth on Buford Highway.”
Councilman Billy Jones remembers the property as a young boy after it first constructed in the late 1960s on one of the highest points in Duluth. It was the first true shopping center outside of Parsons.
When Jones was a young teenager, he worked at Western Auto, and that helped him buy his first car at the bottom of the hill, a 1973 Chevrolet Nova.
“I remember working in this store looking out the window going, ‘I’m going to buy that car one day,’” Jones said. “It sat there a long time — it seemed like it took me a year to get my down payment.”
Jones’ parents had a television sales and service business and a laundromat at one end of the property, and between his job and after-school time with his father, Jones said he “hung out here a lot.”
Jones’ grandmother lived just behind the property, and because of his family ties, he said history is very important and recalled a one-time city motto: having pride in old and new.
“On the flip side, you’ve got to move ahead with some things,” he said. “There’s got to be a mix. … Some things have to come down for advancing, but there’s a mix, a fine balance.”

Written by 
Tyler Estep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

​Work on a $64 million mixed-use project in the heart of downtown Duluth — a development complete with hundreds of apartments, a pair of restaurant spaces and nearly a dozen other storefronts — will begin next week, city officials announced Friday.
Proctor Square, an aging retail center, will be demolished to make room.
The project from Dunwoody-based developer Residential Group, LLC, dubbed "The Village in Duluth," will go up on eight acres centered at 3116 Buford Highway, on the southwest corner of that road's intersection with Duluth Highway. It will feature "a 375 multi-family rental unit complex with 11 retail/office store fronts with connected living space and two corner restaurant sites," Duluth spokeswoman Amanda Leiba said in a news release. 

The aging Proctor Square retail center will be demolished to make room for The Village in Duluth, a $64 million mixed-use project. (Credit: City of Duluth)It will also include a parking deck, "tree-lined boulevard" and public art sites. 
Construction is expected to take two years, but work will begin Tuesday — when demolition begins on the 1960s-era Proctor Square, which officials called the "first true shopping center in Duluth." Developers have also acquired three neighboring outparcels. 
The project's start is just the latest step in a flurry of big-time development around downtown Duluth. 
Down the street from the Proctor Square project, work is well underway on "The Block at Parson's Alley," a 30,000-square-foot restaurant and retail district surrounding the city's Village Green. Dreamland Bar-B-Que has already opened on the site near Lawrenceville and Main streets, as has O4W Pizza.
On the western side of Duluth Highway and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, a 31-acre development known as Sugarloaf Marketplace will include 330 luxury apartments and 75,000 square feet of retail. A Sprouts Farmers Market opened on the site in May.
Homesouth Communities is working on a 36-townhome development on the back side of downtown, too.

Written by
Curt Yeomans
Gwinnett Daily Post

​Duluth Mayor Nancy Harris put a major emphasis on one simple two-letter word as she talked about what has been going on in the city during her State of the City Address on Monday: “Be.”
Harris told a packed house of residents, staff and elected officials that the city should be visionary in looking at what it wants to be like in the future. She added that it should be healthy by not only having quality parks and recreation facilities, but using them and also partnering with Gwinnett Medical Center to develop a former Ingles grocery store.
The mayor said the city should also be a destination. It should, she said, be Duluth.
“We want you to eat in Duluth, shop in Duluth and be Duluth,” Harris said. “Everything you do needs to be about Duluth.”
Harris’ speech focused on what has been going on in Duluth in the last year and what will be coming up this year. As part of her theme of being Duluth, she paused for a moment so she and the city council handed out six Capture the Spirit Awards that recognize contributions to the city.
The awards were presented to Michael Robbins, Donna Daluga, Ann Parsons Odum, Melissa Henry, Helen Jones and Maxine Garner.
During her speech, Harris outlined some city business matters, such as working on a new 10-year parks and recreation plan to replace one that is now a decade old. She added that the city has partnered with Gwinnett County, Johns Creek and Fulton County to secure a $400,000 matching grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission to study the revitalization of Rogers Bridge.
There were also some transportation projects, such as working with Gwinnett County to put sidewalks on Duluth Highway, from Buford Highway to Claiborne Drive, construction of George Rogers Road, median work on Buford Highway and landscaping at the intersection of Pleasant Hill Road and Buford Highway.
A major part of the city’s plans for the future, though, is to increase walkability, particularly in its downtown area.
“Citizens are looking for places to live that are walkable,” she said. “We may not be able to make it possible for you to walk to your jobs, but we want to make it walkable enough that you can walk to a restaurant or that you walk to shopping areas.”
Two major walkability-minded developments she highlighted were The Block, a restaurant district that will be located next to the Duluth Town Green, and Sugarloaf Market, a mixed-use residential and retail development at the corner of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Sugarloaf Parkway.
Both projects are under construction.
Walkability is a key factor in attracting young work-age professionals, the group known as “millennials,” who prefer walkable areas and both bring families with them and are attractive to businesses who are looking to relocate.
Harris said millennials make up 17 percent of Duluth’s population. That’s not good enough, she said.
“I would like to get that number a little higher,” Harris told her audience. “That’s why we’re doing a lot of the things that we’re doing — to attract millennials because that’s the age group businesses are looking at.”
Projects like The Block and Sugarloaf Market are important to the city. It puts restaurants and other retail near residential areas. The Block, in particular, is seen by Duluth officials as the kind of project that will boost the energy of the city’s city’s downtown core.
The rest of the city will benefit from it as a result, Harris said.
“When you have a strong and vibrant downtown, that’s an economic development catalyst for the entire city,” she said.
Harris also gave residents a tease of one project coming up in the next few weeks during her speech. The city council will vote on whether to approve the Residential Group’s proposed The Village At Duluth development during its Feb. 8 meeting, she said. The project is designed to include about 400 residential units and street-facing retail.
If the city council approves it, the development would be built at the current site of the Proctor Square shopping center at the corner of Buford and Duluth highways. Harris said it is being looked at carefully however because of the volume of housing it plans to provide.
The city already has 639 housing units that are in the process of being built. That includes 134 single-family attached units, 174 single-family detached units and 331 urban-style apartments.
“We’re going to look at how many apartments do we want and how many do we need,” Harris said after her speech. “We want to look at all of the data and make an informed decision.”

Written by
Bill Lewis
The Tennessean

Christina Hartlage might buy a house one day, but for now renting an apartment gives her a chance to explore the Nashville region’s different neighborhoods while living in luxurious surroundings that include a dog park and a saltwater pool.
Hartlage, an Atlanta native who knows something about traffic, is also happy about her commute to her downtown office.
“The first time took seven minutes. It usually takes about 10,” said Hartlage, who moved into her new apartment in MetroCenter one week ago.
Hartlage, whose career brought her to Nashville, is one of the first residents of One MetroCenter Apartments. The 320-apartment development is under construction at 45 Vantage Way in North Nashville. It is one of two luxury apartment developments under way in the area.
The Duke Nashville, a 251-apartment development, is planned a few blocks away at 281 Cumberland Bend in MetroCenter.
They are among the 25,000 apartments that are either under construction or planned for development throughout the Nashville region, said Woody McLaughlin, spokesman for the Greater Nashville Apartment Association.
“That’s a historic growth figure. I don’t think Nashville has ever been through a growth spurt like it’s enjoying now,” he said.


Many transplants prefer to rent first
As those 25,000 apartments are completed over the next several years, they will join the estimated 110,000 units that are already on the market, said McLaughlin.
The region’s strong economy and job growth are attracting new residents. Like Hartlage, many of them initially lease an apartment while they learn their way around the city. Some may prefer a mobile lifestyle and choose not to own a home. Others are college graduates whose student debt might discourage them from taking on a mortgage, he said.
Seven out of 10 college graduates had student debt in 2013. The average amount was nearly $30,000, according to the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success.
The average monthly rent for an apartment in the Nashville region was $955 in 2014. Monthly rent was $1,500 downtown and $1,230 in the Brentwood-Franklin area, said McLaughlin.
“I’ve heard apartment managers say most people moving into new ones are from out of town. L.A. and Chicago are two places people are moving from, and they’re used to paying higher rent,” he said.
One MetroCenter’s apartments feature hardwoods, granite countertops, walk-in closets and concierge trash pickup. The development will have a fitness center, a pool and a Zen garden. Rents range from $1,215 to $1,599, said Community Manager Pam Germer.

Construction is still under way, but demand has been strong. The first residents moved in last month. They include four players for the Tennessee Titans, whose practice facility is nearby.
“We believe in the MetroCenter market. The way Nashville is growing, it’s pushing in every direction,” said Germer.

Lock and leave with luxury touches
West of downtown, H.G. Hill Realty is developing Hill Center Sylvan Heights at the intersection of Charlotte Pike and 40th Avenue. The development will include retail space, 14 single-family cottages and 260 apartments, including micro apartments with less than 500 square feet of space. Rental rates are expected to be about $2 per square foot.
The micro apartments will feature “smaller appliances, very European” designed to fit the space as well as Murphy beds made by a manufacturer in Franklin, said Jimmy Granbery, CEO of H.G. Hill Realty.
Hill Center Sylvan Heights will include a fitness center and a dog spa as well as a Nashville B-cycle bicycle rental station. A city bus stop is being placed at the corner of 40th Avenue and Charlotte Pike.
“We’re a stone’s throw from Vanderbilt, McCabe Golf Course, if you work downtown,” said Granbery.
At the One City mixed use development at 28th-31st Avenue and Charlotte Pike, construction of 311 apartments is expected to begin in the spring. Downtown, developer Tony Giarratana’s SoBro Tower and 505 building will add hundreds of apartments to the city’s urban core. In Green Hills, Southern Land is moving forward with its high-rise mixed use development, which includes 310 residences.
In suburban Mt. Juliet, Rochford Realty and Construction Co. is developing The Meridian at Providence, a 223-apartment community that will include retail space and a location for the city police department’s bicycle patrol unit. Apartments are expected to rent for $900 to $1,500 per month.
The company previously developed the Deerfield at Providence, which has 426 apartments.
“We’ve been astounded” by the pace of leasing. “It’s happened very quickly,” said Trey Rochford, the company’s vice president.
Many people in their 20s and 30s aren’t interested in owning a home, and many older empty nesters are selling their homes and renting apartments so they can live a lock and leave lifestyle, he said.
As she settled into her new apartment at One MetroCenter, Hartlage said she was happy with her decision to rent rather than buy.
“I’m happy with the living situation I have,” said Hartlage. “It would be pretty hard to match.”
​

Published November 25, 2014 by NashvillePost.com

Atlanta-based developer The Residential Group has landed a master permit for its residential project planned for MetroCenter.

The development will include four four-story buildings with a collective 320 units and will be located at 45 Vantage Way.

The Residential Group, which developed the 244-unit West End Village at the southwest corner of 31st Avenue and Long Boulevard in West End Park, will team with Horsepower Realty, LLC, on the project.

TRG Builders TN LLC, an entity The Residential Group created for the development, will serve as the general contractor with the permit valued at $5.2 million.

Written by
Getahn Ward
The Tennessean

Construction should start this week on a new 320-unit, high-density apartment community in MetroCenter.

Atlanta-based The Residential Group recently completed its purchase of nearly 12 acres on Vantage Way for the project. It paid about $6 million for the property located between Downtown Nashville Nissan and offices of Metro Center Health Care Group.

It will be only the second market-rate apartment community in the MetroCenter office park area.

"Our goal is to create a true mixed-use environment in MetroCenter by supporting the over 13,000 jobs that exist there," said Kurt Alexander, a principal in The Residential Group.

Average monthly rents for the apartment units will be $300 to $400 below market, Alexander said. On average, one bedroom units will rent for $1,300 a month and two-bedroom units for $1,650 a month.

The Residential Group's in-house construction company, TRG Builders TN II, will build the complex tentatively called MetroCenter Apartment Homes. The Atlanta-based multifamily division of Birmingham, Ala.-based Davis Architects is the design firm on the project.

The units will be larger than at West End Village apartments, which The Residential Group built and then sold.

Gilbert Smith of Equitable Property Co. represented both The Residential Group and seller, Horsepower Realty LLC, which is led by Rusty Dunn, in the land transaction.

Five months ago, The Residential Group sold the 244-unit West End Village at Long Boulevard and 31st Avenue North — the company's first apartment development in Nashville — for $51.3 million. The buyer was LaSalle Investment Management Inc.

Published August 7, 2014 by AroundWoodstockMagazine.com


The construction at the intersection of Highway 92 and Main Street in Woodstock, GA has been hard to miss. So, what’s going in there? It is going to be a 272-unit boutique apartment complex. The Crest at Laurelwood is slated to open to residents in April of 2015.

What to Expect
The 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom floor plans will cater to residents’ every need. They will have faux hardwood flooring throughout, 9-ft. vaulted ceilings, faux granite counter tops in the kitchens, black, energy saving Whirlpool appliances, and marble counter tops in the bathrooms. Not only will the inside living spaces be luxurious, but the community will be full of amenities that include state-of-the-art fitness equipment in their club room and fitness center, a decorative clubhouse with built-in surround sound and flat screen TV, and an outdoor kitchen and resort-style swimming pool for parties and gatherings.

What This Means for the Community
A new luxury apartment complex right in the heart of Woodstock is going to be a main destination for students, young professionals and new families. Its location is convenient to the businesses of Woodstock and the surrounding areas of Alpharetta and Marietta. This is good news for Woodstock’s economy. With apartments so convenient to the downtown area, Main Street businesses and restaurants could be looking forward to an upswing in foot traffic. The city will also be happy to see their trail system being used as the complex has direct access to the Greenprints Trail System.

We are looking forward to seeing this new development completed and watching those new residents join in the Woodstock, GA community.