Connected, Safe and Attractive
CIDs in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties work with government to provide what businesses need to thrive.
Around Metro Atlanta, it’s nearly impossible not to notice the colorful banners and beautiful landscaping that mark different communities. These are often the work of community improvement districts (CIDs). A CID is a geographic area where businesses voluntarily self-tax to fund projects within the district.
Improving Transportation: Emory Morsberger, executive director of the Gateway85 CID in Gwinnett County and president of the Tucker Summit CD in DeKalb County, photo daemon Baizan.
DeKalb and Gwinnett counties are home to six CIDs each, with projects that run the gamut from infrastructure improvements to safety and beautification. The goal: increasing property values for businesses inside the district and quality of life for district residents (who don’t pay the extra taxes).
In DeKalb County, CIDs are home to major regions of class A office space (Perimeter), areas focused specifically on one entity (Assembly) and those that contain a mix of industry, retail and small businesses (Chamblee Doraville, East Metro, Metro South and Tucker Summit).
The six Gwinnett County CIDs are similar, with a mix of light industrial, retail and restaurants, small businesses (Braselton, Evermore, Gateway85, Lilburn and Sugarloaf), and the area around a mall (Gwinnett Place) that’s being redeveloped. While the goals are the same, the tactics change depending on the makeup of the district.
“CIDs are important because they bring commercial property owners to the table to make decisions on growth and investments and infrastructure that impact the value of their properties and the performance of their properties,” says Malaika Rivers, executive director of the Chamblee Doraville CID. “They bring a willing partner to the table to help cost share in these types of investments.”
CIDs leverage the property taxes businesses pay to secure state and federal funds to tackle projects they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. It’s work that is forward thinking, long term and requires partnerships with city and county governments, the Georgia Department of Transportation and regional planning agencies, among others. The bulk of the work – planning, engineering, permitting, building consensus – often takes place behind the scenes, before a project can begin to come out of the ground to make an area safer, more efficient, more beautiful and a pleasure for visitors, businesses and residents.
Efficient Mobility
Across the DeKalb and Gwinnett CIDs, infrastructure projects are vital to efficiency and safety and are the bread and butter of most districts. Often, these projects that can span county lines, state highways and multiple municipalities require years of planning and the cultivation of partnerships to get off the ground.
“Our mantra is efficient mobility,” Rivers says about the Chamblee Doraville CID. “[The CID] is very rich with transportation assets. It’s planes, trains and automobiles.” Those assets – Norfolk Southern heavy rail, MARTA, Peachtree DeKalb Airport, bike paths – are both a blessing and a curse.
“You can get to the Chamblee and Doraville market very quickly and effectively,” she says. “When you get here, you’ve got to cross all of these different modes. Norfolk Southern tracks and MARTA’s tracks cut this community right down the spine. You’re limited in how you can cross that. If you’re a resident that lives on the east side and you want to get your office on the west side, you’ve got to find a way to cross those tracks. So intra-district connectivity is important to us.”
To foster efficient mobility, the CID has developed a master plan with dozens of projects and is focused on 18 to 20 of the most obvious ones first, such as filling in missing sidewalk gaps to help pedestrians get around safely.
“Our biggest project is finding another crossing across the tracks,” Rivers says. “It’s multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency. We’ve got to build a tent of stakeholders from Norfolk Southern and MARTA to the community members. We were able to get a federal grant to do a feasibility analysis to see if we’re talking about a bridge … or a tunnel.”
Gateway85 CID is focused on projects that help get people from residential areas to jobs in a part of Gwinnett County that doesn’t have transit connectivity across county lines. The Incredible Corridor Study looked at transportation along Mountain Industrial Boulevard, which becomes Jimmy Carter Boulevard, and found that people who live along there are “struggling to get to work. They need better transportation,” says Emory Morsberger, executive director of the Gateway85 CID and the Tucker Summit CID in DeKalb County. “Our goal was to create transportation on that corridor to get people to work. We’ve got a large population there of people who … don’t have cars. We’re trying to make it easier for them to get around.”
The CID is working with other partners to create a transit line along that corridor that would help people get to work.
In the Lilburn CID, which runs primarily along U.S. 29, making that route safe for pedestrians and traffic is essential. One of the most recent projects there streamlined three busy intersections of Lilburn School Road, Jennifer Drive and Hood Road where they each intersected U.S. 29 without traffic lights. The Lilburn CID took the lead on creating the solution that included a roundabout that funneled traffic from the three roads to one intersection with U.S. 29, in partnership with the city of Lilburn.
“We created a single intersection that provides access to [Bryson] Park and access to [Lilburn Elementary] School with the traffic lights,” Tad Leithead, executive director of the Lilburn CID, says. “A vast improvement from a safety standpoint, and an equally vast improvement from a mobility and traffic congestion standpoint.”
That’s a typical CID project and one that exemplifies the work that goes on behind the scenes for CIDs. “We began design work on that project almost four years ago,” Leithead says. “Lilburn CID took responsibility of designing it on the front end, which is what CIDs do. Then we got approved by the city and we worked with the city to procure $4.3 million in funding, which is the total price of the project.” The groundbreaking occurred in October 2023.
Perimeter CIDs, which include parts of Fulton and DeKalb counties at Ga. 400 and I-285, have been part of the largest infrastructure project the state has seen – the interchange reconstruction at 285 and 400 – which will allow traffic to move more smoothly and safely through that well-traveled corridor. The area is home to a significant amount of class A office space as well as one of the most-visited malls in the state, Perimeter Mall.
“We invested $10 million in it,” Perimeter CIDs Executive Director Ann Hanlon says. “And we spent years lobbying the state of Georgia for that improvement. It’s really important for us …. but it’s also important to DeKalb County and to the whole state. We are hopeful that the state will complete it [this] year. That is going to open up access to all of DeKalb County.”
Infrastructure doesn’t always mean roads, though in Metro Atlanta roads are essential. Gateway85 CID is working with Georgia Power, for example, to install electric vehicle charging stations along the I-85 corridor.
“We’re kind of a charging desert,” Morsberger says. “Our goal is to create charging centers at three major interchanges so that it’s convenient for people to get off the interstate and get charged.”
Safety First
For the CIDs, safety is as important as infrastructure improvements. Moving traffic around more efficiently is vital, but moving traffic safely – for drivers, passengers, pedestrians and bikers – is even more essential. CIDs also address community safety in other ways.
Flock cameras, those solar-powered eyes in the sky that read license plates, are a visible part of the plans of CIDs for enhancing safety in their region. Sugarloaf has 35 cameras. “Those have been incredibly successful in helping the police to solve crimes that would otherwise not have been solved,” Alyssa Davis, executive director of the Sugarloaf CID, says. “Once you have the license plate, you can actually track the person down most of the time.”
In addition to 63 Flock cameras in Gwinnett Place, the CID has community patrols out seven days a week, says Joe Allen, executive director. “That has really been a game changer,” he says. “We have seen significant crime reduction as a result of those investments.”
In the Tucker Summit CID, “lighting is key to security,” Morsberger says. “So we are implementing a streetlight program, partnering with the city of Tucker to upgrade streetlights or install streetlights for the first time.”
Beautification
While all CIDs have beautification as part of their mandate, some are taking it up a notch.
One of Lilburn’s highest priorities is beautification. “In 2022 and 2023 we added upscale landscaping to seven medians, the center of the road medians along Lawrenceville Highway,” Leithead says. “We have four gateways to Lilburn. We’re trying to improve all of those so that people get the sense of upscale landscaping, clean streets, etc., when they come into Lilburn.”
Sugarloaf CID is adding public art to unexpected places, including a mural at the underpass at Sugarloaf Parkway and I-85 and a sculpture nearby, at the gateway to the district. “We have an artist we’ve found through the Hudgens Center [for Art and Learning], which is a great asset in our district,” Davis says. “The gateway monument sculpture is also going through the permitting process.”
Single Focus Districts
While most CIDs are comprised of a mix of industry, small business, retail, restaurants and non-commercial property, some were created to enhance or redevelop a single property. They may have grown since creation or include nearby properties, but for Sugarloaf, Assembly and Gwinnett Place CIDs, the primary original purpose of each district is development or redevelopment of and around Gas South District (Sugarloaf), Assembly Atlanta and Gwinnett Place Mall, respectively, with an eye toward integrating the areas into the surrounding community – not creating islands unto themselves.
Sugarloaf, the newest CID in Gwinnett, was created in 2016 with the goal of finding a better use for acres of surface parking lots and ways to connect the Gas South District to the larger community. To that end, the Sugarloaf CID has tackled roadway improvements on Sugarloaf Parkway and at the Sugarloaf-Satellite Boulevard intersection. It is also working on connecting to the county’s loop trail and on a transit plan with the county.
“The Board of Commissioners has just approved [a new transit plan], pending approval of a funding source, [that will bring] high-capacity transit to connect our area to the Gwinnett Place area, to Gateway85 and, ultimately into the MARTA rail system and out to Lawrenceville,” says Davis.
The Gwinnett Place CID has laid out a strategy for the redevelopment of the mall into Global Villages over the next 15 years. The CID surveyed people in the area to find out what they wanted from the space, and the answer was overwhelming. “They wanted that walkable, green, sustainable type of environment,” says Allen. “They wanted gathering spaces, they wanted to celebrate the great diversity of Gwinnett County as a whole, but also this very diverse section of Gwinnett County.”
That’s a transformation of this major business district that will take years to come to fruition.
“For the next two years, you’re really not going to see a lot of activity,” says Allen. “There’s a lot of work that’s got to be done behind the scenes related to that mall site.”
Like Sugarloaf, the Gwinnett Place CID is also doing more visible work, while operating behind the scenes to get Global Villages going. “We have a crew out five days a week picking up trash,” Allen says. “If we see a broken window, we’re working to get that repaired because those are small, simple things that we can control now that will set the stage as Global Villages is starting to gain some steam.”
Assembly Atlanta, the redevelopment of the old GM plant in Doraville, is forging its new identity as a film and TV production studio, owned by Gray Media. Phase I, which includes 19 soundstages – many of which are leased to NBCUniversal – opened in October, just days before the actors’ strike ended.
The Assembly CID, currently comprised of one property owner, is working on the roads, water and other public-use infrastructure for the site, which will include greenspace, retail, residential, hotels and office space in future phases.
“All of the things that will be public, that is what the CID will [maintain],” says Nicole Hall, the CID’s administrator. “It’s almost like creating a new city.”
Whether they’re “creating a new city,” turning an old mall into a walkable global village, or simply making it easier to get from point A to point B, the DeKalb and Gwinnett CIDs are improving the landscape and enhancing the lives of people in the region.
