Archive for the 'Crabapple' Category
Johns Creek Walk Means It: Live There and You Can Walk to Dinner
categories: Buyers, Crabapple, Johns Creek Real Estate, New Construction
When was the last time that you walked to get ice cream after dinner at home? When was the last time that you walked home from the bar after happy hour on Friday evening?
If you answered “Absolutely Never”, I’d believe you.
Around Alpharetta and the other cities in North Fulton – and around most of suburbia for that matter – we drive everywhere, usually because we have to. We live in neighborhoods with one road in and one road out and the only way to the grocery story is via Chevrolet.
We are starting to get some options, though. “Mixed use” developments are all the rage and starting to make their way onto the North Fulton real estate scene. Let’s not kid ourselves: As quaint as the idea sounds we aren’t going to get rid of our cars anytime soon and all of a sudden start walking and biking everywhere as if this were Manhattan or someplace in Europe. However, the occasional walk to a restaurant or shop would certainly be a move in the right direction and one of the aspects of life that is lost when you move from “in town” to the suburbs, or as we say in Atlanta, “outside the Perimeter.”
One of the best new examples of mixed use is Johns Creek Walk at State Bridge and Highway 141 being developed by Atlantic Realty Partners. While of Phase 1 is still underway, the finished product will consist of a mixture of single family “Manor Homes”, townhomes, apartments and retail/restaurant space. There are also resident amenities that include a nice pool, a 24 hour lounge/cyber cafe, meeting space and an exercise room.
Single Family Homes and Townhomes
In Phase 1, there are seventeen single family lots and currently only one Manor Home available, while two others are under construction at the mid $600k price point. There are six unsold vacant lots still available.
Thirteen of the 44 townhomes are sold. These are Artisan and Craftsman style townhomes with sloping roof lines, stone and brick exteriors and shake accents.
Apartments
There are also 210 units of apartments, which is the first apartment development in the Johns Creek area in 10–12 years. Local residents resist apartment buildings because of “the clientele” they attract, but the fact is that a mature real estate market needs to offer housing solutions for all segments of the economy and with the completion of the new Emory Hospital in Johns Creek and all the peripheral medical offices that are developing, there is a greater need for apartments.
Retail Space
My favorite part of Johns Creek Walk is the combination of the retail space to the residential space, which puts the “mix” in mixed use. There are clothing, children’s and computer stores; framing and art shops, a small grocery, a real estate office and a couple restaurants and bars. The sports bar has a TV in each booth so you can watch exactly which game you are interested in. Plus, Johns Creek Walk is catty corner to Super H Mart where you could easy walk to the grocery to to get your dried octopus and some kim chee.
Best of all, there is a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream store which I can only hope stays open late for those end of day chocolate issues. Image how easy it would be for a man if he lived in Johns Creek Walk with his pregnant wife. He could walk around the corner to fulfill her ice cream craving and would be only one mile from the hospital when the moment of truth arrived.
From a retailer’s perspective, the greatest thing about the retail space is that there are apartments in the back of the retail shops. This can either be used as a “back office” or for a true apartment for someone who wanted to actually combine their work and residential space or for someone who lived further away but found it convenient to literally sleep over at the store during the week, for instance.
Crabapple
Elsewhere in North Fulton, Crabapple has a chance to become more mixed use. I’m hopeful, but cautiously optimistic. As part of the new Crabapple Crossing development, there is some retail planned, but nothing other than an Italian restaurant, a dry cleaners (like we need another one of those!) and a women’s fitness studio has opened. I’m waiting for the ice cream store…or better yet, a gelato store. Then, I’ll actually park my car and walk around, but until then I’m still just driving through.
Vickery
Just north of Alpharetta, in Cumming, is another good, new example of mixed use, the Vickery community that includes awesome parks, amenities, retail and even a YMCA. It also has gelato!
In Alpharetta, Prospect Park, which is under construction at Old Milton and GA-400 will be mixed use and the Roswell East development at Holcomb Bridge and GA-400, which is currently “in hibernation” was also proposed to be mixed use with a lot of actual office space included in the design.
Mixed use is clearly a development model that is here to stay and making headway in North Fulton. Developers see it as a way to build higher density, which is necessary given the higher land costs and lack of any remaining large parcels of land. Politicians like it because more new development means more tax base and mixed use potentially means less car trips. Anything to alleviate traffic is good for politicians and the public alike. I’d be curious to know what you think of mixed use. Would you prefer to live in a “traditional neighborhood” or do you like the idea of being to run out for Ben and Jerry’s without the car keys?
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 4 Comments »
Why Can’t I Find Johns Creek or Milton; Will Someone Please Give Me a Map!
categories: Crabapple, Johns Creek Real Estate, Milton Real Estate
Recently there was an article in a local newspaper about a Milton resident who found a lost dog. No big deal, right? Well, the resident wound up bemoaning Milton as a “sorry town” because he couldn’t figure out how to contact the dog catcher. He went on to say: “I don’t know where I live…Where is Milton?”
I don’t agree with a newspaper editor using one resident, who in my opinion doesn’t fairly represent the general population because heck, this guy doesn’t even have a computer, to characterize an entire city. And, I don’t agree that Milton is a “sorry town.” However, I do agree with the general point that was trying to be made.
Where Are Milton and Johns Creek?
Milton – and Johns Creek for that matter – are suffering from identity crises and some growing pains as new cities. However, I also believe that residents of these cities have a responsibility to inform themselves. If you have a computer, it is not that hard.
I’ll make the point slightly differently. We should all know where we live. Period. We might not know exactly where the city lines are as we drive around, but we should know if our house is in Milton, Alpharetta, Roswell or Johns Creek. There are only four possibilities – it is not that hard. And we should know the general location of the cities.
For instance, Johns Creek is the eastern most portion of North Fulton County, mostly east of Jones Bridge Road. Milton is in the northwestern corner of North Fulton, etc. This is simple geography and basic civic responsibility. Here are some maps for reference: Map of City of Milton, GA Map of City of Johns Creek, GA
Emotional Centers Are What is Missing?
My point would be that while the physical boundaries of the cities should be well known, the emotional centers of the new cities, Milton and Johns Creek, are missing. Roswell has its Roswell Square and Old Mill historic areas. Alpharetta, at least, has its Main Street in “downtown” Alpharetta, although that is admittedly stretching the definition of “emotional center”. It is a physical place, though, and the Alpharetta City Hall is located there. Milton and Johns Creek don’t even have that. They are more a state of mind and a physical affiliation. Both new cities currently have their “city halls” in office complexes and Johns Creek’s City Hall and Municipal Court are not even in the same complex.
As far a service offerings by the new cities, some residents understandably still don’t know where to turn when they need help. Remember that we still all live in Fulton County and the County still is responsible for certain important functions: water and sewer service; judicial services; health and human services; and, some environmental services including animal control.
The cities are now responsible for public safety (police and fire), community development and land use planning and some local public works like parks, traffic engineering, road maintenance. The major impetus to incorporating as cities was to have control over local land use and to improve the service levels for public safety.
The challenge now is to communicate to residents who to call for what. My experience with both cities is that they have done a good job making information available via their web sites (www.cityofmiltonga.us and www.johnscreekga.gov) and they have main phone numbers where you can speak to a person or the call is quickly returned. I left a voicemail on the City of Milton’s main number early one evening and at 9AM sharp the next morning someone called me back with the answer to my question.
What is in a Symbol?
The larger challenge is creating literal and symbolic “hearts” for these two cities. Even little Crabapple has the silos. What do Milton and Johns Creek have? If you look at the masthead on Milton’s website, the graphic is of a playground and concession stand at Hopewell Baseball field, some horses and the clubhouse at White Columns. When the concession stand is a good as it gets, there is a problem.
Johns Creek’s graphic symbols are just as allusive: a strip mall, twisted tree trunk, golf carts, street sign (saying Johns Creek Parkway) and a girl on a slide. That could be anywhere.
While the question posed by our Milton resident, “Where is Milton?”, seems simple on the surface, the real test of the new cities is whether they can carve out an identity of their own and create local symbols to reinforce that identity.
[Credit for dogcatcher graphic to Dean Yeagle. Thanks.]
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
Is Crabapple Heading Toward Rotten Apple?
categories: Crabapple
The picture above is NOT what Crabapple looks like today. Rather, it was the vision.
This is the cover picture on the Crabapple Crossroads Community Plan, approved in June, 2003 and it is the work of photo editing.
The actual photo is below, after I reverse engineered it and removed the fabricated foreground.
What I don’t have is a picture of what this intersection looks like today, but suffice it to say that we got the proverbial ”finger” from Fulton County.
The county, in its last dying acts before responsibility was passed to the new City of Milton last Fall, authorized a number of building permits in Crabapple that essentially ignored the Crabapple Plan.
This plan had been worked on by untold number of local citizens since 1999 and offered something different than the typical suburban development that dominates the area with “one way in and one way out” subdivisions. For all intents and purposes the plan has been completely ignored.
Frankly, I’m ticked off. This is a case study of how government produces one outcome while common sense AND the opinion of EVERY person I’ve spoken with says just the opposite. It makes you really wonder how the decisions were actually made.
It is not just that some planning bureaucrats in Atlanta made 12th hour decisions that we must live with - sure, I’d don’t like the feeling of not being in control of issues that affect us so much. 
What really bothers me is that we are not talking about ordering a bad meal at a restaurant, something that can easily be undone. We are talking about permanent changes that have now been made and cannot be undone even thought City of Milton Mayor Lockwood says he wants to stop and evaluate what has taken place.
Not a single tree remains on most of the land in the northwest quadrant of Crabapple. Earth movers have been leveling every contour of the land for the past three months. The picture on the right is from early in the development.
Traffic is bad and only going to get worse; and I don’t know a single person who is happy with how things have played out in Crabapple. I just don’t know what can be done now that so much has already taken place.
The real pity though is the lost opportunity to create a community reflecting the character of the area while meeting the demands of modern life. The original Crabapple Plan called for design work to be done by Lew Oliver of Whole Town Solutions. Oliver, from Roswell, is one of the national leaders in New Urbanism, a school of design that highly values walkability, connectivity and sustainability. Oliver has been involved in developing such highly regarded communities such as Rosemary Beach, Celebration and closer to home, Vickery in South Forsyth.
Granted, Vickery was developed from a clean slate. Transforming Crabapple into a functional mixed use community certainly is not without challenges. But at this point, we don’t have the luxury of the experience of someone like Oliver. We are currently in the hands of John Wieland and the bulldozers. No one really even knows what is being built and there is no info on the Wieland website.
At least we are free of the shortsightedness from downtown Atlanta.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
New Crabapple Slab Homes Offer Great Skate Park
categories: Buyers, Crabapple, New Construction
Alpharetta and Milton are not just for horses and open space. Skateboarders are staking a claim in nearby Crabapple.
As higher density development approaches, signs of urban decay are alreay cropping up ;-> As if heelying in the grocery store were not enough, now there is a skateboard park in Crabapple! (My tongue is in my cheek you know…)
I witnessed the scene pictured on the left driving home Friday evening: a dozen or so of North Fulton’s most industrious young men who had converted new construction at Crabapple Crossing into a makeshift skate park.
Here’s the choice. You can pay $500,000 for a 4 bedroom home on a slab with a two-car garage - or you can turn it into a skate park. These young men hope that sales slump and their “park” is preserved because skating havens don’t abound in horse county.
The Crabapple Crossing neighborhood is one of a new kind of development in the area. Crabapple Crossroads by Williamscraft is across the street and offers a similar concept. Both these developments offer higher density, mixed use (major buzz word these days) communities with a focus on building “community” in the neighborhood by including sidewalks, courtyards and front porches. Perhaps that is just a way of putting a positive spin on higher density, but with the price of land, higher densities are inevitable.
Crabapple Crossing will have 21 single family homes and 16 garden homes, which are attached to each other. There will also be some commercial development as part of Crabapple Crossing and the vision is that a walking community will develop more within Crabapple, which consists mainly of a few antique shops and Miltons, a new restaurant that is getting good reviews from the locals.
Williamscraft goes so far as to say that, if you want “a little bit of NYC lifestyle in peaceful and placid 
surroundings”, then you should consider their community. You can get a Crabapple brownstone (shown on right) for only about $460,000 versus a few million in NYC…what a bargain!
Whether or not buyers elect for this product is still uncertain. My wife, who I must first say has lived (and liked living) in NYC, likes the concept. There is a community in South Forsyth county called Vickery that is also along these lines with mixed residential, commercial, green space, classical architecture, etc. and my wife likes this community, too, but that may also be because of the gelato shop.
Is my wife is typical of buyers? I bet not. However, she does like Martha Stewarts’ new home designs and I bet she is close to the mark that those will be hot sellers. However, Alpharetta/Crabapple/Milton is not New York City buy the longest stretch of the imagination as much as people want to embrace the romantic vision of pedestrians strolling along brick sidewalks ducking into interesting shops and bookstores and then relaxing on the patio for a coffee or cool drink.
My take at this time is that as idyllic as the vision is, the automobile is king in these parts, not the nikes. We don’t walk anywhere. Walking to the mailbox in August is about as far as anyone goes. I’m afraid to report that people in my neighborhood even drive their cars to the pool and tennis courts in the summer. Don’t want to get too much exercise or get too hot.
As far as homes go, what people tell me they want these days is space and privacy. They might not want the yard work that goes along with an acre lot, but they like the privacy and room for their kids to play.
How long it will take for Crabapple Crossing and Crabapple Crossroads to sell out is still to be seen. It will sell out; eventually everything sells it seems. John Wieland Homes is also building a new development in the area, which will add even more inventory. What is for certain is that the face of Crabapple is forever changed and there are going to be more people living there. For now, though, the boys are enjoying their skate park.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
I Can’t See the Forest for the Houses
categories: Crabapple, New Construction
I’m a self professed tree-hugger. Maybe it is because I’m from Denver, where we really don’t have many trees, that I value them so much. My tree pedigree includes planting trees in British Columbia one summer after college for a reforestation company. On an average day, I’d plant about 750 trees; for the whole summer I figure that I planted about 100,000 trees. That was hard work but I’m proud I have those 100,000 trees to my name.
I’ve also ordered the “Ten Free Trees” you get with a National Arbor Day Foundation membership, even though I had no where to plant them in my own yard. I wound up planting them surreptitiously in public spaces along roads and in parks - I don’t even remember where.
As each of my children were born, I planted a tree in their honor: My son is a bald cypress; my eldest daughter is a magnolia; the baby girl is a redbud. Since the kids had trees, I figured my wife and I should too, so she is a weeping willow, which she requested so don’t think I’m making any sort of commentary with my tree selection. I’m a dogwood which I don’t know is fitting for me or not, but I love them so what the heck.
Which brings me to my point: The face of Crabapple has been forever changed by the clear cutting
for the most recent of the THREE new Crabapple developments. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t oppose development. I’m sure that this latest development ($400k townhomes and $700k custom homes which is still un-named as far as I’m aware) by John Weiland Homes will turn out to be a very nice community, but do we have to cut down ALL the trees in order to build a house? Plus, when they demolished the old ranch home that was along Birmingham Highway, they bulldozed about 20-30 beautiful dogwoods. Each spring that old homestead was fireworks. Maybe I’m just bitter.
The tree cover in Fulton County is down from 56% in 1991 to 48% in 2005. This according to Professor Liz Kramer at the University of Georgia Natural Resources Spacial Analysis Laboratory. Every DAY 54 acres of trees are taken down in the Atlanta metro area. HALF of those acres are replaced with “impervious surfaces”, that is driveways, rooftops, parking lots, etc. We truly are paving paradise.
North Fulton is bad enough, but I had an opportunity to recently review current satellite imagry of Forsyth County. It is simply amazing what it looks like from space: a checkerboard of green and red. The green represents the existing trees and the red is the Georgia red clay that is all that is left after all the trees are cut down.
One of the marketing slogans, and frankly one of the actual selling features of The City of Atlanta is that it is “The City Among the Trees”. Fly into Hartsfield airport and that is immediately obvious. The City of Alpharetta also makes claims in this vein. Alpharetta is a Tree City USA, as awarded by the Arbor Day Foundation and has been for seventeen straight years.
So how can all the trees be getting cut down and the cities still claim to be tree lovers? Builders have to protect or replace ”specimen” trees only. If there isn’t enough room to replant, the builders can make a contribution to the Tree Bank and recently Alpharetta planted 382 trees with bank contributions.
The problem is that while we are preserving specimens we are losing the woods, the solid acres of trees that give the area its character, provide privacy and are easy on the eyes, not to mention home to many critters. At the end of the day, it is the woods - and hills - that give North Fulton (and particularly Milton and parts of Roswell) its differentiation from any other American suburb. Cut down all the trees and build cookie cutter and we could be in Indiana, Illinois or Iowa but with humidity and NASCAR.
There are some neighborhoods in the area where you still have the “woodsy feeling.” Those that come immediately to mind are Providence Lake, Sable Point, Stonebrook Farms, The Hermitage and Enniskerry. In these neighborhoods, the developers figured out how to build among the trees. I don’t know why that is so hard when it so obviously has a good affect on sales. If I had a dollar for every time a client told me that they liked a house be were disappointed that all the trees had been cut down.
Last weekend I was visiting friends in Roswell and was driving through Litchfield Hundred subdivision. There is a new section called Litchfield Overlook in the back and we were checking it out. My son piped up, “I like the older part better. There are lots more trees to play in. Big houses and lots of space.”
We should just let the kids run the zoning board and pass building ordinances.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 4 Comments »
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