By. Zoe Seiler
Avondale Estates, GA — Dirt will soon be moving again at the Town Green in Avondale Estates as construction starts on the commercial development, known as the Dale. The city and developers broke ground on the project on Thursday, Dec. 14.
“Let’s start building the thing,” City Manager Patrick Bryant said.
The Town Green project includes the construction of four-acres of the land. About two acres are a park and the other two acres are a market pavilion and commercial development. The site is located along Highway U.S. 278/North Avondale Road between Lake and Oak Streets.
The city broke ground on the Town Green project in June 2021 and the work on the park and market pavilion was completed in 2022.
The commercial development will be completed in about a year and the Town Green will be fronted with retail space, restaurants, and outdoor seating. The Dale will be a 24,000-square-foot mixed-use commercial development. It is being built by ATG Partners, which is the development team of Fabric Developers, LLC, and Healey Weatherholtz Properties, according to a press release.
Fabric Developers developed the two-acre park portion of the Town Green project. Peter Constructive, Inc. will be the contractor for this $13 million development.
“We’ve been working on this project my entire tenure, which just eclipsed five years,” Bryant said. “A lot of hard work, a lot of man-hours have gone into the project at the [city commission] level, staff level, DDA level and the developers themselves. We’ve all worked as a very cohesive team to try and accomplish the shared vision that we all had for this project, which is anchored by our lovely Town Green.”
One goal driving the city commission’s decision-making was to build out the downtown to diversify the city’s tax base, Mayor Jonathan Elmore said.
“The Dale is, and always has been, an anchor and a significant part of our vision for the Town Green. This project will help us achieve our goals,” Elmore said. “This new development symbolizes progress with purpose and reflects the vision created over many years with lots and lots of community input.”
The city’s 2014 downtown master plan included converting this acreage into a park. In 2018, Avondale launched an open, public process to determine the best use of the land. At the time, the city received about 13 designs and had thought about taking pieces of each, designing and combining them. But there was one entry – concept No. nine – that stood out and ultimately became the plan for the Town Green.
The concept was submitted by Avondale resident and local architect Sheri Locke in May 2019. Locke’s design included commercial buildings next to the road and a public green space behind them, Decaturish previously reported. The city signed the memorandum of understanding with Fabric Developers for the project later in 2019.
SSOE, the engineering and architecture firm that hatched the original concept design of the Town Green, master planned the site, and designed the performance pavilion, has created an adaptation of Avondale’s distinctive Tudor style for the commercial buildings. The two-story development is designed to maintain a human scale along North Avondale Road, complementing the improvements that will be made to U.S. 278 including the 10-foot path for pedestrians and bikes.
The Downtown Development Authority was excited to be part of a project like this, DDA Chair Dave Deiters said.
“The DDA’s state-mandated mission is to promote the revitalization and redevelopment of our downtown, and this kind of public-private partnership is exactly the type of project for which we exist,” Deiters said.
Deiters added that the project is an example of placemaking and the restaurants and shops will help energize downtown Avondale.
“This project does prove the catalyst impact of the Town Green. It adds to our downtown’s identify as a shopping, dining and entertainment destination. It itself will be a catalyst to attract even more business,” he said. “All of these things will ultimately help achieve that I believe very strongly in, which is a balanced and diversified tax base.”
Read the article on Decaturish.
