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ACC12_SEC13Booster

ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

{{"...the third an outer perimeter. Fortunately, areas north of Alpharetta were not as developed as in Gwinnett."}}

Georgia was not able to proceed with the Outer Perimeter because of widespread objection (and outrage) from the public as it was the state's support of the Outer Perimeter (particularly the Northern Arc portion of the project that runs through some areas of intense political power and influence in Forsyth, Cherokee and Bartow counties in the Northern suburbs) that got the long-ruling Georgia Democrats kicked out of power and pole-vaulted the then up-and-coming Georgia Republicans into power and into firm control of the state's political scene back in 2002.

Also it was the seemingly sparcely-developed outer-suburban and then-exurban areas north of Alpharetta that led the public rejection of the proposed Outer Perimeter and Northern Arc road projects because of the fear that the proposed road was being used by the state to help political insiders make a profit off of land that was owned close to the proposed route of the road and help well-connected developers spread more of the sprawl and overdevelopment that has turned Gwinnett and Cobb counties from bucolic outer-suburban counties into increasingly overcrowded urban districts of Metro Atlanta.

Ironically (or not), it is the overdeveloped and overcrowded county of Gwinnett that has kept the right-of-way of the highly-controversial and highly-unpopular old Northern Arc free of new development because of local plans by Gwinnett County government to eventually extend Sugarloaf Parkway from 316 over to P'tree Industrial Blvd.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

{{"...Second, Marta - Yep Marta made it's way to back and west side of Perimeter Mall significantly removed from direct mall access (a lesson learned from Lenox Mall)"}}

The problem with MARTA is that it came about in an era of racial polarization and very-high crime rates in the City of Atlanta (much-higher crime rates than today as the City of Atlanta was home to the largest cluster of high-crime public housing projects in the nation south of Washington DC and east of Texas during MARTA's first 3 decades of existence) which meant that the often-derided fears of a MARTA bringing crime to the suburbs from an inner-city filled with some of the most crime-ridden housing projects in the nation were in fact somewhat understandably justified.

Just as there are political interests that don't want MARTA extended out to Gwinnett for fear that it will bring crime and blight from the City of Atlanta and DeKalb, there's also the reality that political interests in the City of Atlanta, South Fulton and DeKalb counties don't want to extend MARTA out to historically predominantly-white and suburban Gwinnett and Cobb counties because they don't want to relinquish the political power and control they have over MARTA.

The only way that increased transit service (bus and rail transit) would ever come online outside of Fulton and DeKalb is if the state played a greater role in managing and operating transit (by taking over MARTA and making it a regional transit entity), something that just simply not going to happen in the immediate future in this transit-averse statewide political climate.

Though, increased transit is likely to come online farther down the road because of the Feds desire to see increased transit usage in a road infrastructure-challenged region in which transit use is extremely low and because of a severe lack of desire for large-scale road expansion in one of the 10-largest metro regions in the nation.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

{{"Effectively, this is a culmination of three missed opportunities. Unfortunately, some will refer to this as incorrect decisions...First, a 400 like toll. When constructed, people felt that businesses would leave such a toll. It did not. More affluent home owners, renters, and businesses continued to move up Roswell, up Alpharetta, up to Cumming."}}

Tolls can be very-effective ways of financing new road construction, but tolls are extremely unpopular in the political climate of the state of Georgia.

The only reason why a toll was put on Georgia 400 was because of an extreme lack of transportation funding, even back during the boom years of the late 1980's when the 400 Extension project was approved by the state (under pressure from land spectulation and real estate development interests, of course, who wanted the GA 400 Extension as a way to move traffic directly up to Buckhead, the Perimeter Center area and North Fulton from the Airport and Downtown).

Putting a toll on GA 400 was the only way to get the road built financially seeing as though there was no funding available to get the road built from the proceeds of the gas tax at the time.

Promising to remove the toll from the road after it was built was the only way to get the road built politically as tolls are generally very-unpopular in the political climate in Georgia.

If the use of tolls to build a new road is politically-unpopular, then placing tolls on an untolled existing road is extremely-unpopular (as was witnessed with the implementation of tolls on the existing HOV lanes on I-85 back in late 2011).

The only reason that tolls are being imposed on existing untolled HOV-2 lanes is because the Georgia Department of Transportation now subscribes heavily to the theory of "INDUCED DEMAND" (this term is very-important because look for it to keep coming up in these conversations about HOT lane expansion as all new lanes added to freeways are planned to be toll lanes by GDOT from here on out) after a series of very high-profile public rejections of major roadbuilding proposals.

The only way that tolls would ever be imposed on existing freeways and Interstates like I-85 is through federal imposition, which is coming as the Feds have openly stated that they highly-desire and firmly intend to boost transit usage in the currently transit-averse Atlanta region over the long-term.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Leaders find encouragement in community, even with failing mall

Leaders find encouragement in community, even with failing mall

Anyone who thinks that Gwinnett Place Mall is going to return to its former glory of yesteryear (circa-1984 to 1999) is kidding themselves.

In the days since GPM was the dominant suburban shopping mall in Northeast Metro Atlanta, 4 other shopping malls have opened in Gwinnett County along with the rise and proliferation all over the region of the one-stop-shop Wal-Mart Supercenters and the advent of virtual/online shopping on the Internet, not to mention that the average per-capita income in the area has declined noticeably.

There has also been much talk of there being increasing interest by real estate developers to develop Braselton into the next big super-suburb with a concentration on building heavy commercial development around the Hwy 211 and Hwy 53 junctions on I-85 which is a development scenario that could conceivably put the newer Mall of Georgia and surrounding area at-risk of a Gwinnett Place Mall-style decline in coming years.

Gwinnett Place Mall really was a sight to behold in its heyday back in the 1980's and early 1990's. But that was nearly 30 years ago and malls like GPM are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Old-fashioned enclosed regional shopping malls like Gwinnett Place are dinosaurs in this retail environment of lifestyle centers, Wal-Mart Supercenters and online retail. To think that a severely-declining and increasingly out-of-fashion Gwinnett Place has even the slightest chance of returning to its glory years is pure fallacy at this point.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Mr. Galt, I don't blame you one bit for wanting to leave the county before things get worse...And believe me, with Gwinnett County's population quickly speeding towards the 1 million mark (842,000 people now live in the county at the latest count), things are going to get worse.

With a population of 842,000, things are bad enough, so one can only imagine how things will be when the county's population reaches 1 million, probably sometime in the next decade.

Because if you think that HOT Lanes are bad, just wait until they hit us with HOT ROADS with congestion pricing in the form of adjustable tolls on ALL LANES of I-85 (and GA 316 and I-985 and Hwy 78) that are well above $10.00 per-trip EACH WAY into and out of Atlanta.

The tolls on ALL LANES of the freeway system is definitely coming as the i-85 HOT lanes are but only a demo for a much-larger and much more-encompassing system of congestion pricing that is going to be used to push drivers off of the roads and onto bus and rail transit lines.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Unfortunately, you are very much correct. Except that it is worse than people not getting up off the couch to go and vote.

Because Gwinnett County has grown so fast (nearly 800,000 people have moved into the county over the past four decades) most of the population hails from somewhere else, meaning that most of the newcomers (many of whom have been lower-income as of late) from other states and countries don't even know or care who their local, state and national elected officials are.

Heck, in some local and state elections in Gwinnett, voter turnout rates have been as low as 6%, SIX PERCENT!!!

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Crowd light at HOT lanes open house

Exactly...They knew EXACTLY what they are doing by meetings during the teeth of the rush hour when everyone is stuck in the traffic that they've intentionally made worse with their lanes.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

It's not just the economy that has not been kind to Gwinnett Place, but also Father Time.

GPM was in steep decline long before the Great Recession hit, the economic downturn has likely just finished off what demographics and overbuilding were already taking a very-heavy toll on.

The Atlanta region local custom of overbuilding commercial and residential development further and further out away from the urban core along with demographics also has contributed heavily to Gwinnett Place's steep decline as GPM was in big trouble the day that the Mall of Georgia opened in 1999.

The opening of Sugarloaf Mills Mall (formerly Discover Mills) only a few miles up the road only served to speed-up Gwinnett Place's precipitous decline and the emergence of the Forum on Peachtree and the Hwy 124 Corridor/Avenue Webb Gin have likely brought about the end of Gwinnett Place as we once knew it.

Despite the heady and heavy growth that has pole-vaulted the population in Gwinnett to over 825,000 people, the Gwinnett County market is likely oversaturated with retail because most of the newcomers to the county in the last several years (roughly since the 1996 Olympics) have been those with relatively-lower incomes unlike the higher-middle and higher income residents who made up most of the migration into the county before 1990.

The overdevelopment of shopping areas has left a county with declining per-capita incomes with 5 major shopping areas trying to compete for a limited share of affluent shoppers that has been made even more limited by a soft economy.

Looks like Gwinnett Place is the odd man out because of its relatively-advanced age.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

Unfortunately, it looks like Gwinnett Place Mall is the very next contestant on the Dead Malls website.

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ACC12_SEC13Booster 2 months, 4 weeks ago on Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

Belk to close at Gwinnett Place

When Gwinnett Place Mall opened in 1984, there were roughly only about 200,000 or so people in all of Gwinnett County.

For about 15 years, Gwinnett Place was basically the "only-game-in-town" as there were no other malls or dominant shopping areas in the county until the Mall of Georgia opened in 1999.

Fast forward to the present day and, as of 2013 there are more than 825,000 people living in Gwinnett County (roughly 625,000 more people in the county than when GPM first opened nearly 30 years ago back in 1984...a population increase of well over 300 PERCENT) and four other major shopping areas in the county (Sugarloaf Mills Mall, The Mall of Georgia in Buford, The Forum on Peachtree in P'tree Corners, and the Hwy. 124 Corridor in Snellville), not to mention numerous one-stop-shop Wal-Mart Supercenters, which were not found in abundance in the area in 1984, and the Internet, which did not exist 30 years ago when GPM opened and dominated the Northeast Metro Atlanta market.

The same stark and dramatic demographic changes that are happening to Gwinnett County and Metro Atlanta as a whole that are turning once-distant upscale suburbs into urban districts have been going on in aging suburbs around places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for many years.

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