Suwanee City Council approves plan for $12 million park

The area will see a realignment of Main Street, which will shift around the park and exit onto Suwanee Dam Road at an existing traffic signal in hopes of improving the safety and traffic flow, which would allow the median break on Suwanee Dam Road to be closed.

About 15 acres along the existing Brushy Creek Greenway will remain undisturbed.

City officials recently sought feedback from residents and collected more than 1,000 in-person and online surveys of park users. There were four planning workshops, two design charrettes and other meetings and presentations.

The new park design is influenced by the style and quality of Town Center Park, but city officials said it won’t be a replica. Plans call for a a more prominent pedestrian connection to rework City Hall Park into a linkage of the two sites. The topography of Town Center Park West will allow it to overlook Town Center.

“The success of Town Center Park has exceeded all expectations,” Suwanee Mayor Jimmy Burnette said in a press release. “The park draws over 200,000 visitors annually to events, as well as regularly serving our 18,000 citizens. The new Town Center Park West will help ease the demand on the existing park and surrounding community.”

The park will feature a mixture of urban and rural environments, including:

• A roughly 900-foot, elevated signature bridge for pedestrian and bike use, which will span the entire park and cross an approximate one-acre water feature.

• An open terrace plaza and lawn area at the peak of the park’s elevation that will include several small-scale micro-business sites

• An extension of the existing Playtown Suwanee geared toward older children, which will expand the age range of Playtown Suwanee

• Sandpit volleyball courts

• A public art piece

Reprinted from Gwinnett Daily Post by Mark Farner

Three Hottest Neighborhoods in Atlanta Area for 2013

Redfin Identifies Up-and-Coming Areas In and Around Metro Atlanta

By Mike Benzie | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Thu, Jan 24, 2013

Looking to relocate in the ATL? Roswell, Smyrna, and Suwanee were cited as the hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods in theAtlanta area for 2013, according to a recent survey of Redfin real estate agents.

The online real estate site's study examined trends in 16 markets across the country.

In Atlanta, all three are not neighborhoods as much as they are cities or small towns, and all are outside the Atlanta city limits.

Roswell was ranked at the top of the list for metro Atlanta, Roswell, ranked second in the market.  Ranking third (behind Roswell and Smyrna) was Suwanee, a small town about 30 miles north of Atlanta. Suwanee has been previously applauded in reports by Money Magazine and Kiplinger.

"Suwanee has easy access to freeways to downtown Atlanta, and there are a lot of high-tech jobs in the area," said Redfin agent Will Fassinger. "The new town center, which was completed in 2009, also offers employment opportunities. Move-in ready homes that go on the market generally sell within a week."

The hottest neighborhoods were judged on shrinking inventory and rising prices and sales compared to the rest of the market, and the study also looked at 2012 data to see how those areas have changed.

"The results surprised us," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman in the report. "The hottest neighborhoodsaren't the well-known bastions of privilege. They're once-gritty urban areas and far-flung suburbs with school districts on the rise."

Nationally, nine of the hottest 10 neighborhoods were on the West Coast -- the Chicago area of Logan Square the one exception. No. 1 nationally was Highland Park in Los Angeles, where agents found a 48-percent drop in listings combined with a 73-percent bump in sales and a 31-percent bump in price.

Mike Benzie has covered sports and features for major online media organizations as well as several newspapers across the Southeast.

Kiplinger

10 Great Cities to Raise Your Kids
Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real-estate/T006-S001-10-great-cities-to-raise-your-kids/index.html#yxIkWAALQyDz9sRQ.99 

#3 Suwanee

City population: 15,355 
Average family income: $104,813 
Percentage of families with children: 40.3% 
Metro-area spending per student: $6,008
Public playgrounds: 4 

Suwanee sits in Atlanta's moneyed northern suburbs: Think big yards and small crime rates. The town's highly regarded schools make it a particularly good place for raising children. The education non-profit GreatSchools.org rates every school in the district an enviable 9 or 10 (out of 10). Kids in northern Georgia also benefit from proximity to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Lake Lanier, a reservoir popular with boaters and vacationers. The city itself boasts a massive public playground called PlayTown and a downtown fountain called Big Splash, where kids are encouraged to play. (One of the rules: "Smile!") 

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad can expect low living costs and solid incomes at one of the many manufacturing firms that call the area home. Atlanta is a commutable 45 minutes away.
Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real-estate/T006-S001-10-great-cities-to-raise-your-kids/index.html#yxIkWAALQyDz9sRQ.99 

Best Places to Live” Top 100

Suwanee #10

Six years ago the residents of Suwanee voted to more than double their property taxes. The payoff: a boost from 28 acres of green space to more than 270, and a feeling of investment in their hometown. That's abundantly clear at the newly developed Town Center. Built on a heavily trafficked downtown corner, it meshes park space, retail and office properties and housing into one multiuse plaza - and residents have embraced it in a big way. Housing is reasonable, and schools are topnotch.

Though the town has planned recent development deliberately, the area around Interstate 85, which runs through Suwanee's southeastern corner, lacks for aesthetics but not for congestion. Still, the rest of the city has a lot to offer.

Other Highlights:
Colleges, universities and professional schools (within 30 miles) = 25
Junior colleges and technical institutes (within 30 miles) = 19