By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

Redevelopment of downtown Roswell is one step closer to actually happening, if last week’s Council workshop was any indication.

Council met Monday night with members of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) to come up with plans for a “charrette” to help redevelop the area around Roswell’s City Hall, the old Grove Way community, an area bordered by Norcross St. to the north, Atlanta St. to the west and Grove Way to the south.

“This is the historic African-American community in Roswell,” said Mayor Jere Wood of the area to be considered, explaining its history and importance to the ARC. “There are two churches and they have been in the community for one hundred years… The area has a lot of potential and we’re all excited for what you come up with.”

Unfortunately for the ARC (and any developers), the Grove Way Community is a hodge-podge of owners and terrain that will make any redevelopment tricky. The City of Roswell, Fulton County, the Housing Authority and the Child Development Agency as well as residents own the many plots of land in the area, and the land is very mountainous thanks to Big Creek and Waller Creek. The charrette will hopefully take care of many of these problems by getting the local residents and owners on board with any plans.

 A charrette is, “An intensive multiple-day planning exercise,” said Stephen Cosby, of the ARC. “Architects and planners sketch out ideas in real time. It’s a real time planning exercise,” with developers, architects, business leaders, community leaders and residents working together to create a vision for what the development should look like. Cosby suggested the Grove Way charrette be a two-day seminar, to be held in September. The ARC will be working from ideas provided by a Livable Communities Initiative (LCI) study done by the ARC last year covering all of historic Roswell, with an aim toward interconnectivity.

Local architect and community leader Lew Oliver was heavily involved in the last charrette Roswell held, as well as the LCI study, and had several suggestions to be considered by the ARC in their new one.

“As someone who participates in at least two charrettes a month, you can have a nice little chat and have some tea and hold hands in two days, but you can’t get any real work done in less than a week,” said Oliver.

“The ramifications of what we’re doing here filter into a much, much bigger area,” Oliver he continued. Several suggestions were given by councilmembers on how to possibly improve the area, including linking roads to the south and east to provide for better access, the consequences of which might be increased traffic on roads such as Oxbo or Grimes Bridge. Redevelopment might also shift the downtown economic focus from Canton Street to this new area. Oliver said that all of this must be considered when developing a plan for the area. 

 
Oliver stressed the need for a real master plan, not just rezoning or a simple overlay district, saying, “We have had overlay districts in Roswell for about a decade and, frankly, it’s really hard to have something to come out of that.”

He suggested a ‘form-based code,’ as opposed to Roswell’s nortoriously restrictive codes. “What we need is to envision the perfect city center and designate where the buildings go. “This is how great cities were built. Savannah would never have been built, nor Charleston, if they [their city leaders] had been restrictive the way we do here. We don’t need to restrict, we need to be proactive.”

Expect to see more about Roswell’s redevelopment in the coming months.