City officials were scheduled to vote on the venture Aug. 26 but postponed the vote to study the project further, city staffers tell GlobeSt.com.
The development would have two million sf of office, commercial and hotel space, up to 200,000 sf of retail, 404 townhomes, 752 apartment units and 868 assisted-living units for senior residents. The proposed 20-acre North Fulton Centre for the Arts would be built within the Cousins development.
Critics of the project maintain it is too commercially dense for a suburban market, area brokers tell GlobeSt.com. Although the city planning department approved the project two weeks ago, planners still attached 65 conditions that have to be met before a groundbreaking could take place.
Among those conditions was the elimination of single-family detached houses, normally the first item a municipality wants to see on a developer's to-do list, brokers tell GlobeSt.com. But in the transportation and commercial corridor of GA 400 and Westside Parkway, planners say higher-density, multifamily housing is in line, rather than single-family residences with yards.
Cousins originally planned to build 50 single-family homes when the REIT submitted its first set of development plans last summer. Although that component is now out, anti-development residential groups have told the city the project will trigger increased road traffic and overcrowded schools.
Cousins founder Tom Cousins bought the 291 acres 30 years ago for an undisclosed price.
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