There were two interesting items presented at the Planning Commission meeting last night.
The first item; a movie theater is going to take over the old Parisian big box space at North Point Mall which has been empty since 2007 (!). That is cool! They are converting it from two stories to one to make room for a 12 screen theater. First run movies they say. I was kinda disappointed to hear there would be no entrance directly into the mall though. It was said due to security reasons, they prefer one point of access and that one point will actually be right outside a mall door I think. That is not too bad. They will also reconfigure the parking lot a bit to have a drop off lane. I don’t think they said when it would be open. I will get that info at the Council meeting coming up in a couple of weeks.
The second item is the revisit of Goodwill for a store location in Alpharetta. The site they are looking at is on North Main Street right across from Campbell Tire. Now, I should state that the applicant (property owner) emphatically denies that “Goodwill” is who he is trying to get there. I do not believe him at all. I was there when Goodwill tried to get approval for the Cogburn location in 2008 and I know what their deal looks like.
My take is this… horrible idea. Not a good location for many reasons. The community will fight that tooth and nail. He should pull it off the table right away and not waste his time and money.
The 6+ acres site is already zoned C2 which means he can build a 40,000sf strip center there now if he likes with no further approvals needed. It would be hard to say a strip center would be better than a thrift store, but at least the structure of the businesses would be much different and more “community friendly” I guess. One thing the residents around there should realize (they may already) is the fact that retail is not doing anywhere near what it needs to be for any developer to go spend money to build another strip center. That would be very foolish even if he COULD get funding for it. What lender in their right mind would fund construction for a strip center in this economy unless it is completely pre-leased? And believe me, I know THAT is not going to happen either. Especially not in that location.
My bet… It will stay a green space for quite a while longer like it is right now.
The Council meeting on 2/27 should be an “entertainment value”.
By the way… the Planning Commission voted to approve the theater and denied the “thrift store”.
