CUMMING, Ga. — Following years of planning and development, ground was broken Wednesday morning for Cumming’s proposed City Center.
“In my mind, it’s been coming for about three years,” Cumming Mayor Troy Brumbalow said. “We've been working on it with the city since I was elected a year-and-a-half ago. We got all the plans done finally and all the design work and happy to be able to break ground.”
He said it’s been a slow process, partly because of all the agencies involved.
“Because we have some streams on the property, we have to go to the Corps of Engineers, EPD and that kind of stuff,” Brumbalow said. “They could not have been easier to work with. It just takes time to get through their processes and our engineering and all that kind of stuff. it just takes some time, but we're here finally.”
Atlanta-based architecture firm Dwell Design Studio came on board late last year and have continued moving everything along.
"We just finished up our design development phase of the project,” Mel Doyle, the project architect, said. “We're really starting to pick things up and get things moving to progress the project forward now.”
“The master plan now includes nine buildings and also an outdoor park and amphitheater, so it's really creating a new place in Cumming,” Ryan Miller, managing principal with Dwell, said.
“That makes a huge difference between something that we do that’s maybe a typical shopping center or typical real estate transaction. This one is for a community. It's going to be such a community place that is really embraced by a city with so many people so excited about it.”
If all goes well, the mayor said a ribbon-cutting for the City Center could be happening within two years.
“Summer of 2021,” Brumbalow said. “We should be going vertical with construction this April, that's the goal. So far, everything has been right on schedule, so we'll keep our fingers crossed and hope that continues.”
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