Business View Magazine | November 2019

297 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2019 streams in enterprise funds from gas, water, and electricity. Not being strictly reliant on property tax for funding means community development can be quite creative, focusing on everything from an urban downtown development core, to arterial growth and beautification. Over the last four years, the city has upped the ante in terms of dense urban residential in the community with two key projects. The SouthLawn project is a 35-acre, mixed-use development that includes residential, retail, the City Hall, and Police Department - bringing some primary assets of the city into that downtown core with a walkable stretch of road that connects through retail establishments and restaurants, but also offers urban residential on top and behind those buildings. Lisa Sherman, Lawrenceville’s CCO and Community Development Director, explains, “The development feeds into our eight-acre greenspace, the ‘Lawrenceville Lawn,’ where we have a ton of events that really engage the community, as well LAWRENCEV I LLE , GEORGI A as tourists from outside the city. We also have a smaller development on the outside of our square that connects into our depot area and a new artery we’re building, with a corridor, 2.2 mile Linear Park that will connect our four-year college with the downtown area. That’s all being done to make the core attractive and walkable and safe, so people can live here and play here. We need that residential component to help balance our tax base. They can work here, too, to bring up our median household income to sustain our businesses and the community at large.” About a year ago, a major change took place in traffic flow downtown; converting one-way streets to two-way with the goal of making them more walkable. City Manager, Chuck Warbington reports, “Drivers and pedestrians have adapted to that really well and it’s done exactly what it was supposed to do. As Lisa mentioned, we have also approved the final $10 million phase of the $30 million Georgia Gwinnett College corridor project – a red carpet invitation connecting the college to CCO/Community Development Director, Lisa Sherman and City Manager, Chuck Warbington