Snellville, Georgia, works on comp plan

Thirty years ago, Snellville, Georgia, was a small farming town at the crossroads of two highways. In the 1970s and 1980s, when US Highway 78 became a major commuter route into metropolitan Atlanta, the city and county governments encouraged commercial development along the road. But as the shopping centers age and anchor tenants move to new locations, the city has decided to rethink its comprehensive plan. The City Council recently hired a team of Atlanta architecture and planning firms to lead this effort. Headed by Town Planning and Design, the team also includes Clayton Preston & Associates, and the Planning Design Group. Randall Arendt, vice president for conservation at the National Lands Trust, will consult with the team. Donald Broussard of Town Planning and Design says the plan will address four major issues: Building a downtown where none exists, retrofitting the aging retail centers, redesigning US 78 to alleviate traffic, and diversifying the character of residential areas, which are presently dominated by monoculture subdivisions. “A lot of our task is to make the residents comfortable with the idea of density,” Broussard says. In the next eight months the team will conduct three charrettes, and will also create a map of potential conservation land in and around the city.