LaVista Office Park to become Shopping Center

More retail stores are coming to the Northlake/Tucker area, including Dick’s Sporting Goods.

 From: http://thechampionnewspaper.com/news/local/office-park-to-be-razed-for-shopping-center/

Office Park to be razed for shopping center
Posted by Carla Parker on May 7, 2015 in DeKalb News 
A group attending the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners’ meeting raise their hands to announce their support of the rezoning of LaVista Office Park to redevelop a retail shopping center.
More retail stores are coming to the Northlake/Tucker area, including Dick’s Sporting Goods.

On April 28, the DeKalb County Board of Commissions approved rezoning a portion of the LaVista Office Park within the Northlake Overlay District from single family residential to office institutional to combine with the adjoining property to be redeveloped as a retail shopping center.
 LaVista Office Park is located at the northeast intersection of LaVista Road and Northlake Parkway.

The item passed 4-1, with Commissioner Kathie Gannon voting against it.

“I certainly understand the business outlook on this and their desire to help reinvent Northlake,” Gannon said before the vote. “I’m not in favor of reinventing Northlake as a traditional suburban, hard-oriented single-level retail kind of center. It doesn’t face the street, it’s surrounded by a sea of parking, it’s right near an expressway where you could have that density. I think there are other opportunities to do more with this site. And I think it will affect the zoning of the overlay.”

On April 29, Ben F. Kushner Company confirmed that Dick’s Sporting Good’s will be the first retail store to anchor the new retail development—The Meridian at Tucker—in what is currently the LaVista Office Park.

Built in 1973, LaVista Office Park is a 285,000-square-foot single-story office complex on 25 acres of land.

Kushner representative Jennie Kushner said the current structure will be razed to make room for the new shopping center.

During the April 29 commission meeting, local business owners, such as Tucker-Northlake Community Improvement District president Bill Rosenfeld, spoke in favor of the new development.

“Tucker CID just completed a master plan, and we had three public hearings where the public was allowed to interject their comments and some of the comments were they wanted to see more restaurants in Tucker,” Rosenfeld told commissioners. “They wanted better shopping facilities, also newer and better office space. It’s important to us as a community, and you, as a county to support this and move forward.”

Leroy Tanker, a business owner who has a property across the street from the project, said the development is a homerun.

“It will create many jobs, it will create millions of dollars in retail sales and therefore millions of dollars in revenue for DeKalb County,” Tanker said. “It will spur more development, which would bring in more jobs and revenue for DeKalb, and revenue is what DeKalb County needs now.”

Construction on the shopping center is scheduled to begin this summer.

Photo credit: google maps
--
 Comment:
Daphne said...
 AND it backs up to a wonderful old forest buffer between the existing office park and Winding Woods subdivsion. This development came in with NO OTHER OPTIONS and shoved it down the throats of the citizens and property owners of the area. Northlake Mall is collapsing. Do we really need another strip mall? Especially across from the fleabag hotel across the street!!!