ECONOMY OVERVIEW
Atlanta 2019 An in-depth review of the key issues facing Atlanta’s economy featuring the exclusive insights of prominent industry leaders
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Gwinnett County: “Vibrantly connected” Gwinnett County boasts an award-winning public school system, a high quality of life, convenient access to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the state’s fastest-growing population. With a pro-business climate, committed leadership and unparalelled demographic diversity, the county continues to attract both new residents and businesses. It is quickly becoming a leading player in today’s increasingly global marketplace.
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Vibrantly connected: With the state’s fastest-growing population, an award-winning school system and unparalleled diversity, Gwinnett is making waves Gwinnett County’s new slogan — Vibrantly Connected — expresses the pride of a dynamic suburban community with easy connections to Metro Atlanta, the region, the nation and the world. Residents enjoy a world-class quality of life and daily direct flights to almost anywhere in the world. With a nationally recognized public school system and the state’s fastest-growing population, Gwinnett’s many claims to fame include being the birthplace of Waffle House and home to the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir, one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States. The county’s pro-business climate and diverse population continue to attract new and expanding businesses, both large and small. With its social and economic development accelerating rapidly, Gwinnett is poised for unparalleled success in today’s increasingly global marketplace. From Button to boom Gwinnett County is named for Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence. Gwinnett helped draft the state
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constitution and served briefly as acting president of Georgia, then lost in a bid to become governor. In 1777, he died of injuries several days after a duel with his political rival General Lachlan McIntosh, who was never charged in connection with the death. In 1818, the Georgia General Assembly created Gwinnett County — the state’s 50th county — from land ceded by the Creek and Cherokee. There were just 4,000 residents at the time. In 1821, the city of Lawrenceville was founded as the county seat. Gwinnett’s three representatives to the Georgia Constitutional Convention in 1861 all voted in the minority against secession. No major Civil War battles took place in the county. In 1871, the first of two railroads was built through the county, and many of Gwinnett’s 16 cities grew up along the tracks, including Norcross, Duluth, Suwanee and Buford. Tanneries were the first real industry, beginning in 1868 with the R.H. Allen Tannery in Buford. An earlier cotton mill in Lawrenceville was burned during the war. Construction of Buford Dam created Lake Lanier in 1950 and moved Gwinnett into the modern era. Major ( )
GWINNETT COUNTY INTERVIEW
Strong growth How the Gwinnett Chamber is targeting five industries to strengthen the county’s job growth, especially in the tech sector, and supports regional transportation solutions
Nick Masino Chief Economic Development Officer – Partnership Gwinnett; Senior Vice President – Gwinnett Chamber
What industries in Gwinnett County are currently experiencing the most growth? There are five target industries for which we have 1 to 2.5 percent times the average workforce of the average county in the U.S. Gwinnett is 20 percent of Atlanta, so we are really strong in the corporate regional headquarters cluster; in fact, it’s our largest cluster. We have two Fortune 500 headquarters in Gwinnett. Another industry that’s very strong is supply chain logistics. If you make a product, you have to move it. We also have the largest cluster of flex industrial space in the region, at 150 million square feet. It is the largest cluster in the entire state. The other two industries are health sciences and services. We’re really good at bioscience and life science. The last industry where we excel is technology. We are one of the three places in Georgia with the largest concentration of tech companies. Our strongest tech sub-cluster is advanced communication. What sectors do you think need to be nurtured? I believe we’re nurturing the right sectors. Metro Atlanta is leading the United States in job growth. In terms of new jobs, we crush it in the service sector and construction. Metro Atlanta is experiencing the biggest construction boom in the U.S. right now, so there’s obviously huge job growth, and we’re also seeing the largest growth in the technology sector. What are some of the main challenges to economic development in Atlanta, and what are some solutions to solve these issues? Atlanta has a reputation for congestion, and it is an unfair reputation. I had offices in Chicago and D.C.,
and we can’t hold a stick to their congestion. Any successful metropolitan area has congestion. We’re not any worse than anybody else. What we need is a strong expansion plan and investment because when investors are making decisions about where to bring their business, they just want to know that the issues are being addressed and not ignored. We have experienced sweeping changes in legislation. Gwinnett will be a huge investor in the regional transportation solutions, which will include expanding transit and promoting different forms of transit, from bus rapid transit, dedicated bus rapid transit to light rail and even heavy rail expansion.
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GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
( ) infrastructure investments helped support a rapidly growing population. For example, the Crooked Creek Water Reclamation plant, which was built in 1972, has been upgraded and expanded several times and is now undergoing a major $136 million renovation to improve efficiency, reliability, odor and noise control. Near man-made recreation magnet Lake Lanier on the northern edge of Gwinnett County, the state-of-theart F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center is now the County’s primary wastewater treatment plant. It is attracting worldwide attention for using innovative technologies such as returning highly treated water back to Lake Lanier, generating some of its own electricity supply from methane gas and commercial kitchen grease and making commercial fertilizer pellets from byproducts of the treatment process. Conservative fiscal management, voter approval of a series of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax
(SPLOST) programs and a pay-as-you-go tradition led to low debt, low taxes and one of the few Triple AAA credit ratings among 3,069 American counties. With a population now approaching 1 million, Gwinnett combines the amenities of big-city living with the pleasant charm of suburbia.
Gwinnett is a leading majorityminorty community, with 25 percent of its population born outside of the U.S.
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Diversity Gwinnett is a leading majorityminority community, with 25 percent of the population born outside of the U.S. and a 78.6 percent diversity index. This diverse population has been growing rapidly since the 1970s and is expected to surpass 1 million in the next decade, making Gwinnett the most populated county in Georgia. A new kaleidoscope logo adopted by the county government in 2017 reflects the community’s diversity and vibrancy. The new logo projects a county that connects its residents to the unique people, place and promise of Gwinnett with three overlapping crescents representing Gwinnett’s three river basins.
GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
The crescents’ overlapping layers create many shapes that represent connections to one another, to our state, to our nation and to the world. At the heart of the kaleidoscope is a unifying crest, a symbol of integrity and a token of the unwavering mission to make life better for the people of Gwinnett. In addition to demographics, Gwinnett is also diverse in terms of business and interests. The county is a leader in investment and job creation in the Atlanta metro area. It is home to the global headquarters of Fortune 500 companies such as AGCO Corp and Asbury Automotive with more than 60 international company headquarters, including Mitsubishi Electric, Ricoh Electronics and WIKA Instruments. The county also supports small businesses with more than 250,000 square feet of incubator and accelerator space in at least a dozen facilities — including the newest addition, Atlanta Tech Park, a 43,000-square-foot innovation center that opened in 2017 in Peachtree Corners. Partnership Gwinnett — a public-private initiative dedicated to bringing new jobs and capital investment to Gwinnett County — has worked with local partners since 2007 to attract and retain jobs, cultivate capital investment, support educational institutions, foster workforce development and contribute to Gwinnett’s exceptional quality of life. “Gwinnett County is different in that our cities have a great working relationship with the county,” Steve Edwards, mayor of Sugar Hill, told Focus:. “In addition to having our own Economic Development Department, we participate in Partnership Gwinnett, which provides county-wide economic development efforts.” Hot market With a wealth of thriving downtowns and vibrant retail corridors, Gwinnett County boasts a thriving real estate market. “We do not have a lot of industry in Loganville, so the real estate market is critical,” Rey Martinez, mayor of the City of Loganville, told Focus:. “We have been growing over the last several years and will continue to develop new neighborhoods in 2019.” Home values in Gwinnett — already up 10.8 percent year-over-year — are expected to rise another 6.4 percent by the end of 2019. The median home value in the county is $221,200, according to Zillow, while the median list price per square foot is $111, lower than the metro area average of $125. Median rent in Gwinnett is $1,550, slightly higher than the metro-area average of $1,500. Even with 16 cities wholly or partially within the county’s 437 square miles, about three-fourths of all Gwinnett residents live in unincorporated areas.
Home values in Gwinnett County are on the rise moving into 2019.
Gwinnett is the busiest market for home sales in the metro area, according to the Atlanta Realtors Association, logging 1,086 sales in the first six months of 2018, with the median sales price at $252,000. Gwinnett’s housing market remains strong with high demand moving into 2019.
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Daniel Kaufman President & CEO Gwinnett County Chamber
What roles do technology, life sciences and healthcare play in Gwinnett’s economy? The medical school in Athens is new and a straight shot from Gwinnett, so ideally we want this to become our bioscience corridor. Between the programs at Gwinnett Medical Center and the students studying bioscience at Georgia Gwinnett College, we want development occurring along the road connecting Lawrenceville and Athens to be based primarily around bioscience and healthcare. In terms of information technology, we are also strong. We are the fifth-largest gaming center in the U.S. What sector is most important to provide a better quality of life to the county’s residents? Education continues to be the foundation of success in this community. As the county has grown dramatically in previous decades, and as the demographics have changed dramatically in the last 25 years, the continued success of the Gwinnett County Public School System is truly extraordinary. It was recognized as one of the finest urban school systems in the country and is by far the largest in the state of Georgia. Combined with the the success of the workforce development programs out of Gwinnett Tech preparing people for 21st-century jobs and Georgia Gwinnett College’s 13,000 students, we have created an educated workforce and citizenry that has added so much to our community. What characteristics of Atlanta’s economy stimulate the most international trade? First and foremost: connectivity. You can get to anywhere in the world from Atlanta. The airport is an enormous asset for the entire Metro Atlanta region. We also have a temperate climate, a reasonably low cost of labor, stable energy costs and well-developed and cost-efficient infrastructure. The economics of international trade are strategic, and the dynamics of that trade work very much to our advantage here in Atlanta. 124 | Focus: Atlanta 2019 | GWINNETT COUNTY
The county is also seeing ramped-up interest in mega developments. Anchored by the Infinite Energy Center, Revel is a $900 million, entertainment-focused mixed-use venture by North American Properties on 118 acres in Duluth. CBRE is managing leasing for the development’s 750,000 square feet of high-tech office space. Revel will also have 50 single-family homes, 840 multifamily residences, 400,000 square feet of street retail space including a bowling alley, a 300-room hotel and a food hall. The community is expected to open in 2020 with Gigabit connectivity and high-end concierge and retail experiences. The county seat of Lawrenceville is welcoming a major development spearheaded by George Berkow, the Novare Group and Batson-Cook Development Company. SouthLawn is a $200 million, 32acre mixed-use project that includes more than 15,000 square feet of retail space, 600 single- and multifamily residences and a town green connecting city hall, the police station and Lawrenceville’s historic downtown. Gwinnett County will relocate the new Lawrenceville Branch Library to an area adjacent to the historic Hooper-Renwick School, which the city will preserve as part of the overall project. Commissioners agreed in 2018 to buy part of the OFS Brightwave Solutions site on I-85 near Jimmy Carter Boulevard to help stimulate economic development in the area. OFS will keep 66 of its 169 acres and expand its fiber-optic cable manufacturing operations there. The Urban Redevelopment Agency of Gwinnett County is buying about 103 acres, including an office building and another building that currently houses film production studios. The site has been a principal production facility for more than 35 movie and TV productions in recent years. A Venture Drive Overlay and active Community Improvement District are upgrading infrastructure and attracting new investments to an area surrounding the county’s first shopping mall, Gwinnett Place. Across the county overlooking Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park, Gwinnett County leaders have purchased the site of the 1996 Olympic tennis complex and will look to the private sector to redevelop the site as an economic catalyst for the area. Warehouse space is also big business in Gwinnett. Eberly & Associates got approval in 2018 for a fourstory, 640,000-square-foot distribution center that could employ up to 1,800 workers. The project is located northeast of Stone Mountain Park with expected completion in 2020.
GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
Going green In 2018, Gwinnett commissioners approved a Countywide Trails Master Plan, with the ultimate goal to create a seamless, interconnected 320-mile network of bike and pedestrian trails for recreation and transportation. Nine “Signature Trails” are identified as regionally significant pathways offering amenities and connectivity. Some trails, like the Sugar Hill Greenway, are spearheaded by cities, while others built by the county often stretch across multiple jurisdictions and even into neighboring counties. With trail access from about three dozen county parks and at least 100 miles already completed, the plan’s Core Network Trail is projected to be complete by 2040. Gwinnett County is committed to environmental sustainability to ensure a healthy future for its younger generations. It was the first county to achieve the Gold
level and is now seeking Platinum status in the Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) Green Communities Program, which promotes energy efficiency and green building efforts. The ARC was the first in America to transform a region by promoting sustainability through green certification. In 2009, Gwinnett launched its Environmental Sustainability Program to preserve natural resources and reduce government impact on the environment. These efforts include water and energy conservation and reducing air pollution and waste throughout the county. Gwinnett has demonstrated its commitment with many LEED-certified buildings, including the Environmental and Heritage Center, Hamilton Mill Public Library, Morgue/Medical Examiner facility and the Police Training Center. The county’s water conservation efforts have earned an international reputation. The state-of-the- ( )
Gwinnett County is committed to environmental sustainability to ensure a healthy future for its younger generations.
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GWINNETT COUNTY INTERVIEW
Rebranding How Gwinnett County is revamping its image to reflect both its demographic and business diversity and adopting technology to create intelligent traffic systems
Glenn Stephens Commissioner– Gwinnett County
Knowing that transportation doesn’t just mean interstates and major arteries but also our regular twolane roads and trails, we conducted a robust citizen outreach to determine exactly how they wanted us to prioritize transportation spending and where they felt the pressure points were in the county. One of the things we learned through this process is that I-85, whether we like it or not, is our main street. It’s our thoroughfare. It’s where our residents tend to go to connect north or south. We’re working closely with GDOT on improving I-85. No fix is cheap, but the state is stepping up to the plate. We also have miles and miles of trails. There’s a long-range goal of having trails that traverse the entire county, not just to try to relieve the congestion but also because folks love trails. Property values increase in and around most multi-use trails, and with our population continuing to grow, there will be more walkability as density increases in certain parts of the county.
What were some highlights for Gwinnett County in 2017? Toward the end of 2017, the county adopted a logo for the first time in its history. We changed our seal as a part of that as well, but we’ve never had a brand or logo before. The logo is a kaleidoscope to reflect the diversity in Gwinnett — and not just the demographic diversity, but also the diversity of interests and businesses. At its core, the crest symbolizes integrity. If you don’t have integrity at the heart of everything you do, you’re going to go off track at some point. What are your plans to ease transportation issues connecting Gwinnett to Downtown Atlanta? We just entered the final stages of our required comprehensive transportation development plan.
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How is Gwinnett adopting new technology to help address some of today’s traffic challenges? Many of us have become believers in autonomous vehicles; they will eventually have their place on our roadways. The smart corridor that we’re developing along Peachtree Industrial Boulevard is incredible. It’s one of the first of its kind in the state. On Pleasant Hill, we have an intelligent traffic management system that monitors traffic lights in real time through computers, as opposed to a traffic control center that relies on people. The same way autonomous vehicles will benefit roadway congestion, traffic signals can be managed earlier and more efficiently through this intelligent traffic system. They’re going to be able to do, in real time, what it used to take people an hour to do. I think you’ll see Gwinnett be a leader in adopting that new technology.
GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
Philip Wolfe President & CEO – Gwinnett Medical Center
While the community is still at the heart of everything we do, our hospital has expanded to that of a regional health system. As the most diverse and second most populous county in the state, our community’s needs are ever changing, and we’ve taken the opportunity to evolve, consistently adding new services and physician partners. From sophisticated neurological care and physician residency programs to our culturally based community support services, Gwinnett Medical Center continues to be a visionary institution and anticipates the future needs of the region.
( ) art F. Wayne Hill Water Reclamation Center uses byproducts to generate electricity and make fertilizer as it returns highly treated wastewater to its source in Lake Lanier. In 2018, officials broke ground on a global Water Innovation Center for applied research, technology innovation, workforce training and public engagement. Transit plans Atlanta is fourth on a list of America’s most congested cities. The I-285 and I-85 interchange near the entrance to Gwinnett may be the nation’s most congested freight bottleneck, with thousands of Gwinnett drivers passing through daily going to and from Atlanta. State and regional leaders recognize the urgent need for improved transportation options. The state opened its first Georgia Express Lanes in Gwinnett County in 2011 and has issued almost 690,000 active Peach Passes to date. Gwinnett will also see two new interchanges and additional express lanes on I-85 over the next few years. Gwinnett commissioners have already installed more than 225 miles of fiber optic cable and 250 traffic cameras to help control the county’s 700 signalized intersections. They approved new smart technology in 2018 for four additional high-traffic corridors. The state is providing nearly 80 percent of the $4.4 million cost, with the remaining 20 percent coming from SPLOST funds. The Gwinnett Traffic Control Center, established for the 1996
Olympic Games, monitors traffic volume and controls signals to improve real-time traffic flow. Connect Gwinnett, a transit development plan adopted in 2018, recommends a heavy rail line connecting the Doraville MARTA station to a new multimodal hub in the Jimmy Carter Boulevard area. The state had already approved legislation to create a regional transit agency called the ATL to develop a regional transit plan and oversee all federal and state transit funds in the 13-county Metro Atlanta region. Gwinnett voters have the opportunity to decide in the spring of 2019 whether to approve a plan to join MARTA, which would operate and expand the existing Gwinnett Transit system. A new transitfunding sales tax would go into effect through June 2057. The Connect Gwinnett vision outlines short-, mid- and long-term improvements to Gwinnett Transit, like expanded local and express bus routes and a key stretch of bus rapid transit near the busy I-85 corridor. The plan aims for balance both geographically and in terms of modes of transit.
Gwinnett commissioners approved new smart technology in 2018 for four additional high-traffic corridors.
Healthy community A merger between Gwinnett Health System, parent of Gwinnett Medical Center, and Northside Hospital was announced in 2015. When completed, the merger will result in a hospital system with 1,479 beds, 21,000 employees and 3,500 physicians serving Gwinnett, Cherokee and Forsyth counties.
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GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
Gwinnett Medical Center’s primary care facility in Suwanee just celebrated its one-year anniversary and already has plans to grow, after seeing more than 5,500 patients. Eastside Urgent Care — voted Best of Gwinnett 2017 — recently added a new robotic orthopaedic surgery center and a new Grayson facility, the hospital’s fourth walk-in clinic in the area. Gwinnett County has also provided chronic care assistance grants to two nonprofit healthcare organizations: Hope Clinic and Good Samaritan Health Center. The grants help provide resources to manage chronic diseases and reduce calls for onsite emergency medical services, transport and hospital emergency room visits. To also help those who can’t afford insurance or high-cost medical care, the Gwinnett County Health Department offers an array of services with a slidingscale fee regardless of income. Expanding minds Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) is the largest school system in Georgia and the 14th largest in the country, with 143 schools and more than 180,000 students. The system earned national recognition for excellence by winning the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2010 and again in 2014. Forbes named GCPS the best employer for women in Georgia and number 10 in the U.S. in 2018. Also high ranking was the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, which U.S. News & World Report ranked best high school in Georgia and number 31 in the nation in 2018. The City of Buford operates its own award-winning school system, and there are also many private school options in Gwinnett, including the Greater Atlanta
Stanley “Stas” Preczewski President – Georgia Gwinnett College
We have the single largest undergraduate information technology program in the country. Every faculty member at Georgia Gwinnett College is issued a cellphone and required to put his or her cellphone number on the syllabus for every course. We do not have issued office hours because the idea is to make ourselves available 24/7 to our students, who balance both work and school. We make sure that our students are provided with the highest quality of service and availability. Every classroom is high tech and uses the latest smart technology.
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GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
Gwinnett County hosts a variety of festivala and events year-round to keep its residents and visitors entertained.
Lisa Anders Executive Director – Explore Gwinnett
As part of my current role as head of Gwinnett’s tourism office, I am also the Camera Ready liaison to the film and TV industry. We are home to two major production studios (Eagle Rock TV Studios and OFS) and currently have about 10 projects being filmed. Georgia is such a popular place for people to produce films and television for a lot of reasons, but the main draw is our robust tax incentive for filming. Additionally, we have almost every landscape imaginable, from new and old buildings to farm and urban backdrops to mountains and coastline.
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Market voices: Mayors’ Corner
Mike Mason
Mayor City of Peachtree Corners
Peachtree Corners came to a tipping point. From an economic development viewpoint, our property values were dependent on the jobs in Tech Park. But by the early 2000s, Tech Park was beginning to look like an aging, suburban office park. A lot of the high-tech stuff — Hayes Microcomputer, Scientific Atlanta, a lot of those names — had already merged, sold off or become other things. There were other places that were more exciting from a tech point of view. Plus, Downtown Atlanta and Midtown had been discovered. This was no longer the high-tech place that it used to be. When you reach a tipping point, you need to ask whether you want your community to be bypassed or whether you want to revitalize it. So we became a city. This is our sixth year as an incorporated city.
Over the past 12 months, we’ve been focused on the density aspect of our downtown. We’ve learned from other experts that if we want a downtown with 10 to 15 restaurants to survive, we need about 2,000 residential options within walking distance of these restaurants. We are at 1,500 right now, and we’ll be over 2,000 within 18 months. We have new residential housing options — multifamily, townhouses, single-family homes and apartments — coming online. We’re also buying lots in some of the older subdivisions that wrap around downtown in order to create a path that will connect right to downtown.
Craig Newton Mayor City of Norcross
Nancy Harris Mayor City of Duluth
We had a study done in the 1980s on our downtown sector to determine what could be done to re-energize the area. The first thing we found was that we had something unique: our downtown has historic character that is impossible to reproduce. At the same time, we knew we needed to grow the sense of our downtown being a gathering place. We needed a walkable community with everything — business, pleasure and government — happening at the center of it all. The challenge for us was marrying these ideas — embracing change while keeping our historic identity, embracing growth while keeping what makes us Norcross. We continue to invest in our downtown, but we are expanding eastward and southward to further re-develop around the downtown area.
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GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
Christian School, the second-largest independent school in Georgia. For higher education, Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville was established in 2005 with 118 students and has grown rapidly to more than 12,000 in 2017. More than 8,000 were enrolled full-time and 70 percent were Gwinnett residents. In 2017, U.S. News & World Report ranked Georgia Gwinnett College the number 10 public school in the southern region and the most ethnically diverse southern regional college, public or private. The school offers 17 majors with more than 45 areas of concentration, small classes and flexible scheduling to accommodate its students’ busy schedules. Gwinnett Technical College, with campuses in Alpharetta and Lawrenceville, provides career-focused education to at least 11,000 students. The school offers more than 140 associate degree, diploma and certificate programs, along with hundreds of seminars, workshops and specialized training courses. Gwinnett Tech is also the largest provider of corporate training services in the county. Gwinnett Tech believes in promoting technical education early so the college partners with Kids 4 Coding, a youth technology and design education company. It offers small-group sessions teaching seven- to 15-year-old students how to write computer code.
The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine established a campus in Suwanee in 2005 to help meet a growing need for healthcare providers in the South. Today, the school offers a wide range of health-related degree programs. Movies and more Georgia has become one of the nation’s leading locations for the film industry, and Gwinnett County plays a major role. In 2017 alone, the county issued 95 permits for 48 film projects. Gwinnett is home to two major TV/film studios along with many smaller production and post-production shops. Eagle Rock TV Studios, with more than 470,000 square feet, is the largest studio facility under one roof in the U.S. It has been home to such feature films as “Mother’s Day” and “Escape Plan 2.” The nearby Atlanta Media Campus at OFS has hosted several Marvel productions and provided sound stages for films like “Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” franchise. The campus also houses one of the largest backlots in Georgia. Among Gwinnett’s more popular filming locations are Gwinnett Place Mall, the Infinite Energy Center, Gwinnett County Pre-Trial Detention Center and historic downtowns like Norcross and Lawrenceville. Gwinnett County also has a variety of arts and culture options for residents and visitors alike. With more than
Gwinnet is home to two major TV/ film studios, along with many smaller production and post-production shops.
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GWINNETT COUNTY OVERVIEW
The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a traditional Hindu mandir, or place of worship, inaugurated in 2007. Located in the City of Lilburn, it is the largest mandir of its kind outside of India.
100 hotels, 50 special event venues and numerous downtown areas, Gwinnett offers diverse and authentic culinary offerings and growing nightlife. Other entertainment and cultural attractions include the Infinite Energy Center, the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir, Netherworld and a National Gold Medal county parks system of 50 parks, some featuring aquatic centers and historic sites. The county’s official travel office, Explore Gwinnett, says the tourism industry has a $1.2 billion economic impact on the county. Professional sports teams in Gwinnett include the minor-league baseball Gwinnett Stripers and Atlanta United, a soccer club playing at Coolray Field. The Gwinnett Gladiators play ice hockey, and the Georgia Swarm plays professional lacrosse at the Infinite Energy Center Arena. Looking ahead In the Metro Atlanta area, the many challenges ahead include transportation, redevelopment, affordable housing, healthcare access and workforce development. In Gwinnett, leaders are carefully planning and taking action today to ensure a better tomorrow for future generations.
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“Gwinnett County is closing in on 1 million residents, so we are a strong player in Metro Atlanta,” Barbara Bender, mayor pro tem of the City of Snellville, told Focus:. “All the cities work well together. We also have a great relationship with the county, and the county commissioner works well with us. It’s a collaborative environment, and it makes us a huge presence at the state legislature.” A long tradition of civic involvement, fiscal conservatism and pay-as-you-go financing have built an enviable quality of life based on solid infrastructure, great education, plentiful employment opportunities and attractive amenities for shopping, dining, entertainment and recreation. Accelerating development and a rapidly growing population are positioning a vibrantly connected Gwinnett County to greatly expand its role on the global stage with resounding success. Capital Analytics would like to thank Gwinnett County for its contribution in compiling this chapter. To learn more, visit their website: www. gwinnettcounty.com.