Johns Creek Comprehensive Plan

Details:

Client: City of Johns Creek

Location: Johns Creek, Georgia

Status: Current Project

Highlights:

  • Comprehensive Plan to guide future development in the city
  • Extensive community engagement focusing on community education, meetings with the project’s Citizen Advisory Committee, and hands-on activities for citizens and stakeholders

Description:

TSW, a professional consulting firm, was retained by the City of Johns Creek to lead a multidisciplinary team to prepare a major update to the City of Johns Creek Comprehensive Plan. This new plan would help address the challenges and opportunities that have arisen as a result of the city’s development pattern of suburban sprawl.

Johns Creek, a relatively new city incorporated in 2006, has seen rapid growth in recent years. However, this development pattern has greatly impacted traffic, land availability, and opportunities for new development. With the City quickly approaching complete build-out, most future development opportunities now include the redevelopment of aging and under-performing shopping centers located within the City’s major activity nodes.

To ensure that the new Comprehensive Plan would be effective, TSW knew that extensive community engagement and outreach would be crucial. To this end, TSW developed a number of outreach strategies, including:

  • A community input survey available online and at Planning Workshops to gauge ideas for the future of Johns Creek.
  • Community education programs that focused on market and economic realities, demographic changes and shifts, new urbanism/traditional neighborhood design, and principles of placemaking.
  • A heavily involved Citizens Advisory Committee gave nuanced input on issues prevalent to their communities, identity, goal and policy development, future development patterns, and future land use.
  • Planning workshops that strived to provide residents and stakeholders with context, while giving them ample opportunities to give input on the issues that matter most and propose ideas of how to address them.

Through these efforts, TSW was able to gather a wealth of input and feedback from the community, which was then used to inform the development of the new Johns Creek Comprehensive Plan. The end result is an illustrative plan that guides the future development of Johns Creek, ensuring that all planning efforts, current and future, have a chance to be successful. The plan will help address issues such as traffic congestion, land availability, and opportunities for new development, while also taking into account the needs and desires of the community. Overall, the new Comprehensive Plan will help Johns Creek to continue growing and thriving in the years to come.