Our community planners and designers on staff spend a lot of time supporting communities who are grappling with housing challenges. Our housing studies for cities as compact as Cornelia, or as broad as Morgan County, usually focus on strategy: how can we tweak policy to encourage sustainable growth? How can we discourage sprawl and invest in stronger communities?
While focusing on strategy is critical for Georgia, it is just the first step toward cultivating stronger communities and ecosystems. The next step is to plot out exactly how these strategies could look.
Over the next year, we’ll have a chance to do just that. We’re working with the City of Chickamauga (Walker County, ~3,000 residents) to envision how to apply principles of thoughtful land use planning to a large area of their downtown. For several years now, the City has been contemplating how to redevelop the site where the old Crystal Springs Print Works Factory once stood. The City-owned site spans roughly 130 acres of different character–some pavement, some greenspace–that could boost economic development, connect downtown to historic resources through trails and pedestrian improvements, and provide new housing opportunities.
The City teamed up with Georgia’s Rural Center to find and engage a partner to develop a vision for how this site could support long-term economic growth and community benefit in Chickamauga. Knowing our principles and history of leading Good Urbanism 101 trainings led them to us. We are thrilled to be a part of helping Chickamauga reimagine this site, stewarding growth toward their downtown and supporting connections to the Georgia mountains beyond.
