A July 31 community meeting on rezoning a 35,000-square-foot space in Mount Vernon Shopping Center in Dunwoody turned into a contentious series of accusations between residents and tenants in the center and its owner Branch Properties.
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Branch representatives say they want to change the shopping center’s zoning designation from Neighborhood Shopping to C-1 to allow for a greater diversity of uses beyond a grocery store, which has seen a revolving door of failed retail ventures in the last 10 years.
In particular, Branch Partner and Chairman Nick Telesca said the company has had interest from “eater-tainment” or lifestyle-focused uses like food halls, pickleball courts or entertainment arcades like PuttShack or Main Event, which would have a sporting element to them as well as food and alcohol options.
Telesca said the possibility of putting in yet another grocery store has been shut down by all of the companies they have approached.
“We thought that a Publix or a Whole Foods might want to come in, but we have a definitive answer that this is absolutely not a grocery site,” he told the crowd of about 100 attendees.
The February closing of Lidl is the fourth time that the anchor tenant in the Mount Vernon Shopping Center has been shuttered in the last 10 years. It was once a Harris Teeter, then an Ace Hardware, followed by a Sprouts Grocery before its three-year stint as a Lidl.
Sprouts was open from 2014-2018 before disappointing sales and the looming end of the five-year lease prompted its closure. Lidl opened in August 2020 to great fanfare, but regular shoppers said they noticed that the store’s business had never been robust.
The meeting quickly shifted from an information-gathering inquiry to a complaint session from residents who don’t like the proposed options and current tenants who questioned why Branch won’t offer them long-term leases.
Donna Dietrich, who has owned Consigning Women for four years, accused the company of punishing existing tenants as they search for an anchor that many people don’t want in the neighborhood.
“What I am hearing is that Branch is willing to sacrifice these businesses for a pickleball court,” Dietrich said.
Telesca countered that talking about leasing contracts was not an appropriate topic for the informational meeting.
“This is not the purpose of this meeting,” he said. “And also, if we had this many customers coming in [to Lidl] as there are here tonight, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Neighborhood Shopping, according to the Dunwoody City Code, has as its primary uses:
- To provide convenient neighborhood retail shopping and service areas within the city;
- To provide for the development of new neighborhood shopping districts;
- To help ensure that the size and scale of neighborhood shopping centers and individual uses within shopping centers are compatible with the scale and character of surrounding neighborhoods; and.
- To accommodate uses designed to serve the convenience shopping and service needs of the immediate neighborhood.
Telesca said, although the C-1 designation allows many uses, including homeless shelters, storage facilities and parking garages, he said any change to the zoning would be narrowed down to three or four possible uses.
But residents said they don’t want a tenant like Main Event, which has a location in Cobb County, because of the potential for misuse by unsupervised teens and underaged drinking.
“Nobody’s property values are going to go up by being next to a Main Event,” said Audrey Cechinel, who lives in the nearby Woodlands subdivision.
The meeting broke out into dozens of side conversations, with about half the crowd walking out before it was adjourned.
“I am a long-time Dunwoody resident, and I want what’s best for the city, but I think the city and the council need to get involved and talk to their citizenry about what they want,” David Andersen said.
Council members John Heneghan and Joe Seconder attended the meeting, but did not speak on behalf or against the proposed uses. The modification to the code would have to go through several layers of governmental approval in order to reach the council for final approval. Telesca said this process could take six months or longer.
“I’m happy with the turnout of citizens who turned out to listen to the property owners,” Heneghan said. “Now it needs to work through the system so we can see what the community wants in this space.”
