Dunwoody’s Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on Oct. 8 for a request to rezone a nearly empty shopping center in Dunwoody to allow for a greater variety of uses.
It follows a contentious neighborhood meeting in late July during which a majority of attendees opposed most of the ideas proposed by its owners.
Branch representatives say they want to change the Mount Vernon 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.
A July 31 community meeting about rezoning the property to allow a greater number of uses in an empty 35,000-square-foot space in the center turned into a series of accusations between residents and tenants in the center and its owner.
Branch Partner and Chairman Nick Telesca said at the July 31 meeting 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 nor well-staffed.
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.
The application for rezoning, submitted Aug. 24, recapped the July meeting and Branch’s discussion about the lack of interest in the site as a grocery store.
“There was much discussion as to the failure of Lidl and Sprouts at this location,” the application said. “In addition, Branch representatives gave a brief history of their efforts to attract other grocery tenants at the Property, but other grocery brands were not interested.”
The rezoning to allow additional uses at the shopping center will “allow more flexibility in tenant mix that would help revitalize the shopping center so that other existing buildings on the Property might be improved in the future.”
Social media was abuzz with conversations about the rezoning application, with most saying that the C-1 designation allows for uses not wanted or needed in the neighborhood. Others said they believe additional retail traffic in the area would clog roadways and devalue their homes.
