'Nexus Gardens' project proposed for Loop-Powers Ferry area

A major mixed-use development proposed for the South Marietta Parkway (Loop) and Powers Ferry Road area is scheduled to get its first public hearing in December.

What’s being called “Nexus Gardens” would contain nearly 500 units of apartments, senior-living units and townhomes, as well as restaurant, retail and event space and greenspace amenities on 17.14 acres.

Nexus Marietta, the applicant, has assembled 20 parcels of land, including two big undeveloped tracts fronting Interstate 75 and the Loop and single-family homes in an adjoining neighborhood.

All but one of the parcels is located within the City of Marietta. The rezoning request goes before the Marietta Planning Commission on Dec. 1.

(You can read through the full agenda item here.)

The landowners are RGM Properties Partnership LLLP, McMullan Partners LLC and Rube McMullan. He’s an East Cobb resident, and Nexus Marietta LLC filed as a corporation with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office in July.

Nexus Marietta has hired prominent Cobb zoning attorney Kevin Moore to request converting the land use from regional retail commercial (RRC), community retail commercial (CRC) and office-industrial (OI) zoning categories to mixed-used development (MXD).

The assemblage includes 17 homes on Meadowbrook Drive and one on Virginia Place that are within the city limits. A home at 492 Meadowbrook Drive is in unincorporated Cobb County.

Nexus Marietta’s application also includes an annexation request for that tract, which is located on Meadowbrook Drive at Powers Ferry Road.

The land doesn’t include a Chevron station and convenience store at the intersection.

Nexus Gardens would include a courtyard and townhomes behind it at the top of a project that slides below the Loop and along the western side of Meadowbrook Drive.

That’s a neighborhood of single-family homes built in the late 1950s that is partly in the city, but mostly in the county.

Nexus Gardens rezoning map

According to a site plan filed with the City of Marietta Planning & Zoning Office, Nexus Gardens would include two five-story apartment buildings totalling 280 units served by a three-story parking deck, a five-story senior-living building with 160 units and 39 townhomes.

A commercial building at the center of the project would have a restaurant with outdoor dining. An “alternate” three-story building would contain more restaurant and retail space, event space and a coffee shop. Two smaller retail buildings would line Powers Ferry at Meadowbrook Drive, the lone access point for the development.

The proposal also calls for a variety of amenities in and around the residential buildings as well as a community walking trail, courtyard areas, “gardenesque” landscaping, a dog park and a reflecting pond with water jets.

The property directly fronting I-75 is in a floodplain, and the proposal calls for separating it from the smaller apartment building with a wild flower meadow.

A total of 100 retail parking spaces are planned, 156 spaces are proposed for the townhomes and 542 spaces for the apartments and senior-living units.

The latter is far less than a minimum of 632 spaces required under the requested zoning categories.

The townhomes would be for sale only, and no more than five percent of the units could be renter-occupied.

They would be at least 1,800 square feet and would have two-car garages and driveway space for two additional cars.

Nexus Gardens color site plan

The Nexus Marietta application includes “visioning” renderings of what the project may look like, and it’s similar to other mixed-use proposals in Cobb and metro Atlanta.

The former “Restaurant Row” area along Powers Ferry Road at Windy Hill Road that’s currently under construction includes apartments and senior-living units and is slated to welcome back the Rose and Crown Tavern that was the sole existing business on that property.

An Atlanta-area apartment builder, Atlantic Residential, is proposing to convert the blighted Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center in East Cobb into a mixed-use development, also with apartments, senior-living units and townhomes, a major grocery store and other retail space.

That proposal, which is tentatively slated to be heard in December, has been delayed for several months and has drawn community opposition, mostly because of the apartments.

The area around Sandy Plains and Piedmont roads is dominated by single-family subdivisions.

Nexus Gardens would be the first development of its kind in an area of East Marietta that includes older single-family housing and scattered commercial uses.