Sandy Springs holds ‘topping out’ ceremony for city center project

The city of Sandy Springs’ new municipal complex has reached its zenith.

Hours before a winter storm barreled into metro Atlanta on Friday, the North Fulton city celebrated the “topping out” of the new City Springs development with a ceremony marking installation of the tallest structural component in the $100 million project.

City Springs includes a new city hall, 1,100-seat performing arts center, office space for city departments and private sector tenants, retail, restaurants, luxury apartments and new park space.

The city is financing the public components, while the development team is the driving force behind the apartments and other commercial spaces.

A number of metro-area suburbs, including Alpharetta, Sugar

Hill, Duluth and Smyrna, are building new municipal complexes or encouraging denser, more urbanstyle development to create an identity.

Sandy Springs and its private-sector partners, developers Carter and Selig Enterprises, expect the project to be completed in mid-2018.

Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul called Friday’s ceremony a “major milestone.”

“You’re seeing what the skeleton of the building will look like,” he said. “This gets us on the home stretch.”

Sandy Springs and its development team razed a former strip retail center at the intersection of Roswell and Johnson Ferry roads to build a landmark and gathering place for the young city, formed in 2005.

Sandy Springs is a large city in terms of area, bordered by Atlanta at its south, the Chattahoochee River to the north and west and Dunwoody to the east.

Paul said the city has lacked a place to anchor its many neighborhoods. City Springs, he said, will be the place where residents will go for dinner and to see a play or concert.

“We don’t have a place to build the connective tissue of the community,” he said. “This is it.”

CONTRIBUTED The $100 million Sandy Springs town center project, known as City Springs, is illustrated. Many metro cities are investing in such projects in order to help encourage private development.