Belmont Hills Update

Belmont Hills

Time for the update on Belmont Hills, which is a follow-up to our posts on the Smyrna Town Hall Meeting and Smyrna Economic Development, as well as the Jonquil Village update.

As covered in our last post on Belmont Hills, the Smyrna City Council approved a rezoning for the property in January 2009, which was the final major step in the public approval process.

Halpern Enterprises is the owner and developer of Belmont Hills. The project will not use tax allocation district bonds, rather the City of Smyrna has agreed to reimburse Halpern Enterprises after the project is complete based on the increase in incremental tax revenue in the Smyrna tax allocation district, excluding Jonquil Village.

What this means is that Halpern Enterprises is taking on the upfront risk from the project, rather than the city going through the lengthy and rather confrontational process of traditional tax allocation district financing.

Belmont Hills is situated on 48 acres at the corner of Atlanta Road and Windy Hill. In all the project is expected to include 130,000 square feet of office and retail space, 164 senior and 274 luxury rentals, 338 townhomes and flats, as well as 8 single family homes.

As you can see from the site plan above, there are also plans for an additional road that will go through Belmont Hills and connect Atlanta Road to Ward Road on the northside of  Campbell High School. The right-of-way for the road behind Belmont Hills will come from the demolition of four of the buildings in the Highlands Apartments, which the Smyrna Housing Authority purchased in 2008.

The current property value of Belmont Hills is $15 million with projected property value at $250 million once completed.

Belmont Hills will be built in phases, with Phase One to include commercial development at the intersection of Windy Hill and Atlanta Road, along with the senior and luxury rental buildings facing Atlanta Road.

According to the developer, demolition of all existing buildings is expected to begin sometime in the second half of 2009. Because of the scale of this large project, the demolition process itself will take approximately six to nine months. Demolition includes tearing down existing buildings, as well as removing infrastructure from the ground.

Because of this project’s complexity, construction of vertical buildings is not likely to begin until 2010.

Next up on the update list will be the Four Corners and the old Rich’s/Cobb Center.

[where: 30080]