Move over Jonquil Plaza, here comes Jonquil Village. Above is a photo taken this week and Jonquil Plaza has been demolished and the debris is being removed. It suddenly looks like a gian parking lot and the images of the worn Jonquil Plaza are fading.
The $181 million, 14-acre Jonquil Village project has an approved $26.2 million tax allocation district subsidy. This subsidy has been the cause for much heartache over the last few months as the Cobb County School Board sued the City of Smyrna over the project.
In June, six of the seven Cobb school board members filed a lawsuit in Cobb Superior Court against Bacon, the Smyrna City Council and Smyrna City Clerk Susan Hiott for allegedly violating the Georgia Open Records Act.
The suit was brought after the city allegedly failed to provide the school board with financial documents it requested concerning the $26.2 million Jonquil Village TAD subsidy and how city officials calculated its $181 million value for the project. A TAD is an incentive for developers to build in economically distressed areas to increase property values, which results in more tax revenue and requires cooperation between the city, county and school district to quickly repay project bonds.
Both sides are currently in talks to resolve the lawsuit.
In the meantime the Jonquil Village project moves on. The mixed-use project includes retail space, a Publix grocery store, office space, an underground parking deck and more than 300 condominiums. A. G. Armstrong Development is the developer for the project.
Once demolition is complete, construction should be on an 18- to 24-month schedule. But don’t expect to see much being built up for awhile. The first structure to be built will be the 1,000 space underground parking deck. Everything else will be built on top of this structure.