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'Main Street' coming to Peachtree Corners BYLINE: Milo Ippolito; Staff Ron Pfohl wants to turn the generic strip mall inside out in Peachtree Corners. "This has got to be very different from anything in town," Pfohl said Thursday while unveiling the first architectural drawings of Forum at Peachtree Parkway at an annual shopping center convention. Pfohl refers to his project as a "Main Street" style shopping center. The idea is to build two strip malls facing each other across a narrow parking lot to imitate the look of a downtown city street. Forum actually calls for two such blocks with a traffic circle in the middle. Streetlamps, benches, wide sidewalks, plants and fountains are added to give shoppers an outdoor environment where they can stroll past store fronts. Outdoor, pedestrian-oriented shopping centers claiming to evoke a Main Street "village" or "town center" were popular at the International Council of Shopping Centers Convention, which concluded Thursday. Cousins Properties is building Avenue at East Cobb, which has a U-shaped drive surrounded by upscale mall stores. At Forum, parking spaces would line the curb on either side of the Main Street. Raised crosswalks would force motorists to drive slowly. "We want it to be intimate," Pfohl said. "We want it to be pedestrian friendly. But we also want to provide parking." Pfohl plans to put a three-story office building at either end of his Main Street shopping center in a nod to the mixed-use trend, in favor with planners and government officials. In theory it builds a sense of community and reduces car trips. The project is within walking distance of some Peachtree Corners neighborhoods, Pfohl said. He picked Peachtree Corners because of its affluence and concentrated population. Pfohl wants a mix of upscale store chains and local shops and restaurants. Atlanta-based Brookwood Grill has signed up, Pfohl said. "We feel like to have the big-name mall retailers offers an advertising punch to the center," he said. "It brings credibility. But what's going to give it character is local retailers. Otherwise, you have a sterile environment that's really no better than a regional mall -- only packaged differently."
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