Alpharetta’s City Council on April 28 unanimously approved a comprehensive rezoning, master‑plan amendment and conditional‑use request from Portman Holdings for the Brookside MP pod A site, authorizing a mixed‑use redevelopment that includes a 5‑story for‑rent building, 75 for‑sale townhomes, about 60,000 square feet of retail/restaurant space, a 30,000‑square‑foot office conversion and roughly 13.75 acres of open space and greenway connections.

Staff described the project as a redevelopment consistent with the Brookside Small Area Plan and the 2040 comprehensive plan’s direction to retrofit older suburban office parks to more walkable, mixed‑use activity nodes. The applicant sought multiple approvals including a future land‑use map amendment, rezoning from ONI to MU (mixed use), conditional uses for dwelling units, and variances to reduce minimum lot size in the MU district, modestly increase the shared‑parking reduction (from 25% to 27%), and slightly reduce required driveway separation along Brookside Parkway.

Planning staff summarized technical elements: the plan retains one existing office building, demolishes the other, places a five‑story rental building that wraps a six‑level parking deck, locates a retail village and provides multiple multiuse path and greenway connections, and proposes that some off‑site trail work to connect to Big Creek Greenway be constructed by the applicant in exchange for impact‑fee credits. Staff recommended approval with 42 conditions; two drafting clarifications were added so building heights read “the lesser of the stated number of stories or number of feet.”

Council questions focused on parking, phasing and public‑access parking for Brookside Park and its amphitheater. The developer and consultants presented a shared‑parking study concluding peak parking demand would be 922 spaces on a weekday and 909 on a weekend; the site will provide about 975 shared spaces (excluding the townhome garages). The council asked for stronger conditions to ensure shared parking is not restricted later; staff agreed to add clarifying condition language. Council members also pressed the applicant on how to ensure the townhome phase is delivered and whether apartment certificate‑of‑occupancy timing would comply with the city’s housing policy (the city’s rental‑housing study recommends limiting annual rental entitlement to meet a target owner‑occupancy ratio). Staff recommended allowing the 335 rental units but delaying certificates of occupancy for those units until 2027 or until certain retail and office conversion milestones are reached.

Council added two project‑specific conditions at the public hearing: ask the applicant to either (a) reduce and reconfigure the R‑7 townhome parking area to create a continuous circulation connection to Brookside Parkway, or (b) obtain, if feasible, an additional curb cut in coordination with neighboring property owners and state/local approvals; and require a total of 15 street parking spaces to serve the townhome area with placement to be determined by the applicant and staff. Council also asked for better visitor parking for the townhome cluster. The developer said it would adjust plans to provide additional guest parking in the townhome area.

On housing, staff and the applicant described the project’s target renters (primarily young professionals and empty‑nesters) and noted the rental building is not designed as student housing. Planning staff provided the city’s school‑impact calculation showing an estimated 11 to 166 additional students across three schools if all proposed residential units produced the upper bound of expected student yields; the work included standard county school impact methodology.

The project will be built in phases with the rental/retail/office components in phase 1 and the townhomes in phase 2; staff and the applicant agreed on conditions tying rental CO issuance to delivery of street‑level office conversion and substantial progress on the retail village. Council also required clearer language that shared parking facilities remain available to all users and cannot be privately restricted by subsequent property owners.

The council approved the project 7‑0 with the additional clarifying language and the two new conditions described above. Staff will finalize the conditions and the applicant will return to city review boards for design approvals and building permits.

Why it matters

- Scale: The redevelopment repurposes underused office park land for mixed use next to Brookside Park and Georgia State’s Alpharetta presence, including a proposed Big Creek Greenway connection the developer will help construct.
- Parking/transportation: council accepted a modest shared‑parking reduction supported by a parking study but required guarantees that shared parking remain available to the public and project uses.
- Housing balance: staff tied rental certificates of occupancy to a 2027 timing window and to project milestones so the city’s rental‑unit trajectory remains aligned with housing‑policy goals.

Speakers quoted or cited in this article are those who spoke on the Brookside redevelopment at the April 28 meeting and are listed in the article’s speakers field below.