How different do you think Forsyth County will look like in 2020? (Atlanta: home, buying)

[mrpanda]

What percent of Forsyth County is currently developed? 20%. 30% or 40%?

Johns Creek feels like it is atleast 80% built out. When the job market gets healthy again, I can only imaging that new construction will grow South Forsyth and upwards.

[Stars&StripesForever]

Originally Posted by mrpanda

What percent of Forsyth County is currently developed? 20%. 30% or 40%?

Johns Creek feels like it is atleast 80% built out. When the job market gets healthy again, I can only imaging that new construction will grow South Forsyth and upwards.

I'd say that 60% of Forsyth County's land is suburbanized, though there is room to build out in these areas. That is, there are some open patches amongst the suburbanized area.

[K'ledgeBldr]

Originally Posted by mrpanda

What percent of Forsyth County is currently developed? 20%. 30% or 40%?

Johns Creek feels like it is atleast 80% built out. When the job market gets healthy again, I can only imaging that new construction will grow South Forsyth and upwards.

It's not 'how much is developed', it's how much can be developed.
Like Johns Creek- what you perceive as 80% built-out is more like 99%.
Pockets of land that aren't 'developed' are that way for a reason. They are either land-locked (no road access), topographically land-locked, or the topography is unbuildable.
And yes, I agree that 'new construction will grow south Forsyth'. However, it's not going to happen if there's no infrastructure to start it.

[lastminutemom]

A lot of the communities in N. Fulton became cities because they want very little growth and they wanted total control over it. It will be interesting to see if any growth really happens there and what kind it is.

[Alleycat10]

Originally Posted by ericsonga

I completely agree. The traffic in North Fulton is simply atrocious. That traffic will just continue to spread up to South Forsyth. The problem is that there is just a complete lack of crossroads in the area. I just can't see the demand for housing that far out to boom for quite a while.

I agree. Secondary highways are poor, especially intersections where there is NO coordination between traffic lights and lack of turn lanes at many high volume traffic areas. The DOT still uses 1950's intersection traffic light control technology. There is not enough taxation for highway improvement, that being the case because GA has the second lowest gasoline taxes in the country. In my opinion, gasoline taxes collected by the state should be increased from around 7 cents per gallon to arount 24 cents per gallon to facilitate highway improvements with locals in control of where the money is to be spent. The 1% T-SPLOST proposal is a boondoggle. It is to spend on public transportation that is used by only 5% of commuters. It is said to end in 10 years, if approved. Who believes that? I will vote NO on T-SPLOST!

[ATLTJL]

I don't think so just because I had to go to downtown Cumming a few months ago to do some work at city hall.

I'm assuming Cumming is the county seat of Forsyth county.

It's not a bad little town, but one side of it is completely dominated by a Tyson chicken plant. It looks pretty massive, and I doubt it will be moving anytime soon. It's going to be pretty difficult to develop upscale suburbs that close to rural/indsutrial chicken processing, I think.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by Stars&StripesForever

Georgia 400 north of I-285 was completed in the early 80s, unless I'm mistaken.

I am wanting to say the limited access portion from 285 to Cumming was opened around 1976. I can pinpoint this year because of an interesting little piece of movie trivia. The interstate trucker scene in Smokey and the Bandit was filmed on Georgia 400. Movie producers got permission from the DOT to film on the almost completely finished highway right before it was opened to the public, the reason they could make a film like this without endangering local traffic.

The Trans Am that Burt Reynolds made iconic was a 1977. That was the first year that the updated trans am with the rectangular headlights was available, a car that every teenage boy (of which I was one at the time) desperately wanted. GM released the car to the movie to generate buzz before it released (like the Camaro in the transformers movies), so that leads me to say 1976.

The non limited access portion from Cumming to Dahlonega came some years later, so would say the full length was completed sometime in the 80s.

[cqholt]

If something permanent isn't done about the traffic on GA 400 then Forsyth County will suffer. We need a permanent solution, not just opening the emergency lanes to general traffic. That is the dumbest idea ever, another genius idea from GDOT.

[hal2814]

I've always maintained that if I could live anywhere it would be mid-90's Alpharetta. That place was beautiful. It wasn't terribly crowded. There were some office buildings there but not like it is now. The roads were congested during rush hour but not all day and rush hour was only 7:30AM - 9:00AM and 4:00PM - 6:00PM. North Point had just opened. The 400 Toll was in place so getting to Atlanta was relatively easy. It was fantastic.

IMHO, Forsyth County never really got that golden era. It went straight from growing to over-crowded. It's retail infrastructure lagged further behind the population growth than Alpharetta and it never really attracted the office buildings necessary for the bulk of its residents to both live and work in Forsyth.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by hal2814

I've always maintained that if I could live anywhere it would be mid-90's Alpharetta. That place was beautiful. It wasn't terribly crowded. There were some office buildings there but not like it is now. The roads were congested during rush hour but not all day and rush hour was only 7:30AM - 9:00AM and 4:00PM - 6:00PM. North Point had just opened. The 400 Toll was in place so getting to Atlanta was relatively easy. It was fantastic.

IMHO, Forsyth County never really got that golden era. It went straight from growing to over-crowded. It's retail infrastructure lagged further behind the population growth than Alpharetta and it never really attracted the office buildings necessary for the bulk of its residents to both live and work in Forsyth.

My memory is different. I drove a school bus for Cobb County from 1990 to 1995. I had taken an after hours field trip, JV basketball from Lassiter to Chattahoochee HS in 1992. Almost every road leading east from 400 was two laned and completely congested, it took us forever to get to the school.

While at the game, someone from the school office located me and told me I needed to go back home immediately, that my son had been taken to Kennestone Hospital. This was in the day before cell phones were necessary commodities. It took FOREVER to get back to 400, all the while panicking on what had happened to my 2 year old (was only an asthma scare as it turned out).

This was in 1992. It was chaos on the old county road system that hadn't been updated and prepared for the onslaught of growth that had already headed that way.