Revitalization planned for Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - More than 30,000 cars and trucks travel on Jimmy Carter Boulevard at Interstate 85 every day.

It’s a busy area that many drivers, like Arvis Walker, try to avoid.

“I can’t stand coming over here because it’s always congested,” Walker said. “I cannot stand it. We just happened to come over here for business and my husband was like we’ll go the back way because the highway is a mess as well.”

In addition to traffic troubles here, there are empty store fronts and violent crimes.

“You know I’ve lived on Jimmy Carter my entire life and I think that any plan to help improve the area and to lower crime I would support it 100%,” Gwinnett County resident Joshua Bryan said.

According to crimemapping.com, there have been more than 160 crimes during the past month along a two-mile stretch of Jimmy Carter Boulevard including robbery, assault and homicide.

Now Gwinnett County leaders have a plan to curb the crime.

Yang Chen is the Planning Division Director for Gwinnett County. She said they intend to revitalize the area and make it safer.

“Jimmy Carter is the gateway for Gwinnett County given where it is,” Chen said.

Their goal is to turn it into a place with more walkable, bikeable, and livable work-play environments much like proposed improvements on Oakbrook Parkway.

“If we have mixed use where we have the ground floor commercial, but you have people that live there then you have more people watching the streets so that’s also a way to potentially combat crime,” Chen said.

County leaders will spend the next year planning the revitalization project and it could be about two years before improvements are made.

“If it could reduce the crime and expand more safety, I’m 100% for it,” Bryan said.

“I think that the safety will come with the revitalization,” Walker said.

County leaders will spend the next year planning the revitalization project and it could be about two years before improvements are made.