Tracy Styf, Executive Director, Town Center CID
Tracy Styf, executive director of Town Center CID, spoke with Focus: about recent and upcoming projects to Town Center. “We currently have 15 projects in the workplan totaling more than $75 million. The largest project will be completed in early 2026, which will be the largest infrastructure project in the history of the Town Center community.”
What changes over the past year have most impacted your CID’s strategy, and how have you adapted your approach?
We take a long-lens approach on strategic planning. As the second oldest CID in Georgia, our focus is on redevelopment. We are not a district that has a lot of vacant green space for new vertical projects, so we keep a keen eye on what we need for today and what we will need tomorrow. We have two organizations inside Town Center that collaborate: the Community Improvement District, in its 28th year, and our Town Center Community Alliance, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2026. Together, they look at the quality of life and long-range planning.
We took a commercial area around a mall and evolved it over the past three decades into a community with more than 37,000 jobs, that’s 10% of all jobs in Cobb County that are located in Town Center, and 15,000 residents. Our district is a significant hub where people can access major interstates and spend time. Collaborations with Kennesaw State University (KSU) ensure students have positive experiences not only on campus but also in the community. We want students to stay and add to the workforce after they graduate.
All of these pieces connect in a way that keeps our focus on economic development and converting properties for the future.
What recent infrastructure investments or projects are having the biggest impact within the district?
We currently have 15 projects in the workplan totaling almost $100 million. The largest project — the South Barrett Reliever — will be completed in early 2026, and will be the largest infrastructure project in the history of the Town Center community. We have 60,000 cars per day coming into the area, and this project will reduce traffic by 20% along the major corridor. The project also includes the last portion of the inner loop, providing a complete street through major economic development centers inside the district. This loop will provide safer and more effective traffic flow, separating bike and pedestrian paths off-road. When we invest in this type of infrastructure, we enhance the mobility of the community and impact economic development. As we update these main corridors, it sets us up for key redevelopment projects to occur.
What placemaking strategies and initiatives are helping activate and program public spaces throughout the district?
Placemaking has been at the core of our work from the start. When we began in 1997, we knew we had a natural asset in the Noonday Creek that flows through the district. Activating this space with a trail alongside the creek connected our district and provided an amenity for businesses and residents. In 2014, we opened the seven-mile trail that goes through the district and connects to the broader trail network in metro Atlanta. Now, we are connecting the last four miles to the north with Cherokee County. When complete, Noonday Creek Trail will connect Cherokee County to and through our district to the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield, a site with two million visitors per year, all the way down to the Silver Comet Trail and the Atlanta Beltline. We know that what is happening inside the perimeter of Atlanta is just as important as what is happening outside, which is why the ability for a Town Center resident to bike from our district to the city is so important. As this connection is taking place, we’re also celebrating the 10th anniversary of our bikeshare program — the first CID-sponsored bikeshare initiative within the state of Georgia. To celebrate, this year we have added e-bikes to our fleet for community use.
Providing recreation amenities helps with both personal health and fitness, also with attracting businesses that want to see those amenities. Vanderlande, a Dutch company that has been in metro Atlanta for more than 25 years, relocated its national North American headquarters to Town Center because of the Noonday Creek Trail. They understand this is a recreation amenity employees expect and a core aspect of their culture.
Hospitality is also a key pillar of the Town Center district due to our location on I-75 and in Northwest Georgia. We partner with hotels and other hospitality and tourism organizations to make sure they have information on the trail system, parks, and greenspaces. A major project for the district was Aviation Park, a three-mile park at the end of our general aviation airport. What started as a simple project developing a restroom along the trail turned into a full visioning plan where we partnered with the County to fashion the restroom building as a replica of the air control tower and install a plane and a STEAM-themed playground. We partnered with KSU’s rare books and museum department to create exhibits and a curriculum for students in kindergarten through 5th grade, creating a free field trip opportunity. The exhibits teach about the mechanics of motion, how we get planes in the air, the physics involved, and the history of aviation in Cobb County. We partnered with Kaiser Permanente to provide a yoga in the park series for free, and classes are always fully booked. There was a family who reached out to us who was at the ribbon cutting when we installed the antique plane. Their father was in the exhibit telling stories about the African American workers who were building bomber planes in WWII, and so we dedicated a bench to his memory. You never know the impact something will have on the lasting legacy of people within the community.
How does the CID collaborate with the university to grow the surrounding community?
We have a very close working relationship with Kennesaw State, working alongside the University on strategic and master plans, and concepts for district enhancements. In addition, I, along with two of our CID board members, serve as trustees on the foundation board. KSU and the CID have “grown up” together in a way, it’s been incredible to see and experience. We look forward to the University’s future growth and ensuring our district remains a thriving college and business community.
The first project we formally partnered on was the Skip Spann Connector bridge over Interstate 75, which opened in 2016. In collaboration with Cobb County, we held a contest in which students from three organizations participated in design competitions. Teams submitted bridge designs, and the winning design featured the Kennesaw Mountain illuminated on the bridge. It won awards at the local, state, and national level for design and construction.
This collaboration is great both for community engagement and for infrastructure. The bridge removed 20% of traffic from a corridor that wasn’t built to handle it and saved the university money on busing. It’s an example of how a project can have one goal in mind in the planning stage and have a much greater impact.
What are your top priorities over the next few years, and how will the CID continue to shape the district’s future?
We will continue to protect and strengthen the assets and revenue that come into the district. We are focused on different ways we are raising funds, securing grants, and being thoughtful with our tax dollars to ensure we are partnering with all levels of government to accomplish our goals.
We conduct studies and identify lots of projects, and there’s never enough money to do all the things we want or need to do. We want to ensure Town Center’s longevity and success by being a vibrant community with a diverse number of assets. A mall in need of redevelopment has been part of our master plan for more than 20 years. It’s not an if, it’s a when. We’ve seen the revenue of our district be pulled down by the mall, and the decline in property value has direct correlation with what our property values could have been if the mall had continued to thrive.
Over the past decade, Cobb has seen a 156% increase in property value, and Town Center has seen a 122% increase. The anchoring effects of the mall property have contributed to revenue decline. We are working with all partners to reimagine what can be done and doing it in a focused, strategic way that invites the development community to come and show them our tools to be the best partner.
