Medley: The Future of Johns Creek with Mark Toro - $560M Mixed-use Development

For decades, Johns Creek has been one of the fastest growing communities in all of Georgia. If you're like me, you've always known it as sort of this area between Alfred and Duluth, and it never really had a true downtown. Well, that's about to change. This is Medley. It's a 42-acre project in the heart of Johns Creek, and it's one of the most ambitious mixed-use developments in the Metro Atlanta area. And we got to walk around with the man

himself, Mark Toro, that's making it all happen. When it's complete, Medley will bring together new retail, class A office space, apartments, townhomes, and a new hotel. All told, it's a $560 million investment in the future of the city. Now come along for the ride. Hey guys, welcome back to the Sunbelt Developers Podcast. We are here at Medley in Johns Creek, Georgia. We're here

with Mark Toro with the Toro Development Company. And today we're going to take a behind-the-scenes look at this incredible project. Come along. Alrighty, so here we are. We're outside the office building right now.

Yeah, this is where it all begins. So, you know, Medley is five food groups: single-family residential, multifamily residential, retail office, and hotel. The office is actually the second to open. Trader Joe's opened in June. We welcomed 400 plus employees at Bo Ringer Ingelheim, a German pharmaceutical manufacturer whose animal health headquarters is now here at Medley. So operating and opening

and operating this property in phases has been a bit of a challenge, but we've we've made it happen. Walk with me, I'll show with you what uh what it looks like. So here we are at 4000 Medley, which is uh a 100% leased office building in the suburbs in Metro Atlanta. Shocking, I know. Um, you know, we've got uh I've got a dear friend, many of you know, um John Higgy, who told me

that twice in his career did he lease buildings from zero 100% spec to 100 lease during the course of construction. One was 8,000 Avalon Boulevard, and one was Monarch Plaza. Wow. That's how long ago that was. Wow. So this has been a spectacular experience. The stream realty team has done a great job representing the landlord, and the Christian Wakefield team has done a great job bringing all of our tenants. All of our so um Boe Ringer Ingelheim

is now in here operational and waiting for what's gonna happen on the boulevard. Awesome. Medley adventure starts here. Morning. So much of what Medley's about is the emulation or imitation or just

pure knockoff of things we've seen in travel. So this element we call the boulevard with jewel box buildings in the in the center and the median is a 100% copy, carbon copy of Santana Row in San Jose, California. The other thing that we have done here that's critically important is that we've recruited

the best in class restaurateurs who are what we call sole proprietors, S-O-U-L proprietors. These are guys who are early to mid-stage growth restaurant groups. It's up to us as the principal, as the owner, to vet those operators and make sure they fit A with the rest of the team and B with the

Medley brand. And they're gonna serve the community. You know, we call our lineup here the United Nations of Culinary Arts. Because we've got Japanese and Chinese and Thai and Mexican and Irish and Italian and Spanish. So it's a critical component of, you know, we say F and B is the new anchor back in the day when you were building malls here, shopping centers, Target or Macy's would

be your anchor. Now we cut we congregate 10 or 12 operators.

We are here with Gage Anderson. Gage is with for construction. Uh, they're one of the sponsors on this video. So if you have any construction needs, give them a call. But Gage is gonna be walking us around. Uh, give us the the side of Medley from the project manager lens. I'd love to hear just kind of unique things about it. You've been on the project since day one and converting a corporate campus to this kind of retail mixed-use sort of thing. Was there any complicated side work?

So the hard part of it was that since this building was existing, you know, we had to work to get all the tenant spots ready to go, all the demo on the first floors, and then prep for BI to actually take over those top third and fourth floors. So it tied into our schedule with Fortune Johnson on the multifamily side because we actually owed them the pad for their multi-family stuff. So it was really a close working relationship with them to make sure that we gave each other enough

time to uh hit our dates and make sure we work together as a team to get there. So the biggest scope on this job, in my opinion, has absolutely been the hardscape package. Um, as you can see, this is a lot of concrete that's been hand um sprayed to be this certain etch to show the amount of aggregate in it. It takes a lot of time and effort and a couple tries to get it right, but um

you know this whole site from start to finish, all the hardscapes, all the sidewalks are this etched concrete uh exposed aggregate. And it lead they lead you into all the different shared spaces um that you'll see right.

So tell me about the tree.

What I know Mark told us he's they've injected it with all sorts of stuff to keep it alive forever, but like so the so the tree's been here since the state farm building was in operation, and and one of Mark's you know key goals was to keep that tree as the center point of medley and have it kind of be this this anchor to the to the job site. And so we've had an arborist on um on site pretty much weekly, monthly

since day one, checking on the tree, making sure it's getting everything it needs, and this we're not encroaching on it. Uh the design for the tree bar went into protecting the critical root zone. Um, and so we took a lot of care to make sure we did not disrupt that tree's life.

So we will activate that bar, an open-air experience. It's going to be run by one of our restaurateurs, and we'll do pojo readings and acoustic guitar and happy hours and full moon parties and anything and everything you can imagine to activate that, which is now the centerpiece of the Medley community. This will be an outdoor room, and it'll be activated

three days a week, weather permitting, and all kinds of events and activations.

What did you learn from Avalon that y'all applied here from day one?

Uh, there are dozens of nuances. As an example, the valet run at Avalon is down Avalon Boulevard, behind the building, behind Super Rica, in the second level where it's nested. It's it's too long. So the valet goes from here to there. Got it. That parkway we we we shortened it

by 80%. So that should be a major to so a lot of these a lot of these things are operational. Yeah. You know, the fact that we're we're bringing the plaza with F and B is about creating that experience and creating that energy. The umbrellas that we're using at Crewe are models that I discovered on a recent river cruise on the Danube,

and and many of these European cities have these plazas that have restaurants and bars and so forth, and their plaza is sectioned by the color of the umbrellas. So crew, their their corporate colors are sort of like a deep, like a it's a crew wine bar, so you think it's like the color of a Merlot, yeah, uh, or a cab, and they, you know, kind of followed suit to create

that experience.

Tell me about the mural here. Who's the muralist?

And so so we've uh we've worked with a a gallery called ABV. Uh Greg Mike is a very prominent local Atlanta, or actually now nationally and internationally known muralist. Um you can look him up, Greg Mike. Um, and he runs a gallery called ABV that has access to dozens

of artists of every type. So sculptors and muralists and painters and so forth. So this young lady who's doing the mural here um is one of Greg Mike's stable of muralists. We have four more muralists, murals that will be installed at Medley before grand opening. That one was specifically chosen for

her style and her color. You don't you when you see a finish, it's a that's a lot sort of bolder. Um and she's just uh a talented young lady who's doing great work. Yeah. Okay, so we are in Prelude. How many apartments says it's like 300? 340 units in the first phase, 408 in the second, 133 townhomes,

so there will be 883 households waking up at Medley every day. Which clearly, you know, drives sort of a base layer for all the commercial district, uh, and then becomes the magnet for people to have the medley experience every day. This is Prelude, unit number 5023, and it's leased.

It's the fur was the first unit to lease at Medley, and for good reason, because it looks out over the boulevard, it looks out over the plaza, you have the opportunity to have a front row seat to all that happens at Medley. So, you know, it's a it's a unique experience to have um a residence where you can park your car, walk everywhere you want,

walk, and not move it. It's rare to have this opportunity in the suburbs. And I think the gentleman who leased this apartment saw it, said, it doesn't matter what it costs. I am going to live here.

Um, y'all have been doing an amazing job here. I'd love to hear your side of how this project has come about, any challenges or any of your favorite parts of it and and what y'all are responsible for.

Sure, thank you. Um yeah, EVP at Fortune Johnson. Uh so I oversee all of our pre-construction efforts uh throughout all of our regions. Um this project we started with Toro probably back in 2023 of pricing it. Um very exciting project from the start. We've had to collaborate with Hoare, who's done an outstanding job. Hoare handled all of the master development out here, all of the retail,

all the infrastructure through the main streets, and Fort ⁇ Johnson's responsibility is the two phases of multifamily. So we're standing right here in the Paseo uh Prelude, which is Medley John Street phase one for the apartments. Um this this phase, phase one, is 340 units. Uh there's 40,000 square feet

of retail underneath the podium. Uh, there's an additional 60,000 square feet of podium back behind us uh with all the retail parking, uh, above all the podium, like I said, 340 stick frame uh multifamily units. This the paseo that we're in right now, this is kind of the grand entrance. It takes you from the public space um out in Medley into the

leasing office of the apartment units. So uh to tie in to Medley, the Medley theme out here, uh phase one, like I said, is called Prelude. So there will be piano keys um along the ceiling leading you down to the leasing office. And then they're they're not in yet, but uh along along the sidewalk as well will be piano keys um taking the residence and creating that experience. This

is a very unique project in the sense that typically the developers we build for, it's always get to units first. Like we want the leasing office, we want units. Like that's how they're generating revenue. Toro looks at it differently. They're very focused on what he calls the third space. You've got this great live, work, play area. Um, so retail is a huge component, and that's that's the driver out here, number one. So we got to get that

ready, and we want it all delivering at once.

So we're here over at the green area. Yeah, um uh the green's probably my favorite spot on this project. Um, so behind us, you see, is a stage. This will actually all be turf on Monday, uh, and all these light poles um are all tied up to a system in there that'll be controlled, so you'll have to be able to tie the lights to music, to different events going on. Um it's gonna be a really special spot for the community to come out and enjoy and different colors and all that stuff. Oh,

yeah, colors like synced up with songs and all kinds of good stuff.

You know, virtually every day of the week uh will be an event here in this plaza. Now, the one thing we talked about, you know, key learnings from other from travels and other experiences. One of the factors that we didn't anticipate at Avalon because Avalon Boulevard runs exactly east-west, is that the 3000 building would shade the plaza during the late afternoons

and evenings in the summertime. We don't have that here. So we've erected these poles to house shade sales. So we went through extensive sun studies to look at. So the sunset here is right there. The sunset at Avalon is right there. So that building would shade it, but for the fact that we can't

help where the building sunsets. So the sunsets there in the summer, so we look at at various times of the day how do we erect shade sales, and they start lower in the back and higher in the front so that we don't obstruct the view of the stage.

Is this a mechanical thing that no, they they're just what it is?

They're in they're static, okay, but they they are situated and canted so that they shade most of the sun most of the time. Mark's been great. This has been a real pleasure. Thanks for coming. Come back on the 28th. We'll do. And uh we'll see you uh soon.

Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in. This has been a really special tour with Mark and the whore team and the Fortune Johnson team. Come out and check out Medley. It opens up in just a couple weeks, and I think you're gonna be nothing but surprised and impressed. Um, they clearly have uh their program figured out with Avalon and all the other projects that Mark and his team are up to and have done. So thanks again for tuning in. Please like, subscribe, leave us a review. This project

keeps going on due to your support and tuning in. And uh, if you have any projects you think we should cover, please let us know. Uh, you can reach out to Alfred at Duran Media or leave us a comment. Thanks again. Sumbo Developers is brought to you by Northspire. Here's what Northspire does. On a development project, things become true long before they become visible.

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