Many cities and towns throughout the North Georgia area experienced large growth and development in 2023, including the City of Cumming. While cities like Gainesville and Flowery Branch focused much of their development on their downtown areas, the City of Cumming has focused on a piece of land in close proximity to its downtown -- a development known as the Cumming City Center.
The 75-acre property between Canton Highway and Sawnee Drive to the west of downtown Cumming primarily came online in 2023. It features a series of restaurants, shops, green space, trails and a large outdoor amphitheater. Additionally, plans are underway to move the City of Cumming's Municipal Court building and Police Department headquarters to the Cumming City Center in the near future.
The development was the vision of City of Cumming Mayor Troy Brumbalow, who initially ran for mayor with the idea of creating the city center to bring back Cumming's "small-town feel."
"I was born in raised in Cumming, Georgia, and ... growing up here, you would go and congregate in town," Brumbalow said. "Well, as our county and city have grown over the last three decades, when the boom really started, we kind of lost that hometown feel. People were pretty much just passing through Cumming."
With the bulk of the Cumming City Center now complete, Brumbalow said the development has given the community a new place to enjoy.
"It's amazing when you go over there and see so many families out there just walking around and congregating at the amphitheater, or the putting course or walking the trails and just, people having a good time," Brumbalow said. "It's a different environment there. It's not like a normal restaurant scene where you go and pull up in a parking lot, get out, go to dinner and get in the car and leave. People [at the Cumming City Center] may go to dinner, but then they go walk around and enjoy the nature park in the middle, or just different things going on there."
Brumbalow said a variety of businesses have made Cumming City Center their home, with about 15 different restaurants and eateries. The development exclusively features locally owned establishments, with no chains present, according to Brumbalow. All of the commercial spaces at the development have been leased, with a few still finishing up their build-out process.
"By the summer, everything will be open there," Brumbalow said.
Several additions are planned for the development, including the addition of residential properties. Additionally, Brumbalow said the addition of the new City of Cumming Municipal Court Building and Police Headquarters will help resolve space and age issues with their current facility in Downtown Cumming.
"[The new facility] looks like a government building from 100 years ago, it's really neat," Brumbalow said. "It's going to have a portico off the side, we'll have a police car that the city owns that we restored that two policemen got overtaken and killed in ... a little over 50 years ago. We recreated the car as a memorial for fallen policemen."
Brumbalow said they were expecting to break ground on the new Municipal Court Building and Police Headquarters within the next couple of months.
The new police department is not the only historic piece in the development -- city officials recently held a ribbon cutting for a new fire museum, which features the City of Cumming's last fire truck from when the city had a volunteer fire department.
"Just trying to pay respects to our first responders," Brumbalow said. "Actually, right at Veteran's Day, we opened our pond around our amphitheater. That's become our new Veteran's Memorial."
Brumbalow said the Cumming City Center will continue to feature extensive events in the coming months, ranging from classic car shows, to Zumba classes, to street markets.
As a whole, Brumbalow said he was excited to see the development operational after years of work and planning.
"I hear it all the time from people, you know 'Thank you so much, we've needed this for so long,'" Brumbalow said. "We're just happy to bring it and have it there and bring people from all over together. It's just such a great family environment there. People really enjoy it and we love seeing them enjoy it."
This is the third story in a series of downtown development stories AccessWDUN has published in the final weeks of 2023. Read more about development in Downtown Gainesville and Downtown Flowery Branch by clicking on their respective links.
