North of Atlanta, made-from-scratch town now under construction

Site work is officially underway for the next made-from-scratch town center in Atlanta’s suburbs, following a blueprint set by Suwanee, Alpharetta, Cumming, Snellville, and other OTP cities.

After seven years of planning and discussions, sections of a nearly 140-acre concept called Coal Mountain Town Center have broken ground, pushing metro Atlanta’s development boom ever northward toward the North Georgia Mountains.

The project name pays homage to the area’s unincorporated Coal Mountain community with roots dating back to the 1830s—but never any coal.

The mixed-use town center will be located where Browns Bridge Road (Hwy. 369 east) meets Dahlonega Highway (Hwy. 9 north). That’s roughly seven miles northeast of downtown Cumming, due west of Ga. Highway 400 and Lake Lanier, about 50 miles from downtown Atlanta.

National homebuilding giant Toll Brothers gained Forsyth County’s approval to build Coal Mountain Town Center last year.

Eric White, Toll Brothers division president in Atlanta, says site work is underway for a “premier luxury resort-style community” called The Crossing at the Forsyth County site.

Plans call for a variety of townhomes and single-family residences to start opening for sale at The Crossing in summer 2025, according to White.

The homes will be situated in the new town center with walkability to restaurants, shops, greenspaces, and walking and biking trails. Onsite amenities call for pickleball courts, a lap pool, and a clubhouse for residents, per White. 

As designed by architecture firm Nelson Worldwide, the Coal Mountain project aims to meld retail, offices, and other uses, while benefiting from proximity to Ga. Highway 400, a nearby Walmart, and North Georgia Premium Outlets mall, a Simon property that annually attracts about 6 million shoppers, developers have said.

The masterplanned social hub calls for more than 700 housing units to eventually be built.

Toll Brothers officials said in 2023 the breakdown for Coal Mountain includes 222 single-family homes, 219 townhomes, 300 apartments, plus 20,200 square feet of offices, and more than 70,000 square feet for retail. A 15,000-square-foot brewery space is reportedly also in the mix.

Ironwood Design Group, a firm contributing landscape architecture, amenity design, and community design, says the project will honor “the town’s historical roots while fostering a forward-looking ambiance,” weaving in greenspaces, pedestrian connections, and parking lots.

The broader goal is create for north Forsyth County what Halcyon brought to the relatively affluent, fast-growing county’s southern fringes, only with designs influenced by the area’s agricultural history.

Forsyth County Commissioners unanimously approved plans for Coal Mountain Town Center in 2022, setting the stage for Toll Brothers to begin work on the development. So large is the project’s scope, it drove county leaders to create a new zoning district called the Coal Mountain Town Center Overlay.

Meanwhile, a few miles south of the Coal Mountain project, Forsyth’s county seat Cumming opened its own mixed-use city center last year.

That project is designed to function as an improved downtown for Cumming, built from scratch, with a popular amphitheater as a core attraction.

Find more Coal Mountain context and depictions of how the community is expected to look and function in the gallery above.

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