The city of Lawrenceville has broken ground a major development project in the heart of its downtown.

The 32-acre site, to be called SouthLawn, will include 600 single family houses and townhomes and 15,000-square feet of retail space.

“The SouthLawn development means a new residential sense of purpose for the city,” says Mayor Judy Jordan Johnson.

She tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish the live, work, play community will be within walking distance of restaurants and businesses in the downtown square, the new town green, the Aurora Theatre and the police department.

“It will provide residents with a diversity of housing and a cultural atmosphere that you’re not going to find anywhere else except in the city of Lawrenceville,” says Johnson.

It’s the latest effort to redevelop the downtown which will also include turning the city’s first school for African-American children, Hooper Renwick, into a museum that will also house Lawrenceville’s relocated public library. A future expansion of the Aurora Theatre is also planned.

“When I look at these kind of developments and these kind of commitments by the city, by private development, (and) by retail, it is literally overwhelming,” says theater co-founder Ann-Carol Pence.

She believes some of the 80,000 patrons Aurora attracts every year will be among those buying the new homes and businesses in the development.

Developer Jim Borders, with the Navare Group, has worked on similar projects in downtown Atlanta and Buckhead.

“It doesn’t have to be in the city center, it can be in a city that’s in the suburbs of a large city like Atlanta,” he says.

Borders expects the first buildings to be up by the end of next year with completion in 2021.