Dunwoody's Mayor Says People See "Two Big Walls" at High Street. Here's What's Behind Them.

"I think people don't necessarily know what they're seeing at High Street; they don't know what's there," Mayor Lynn Deutsch said at the Oct. 13 council hearing, as Rough Draft Atlanta reported. "They see two big walls."

The developer agreed with her. Carson Land, vice president of mixed-use development for GID, told council that phase one works as "this dynamic downtown environment, but it's inward-facing," and said, "Our retail vision for phase one hasn't come to fruition as we'd planned."

That admission from the owner of a $2 billion project ties together this fall's changes on Perimeter Center Parkway. The new restaurants, the new office tenant, the Block 6 redesign and the trail work each push High Street outward toward the rest of Dunwoody. Meanwhile, the inside of those walls already gives a Dunwoody resident a reason to stop.

One Address, Morning and Night

The two openings Land pointed to at the hearing sit next to each other at 120 High Street.

Varuni Napoli in Suite 100 celebrated its grand opening on Wednesday, Aug. 5. The menu is Neapolitan pizza made with Italian ingredients, plus cocktails, wine and beer. This is chef-owner Luca Varuni's third Atlanta restaurant, after Midtown in 2014 and Old Fourth Ward in 2017. Before those, he helped launch Antico Pizza.

Rosetta Bakery in Suite 110 opened Sept. 12 with Italian-style breads, pastries, sandwiches and coffee, according to What Now Atlanta. Four friends from Milan, Massimiliano Bagno, Alessandro Barbera, Tommaso Bulfon and Ambrogio Calcaterra, founded the brand and grew it from a first location in Miami.

Together they cover both ends of the day at one address: coffee and pastries in the morning, pizza and wine at night. An inward-facing district needs exactly that kind of anchor, because it gives people a reason to come more than once a week. Land described the pair as an amenity for "the office and residents on property [and] the community at large." The last group on that list is the one High Street has had trouble reaching.

What's Already Inside the Walls

Land put the current count at 23 commercial businesses, 13 of them retail tenants. High Street's own dining and entertainment directory breaks out like this:

• Sit-down dinner: Agave Bandido, The Hampton Social, Cuddlefish, Varuni Napoli
• Quick and casual: Velvet Taco, Nando's PERi-PERi, Rosetta Bakery
• After dinner: Puttshack, Ben & Jerry's
• Errands and appointments: Allen Edmonds, Sugarcoat, The NOW, SkinSpirit

All of it sits around a 0.75-acre park that ties together phase one's 150,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, 600 apartments, 90,000 square feet of new loft office space and 222,000 square feet of existing office. The mix is broad enough to fill an evening. The weak spot is the edge, where a driver on Perimeter Center Parkway sees building faces and garages and none of what's behind them.

A Weekday Crowd Showed Up in August

TriNet provides HR solutions and technology to small and medium-sized businesses, according to the company's press release. It signed a 150,000-square-foot lease at High Street in May 2025, the City of Dunwoody announced. The company expected the hub to create 750 jobs over five years in technology, HR consulting, client management and sales. The ribbon cutting was Aug. 19, 2026, the Dunwoody Brookhaven Ledger reported.

The office opening came two weeks after Varuni and a few weeks before Rosetta. Land called TriNet's choice "a really great validation of the idea of High Street," because "the sum is greater than the parts, and all these different components create a place where people want to be." A steady weekday crowd keeps a bakery and a pizzeria busy at lunch, and that helps keep them open for the Saturday visitor from Dunwoody Village. The district has its daytime customers now. The next step is pulling in everyone else.

Block 6 and the Plan to Open the Middle

GID has asked the city to amend its approved site plan for Block 6, the center of the 10-block, 36-acre campus. Here's how the change compares, based on Rough Draft's account of the hearing:

Land said the change would "open up the heart of High Street." The plan treats Blocks 5 and 6 as a "catalyst to pull phase one forward and continue momentum to phase three." GID has not named the three flagship retailers.

City planning staff recommended two new conditions on top of the 27 already in the zoning. On-street parking would be parallel only, and GID would have to finish a streetscape along Perimeter Center Parkway, the street where the walls face Dunwoody. GID said it supports both. Council members asked for three more things before the second hearing:

1. A traffic and parking plan for restaurant deliveries and pickups
2. More clarity on how on-street parking would work
3. More buildout of the site's multi-use trail network

Council scheduled its vote for Oct. 26. Council Member Stacey Harris pointed out how old this project is. DeKalb County approved the zoning in 2007, a year before Dunwoody became a city. "High Street was the parting gift to the City of Dunwoody," she said. "GID, the current owners, actually held onto it through the recession, through COVID, and now they're finally building it."

The Trail That Would Connect It

Council's request for more trail work ties into a bigger link. Dunwoody and Sandy Springs staff are working on a paved trail connection from High Street to PATH400 along Hammond Drive and Peachtree Dunwoody Road. No delivery date has been announced.

Part of that route already has a project page. Sandy Springs describes the Peachtree Dunwoody Road trail as a 12-foot sidepath on the west side of the road from Hammond Drive to Mt. Vernon Highway. Its design contract was executed Jan. 4, 2024, and the page doesn't list a construction date. The PATH400 extension is on its own timeline. As of fall 2026, Segments 1 and 3 are under construction with completion expected in early 2028, and Segment 2 is expected to start this fall and take about three years. Those dates apply to the main trail, not to the High Street connector.

If the connector gets built, High Street would be reachable without a car, and that would do more to bring down the walls than any change to a building.

Where It Fits in Dunwoody's November

High Street's own events calendar currently runs only through October, with no holiday programming listed. For now, the city's biggest seasonal gatherings happen elsewhere in Dunwoody, and High Street works better as the place for coffee before or dinner after.

1. Diwali in Dunwoody, Saturday, Nov. 7, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., at Dunwoody Nature Center, 5343 Roberts Drive
2. Light Up Dunwoody, Sunday, Nov. 15, starting at 2 p.m. at Donaldson-Bannister Farm, presented by the Dunwoody Homeowners Association and the Dunwoody Preservation Trust. It's free, with Santa, live reindeer, and the lighting of the Christmas tree, Menorah and farmhouse at 6 p.m.
3. Village Holiday Celebration and Lantern Parade, Sunday, Nov. 22, 3 to 6:30 p.m. per the event page, in the Greater Dunwoody Village area. Create Dunwoody's broader listing says 7 p.m., so check with the organizer before you go. Every activity except the lantern workshops is free.
4. Brook Run Park Holiday Lights, a free walk-through display in December that typically runs nightly through Dec. 31. The city hasn't posted 2026 opening-night details yet.

On a weekend like Nov. 15, you could start with a Rosetta pastry, head to the farm for the 6 p.m. lighting and finish with pizza at Varuni Napoli, which gives High Street a regular place in a Dunwoody resident's week.

If you live near Perimeter Center and want to know how a redesigned Block 6, a new office anchor or a future PATH400 link could affect the homes around them, Purpose Driven Real Estate Group follows these projects closely and can walk you through what they mean for your street. Schedule Your Free Consultation.