Did you know that Peachtree Corners is the second largest municipality in Georgia with no city property tax? Our residents don’t pay a single dollar toward property taxes. The city can continue to support this initiative due to Curiosity Lab and our smart city being a driving force for economic development.
Our story began with an idea and an individual determined to improve his community. Paul Duke, a Georgia Tech graduate in the 1960s, saw an opportunity to build up the tech community in the metro Atlanta area. If you’re interested in reading more about Duke and the history of his developments, read the details in the History of Technology Park Blog. Although most of Duke’s work was dedicated to developing tech companies in the community, his ideas had a significant impact on the economic growth of the area.
Since the inception of Technology Park and Peachtree Corners incorporating into a city in 2012, the city has grown to encompass 10,400 acres and is home to 50,000 residents and 50,000 jobs. With Curiosity Lab, Technology Park and the many job opportunities existing under the umbrella of Peachtree Corners, the area remains a hub for economic growth and community prosperity.
Fast forward to present day, Technology Park and the Silicon Orchard remain a high-activity hub driving economic development due to Curiosity Lab and our city street of the future acting as a proving ground for local, national and international companies and startups. These startups and established companies will come to Curiosity Lab for various periods of time, whether that be one day, to a few months or even years, to continue to develop their technologies for full-scale deployment.
When these companies come to our ecosystem, they will eat at restaurants in the area, stay at hotels nearby, shop at local stores, and more. From these visits, the city collects the majority of their occupational tax and retail sales tax revenue. The same principle applies when Curiosity Lab hosts conferences, tours various groups through the lab, or recruits new companies to move permanently to the innovation center. More simply explained, the economic development and activity the Curiosity Lab drives allows the city to maintain a zero property tax rate for city residents.
The consistent activity in Peachtree Corners, driven by Curiosity Lab, results in startups and larger companies wanting to move to the city permanently. Peachtree Corners being recognized as the premiere US smart city and with Curiosity Lab consistently deploying the latest bleeding edge technologies, makes our city hard to resist for companies wanting to be a part of this incredible community. This is the end goal for our economic development initiative: to bring long term activity to the city, promote a healthy local economy and ensure prosperity to our citizens.
To date, we have seen this activity drive permanent relocations of national company headquarters and/or the establishment of East Coast headquarters, including BrightTree, ASHRAE (which moved their global headquarters to Technology Park), Intuitive Surgical and more.
Intuitive Surgical, a global leader in minimally invasive care using robotic-assisted technology to perform surgery, announced in 2022 that Peachtree Corners was officially chosen as their East Coast headquarters. Intuitive will be investing over $600 million in capital outlay and will be bringing over 1,200 new jobs to our city. The innovation in Technology Park and Curiosity Lab had a major hand in this decision.
The project recently earned the 2022 Deal of the Year Award from the Georgia Department of Economic Development due to the expected amount of economic growth that should result from this enterprise. The project brings significant benefits to the Peachtree Corners community, including ongoing economic development that will contribute to the city’s long-standing record as one of the largest municipalities in Georgia.
As Curiosity Lab and our smart city continue to grow, we are looking forward to seeing how the positive impacts of these initiatives will further advance our city and improve the everyday lives of our residents.