Developers announced plans July 30 for a multi-million dollar mixed-use development on more than 20 acres along Powder Springs Street between Garrison and Sandtown roads in the city of Marietta.

The $100 million development, called the Marietta Mercantile Exchange, will include more than 500,000 square feet of upscale residential and commercial space to be developed in accordance with the city’s Tier B classification requirements for appearance, style and density.

The design overlay encourages integration of pedestrian design features and aesthetic improvements into automobile-oriented corridors to generate visual interest.

“We want to assure city officials and other community leaders that this project will meet or exceed all of the standards that have been established,” said B.A. Stoner, whose company, Youtsey Inc., owns much of the property on which the Marietta Mercantile Exchange will be developed and is working to acquire the remaining parcels. “We want to be sure this is a project everyone in Marietta will be proud of.”

Youtsey will team with A.G. Armstrong Development based in Tampa, Florida. The A.G. Armstrong vice president of Georgia operations, Nayef Haddad, said plans for the site include new retail, office and housing construction, with approximately one-third of the project designated as high-end residential use.

Mr. Haddad said a yet-to-be-determined national grocery chain will anchor the site’s retail component.

“We want the grocery anchor to reflect the needs and desires of the community, and there are several possibilities given the old-world neighborhood design we envision,” Haddad said. “The retail anchor will need to be a well-known national grocery chain. The candidates with whom we are working all do intensive investigation prior to committing to build a store anywhere.”

The mixed use project incorporates class-A professional office suites, high-end residential flats and town homes and a neighborhood retail mix and will create a significant increase in tax revenue for the city of Marietta.

“We hope we’ll be lighting a wildfire of value in that area,” Youtsey representative Bill Loughrey said. “This isn’t a project being developed by an absentee landlord. This is a project being developed by a sixth-generation Cobb County family that has been doing business here for 52 years.”

Loughrey said the project adheres to all of the guidelines recently adopted by the Cobb County Commission for a tax allocation districts (TAD), and the project developers will be making a TAD application with the Marietta Redevelopment Corporation, Marietta City Council, Cobb County and city of Marietta Board of Education in the near future.