Sunset over Technology Park at Johns Creek, one of the largest employment centers in Metro Atlanta with over 10,000 daily workers.
Image courtesy of City of Johns Creek.
Johns Creek shows how it’s done in the northern suburbs of metro Atlanta.
Drive through the northern suburbs of metro Atlanta, and you’ll see a lot of gated communities, golf courses, pristine parks, mixed-use developments and, of course, traffic.
But if you happen to pass through north Fulton County near the intersection of State Road 141 and McGinnis Ferry Road, stop and pay attention to what is happening in this area. Tucked into the north Georgia foothills along the meandering Chattahoochee River is a community of 82,230 people who comprise the 10th largest city in Georgia and the No. 1 Best Place to Live in America, per the 2025 ranking by U.S. News & World Report.
My first experience with Johns Creek came 25 years ago, when I drove from Buford, Georgia, in northern Gwinnett County to a dentist appointment in Johns Creek. Back then, Johns Creek wasn’t even a city. It was more like a loose collection of neighborhoods, small professional businesses, lots of medical offices, a few large corporate employers and a mish-mash of national chain stores. Becoming a city is something that would not happen until residents in the area voted to incorporate the community in 2006.
Two decades later, signs welcome visitors to the city with these words: “Johns Creek: Be the Exception.” How did a once nondescript area of north Fulton transform itself into what U.S. News now claims is the best place to live in the United States? To answer that question, I took another trip to Johns Creek, this time on June 10 to City Hall, located in Technology Park of Johns Creek — a 500-acre business park that is home to 7 million sq. ft. of office and industrial space.
A new amphitheater just behind City Hall in Johns Creek is projected to be complete in 2026.
Image courtesy of City of Johns Creek.
My goal was to find out how a formerly unincorporated area governed mostly by homeowners associations coalesced so quickly into a thriving municipality that regularly attracts the most talented workers and the employers who want to hire them.
Case in point: Boston Scientific is putting the finishing touches on a $62.5 million campus expansion that’s bringing 340 high-wage jobs to Johns Creek at a new manufacturing and supply chain facility in Tech Park. It’s part of a burgeoning life sciences and health care ecosystem that already employs over 4,000 people at 700-plus medical and med-tech establishments in Johns Creek.
Creating a Leader in Life Sciences
Kim Allonce, economic development director for Johns Creek, says Boston Scientific was a competitive project that “could have left the state and gone somewhere else. Instead, they decided to continue being in Georgia and chose Johns Creek as their location. The Boston Scientific win was made possible because of the close relationship that we have with our state and regional partners such as the Georgia Department of Economic Development and Select Fulton. The state has been very proactive in pursuing companies, and we are very proud to be a leader in the life sciences in Georgia.”
“We have created the amenities that office employers are looking for.”
– Kim Allonce, Director of Economic Development, City of Johns Creek, Georgia
Already home to Emory Johns Creek Hospital, the city recently landed a huge investment by Boehringer Ingelheim in Tech Park. The world’s largest private pharmaceutical company is leasing more than 70,000 sq. ft. of office space and bringing over 480 employees to Johns Creek as part of its new life sciences campus.
The city’s vision of a new town center helped make that deal happen, says Allonce. “We have created the amenities that office employers are looking for,” he says. “Employees will have great access to shopping, dining, walking trails, parks, city services and other facilities right here.
He’s referring to Medley, a new $560 million mixed-use development being built by Atlanta-based Toro Development Company, and the new Johns Creek Town Center, anchored by a nature-surrounded boardwalk and 21-acre park. Medley, a 43-acre lifestyle destination center being developed by the same people who brought Avalon to nearby Alpharetta, will open next year and offer 150,000 sq. ft. of retail, restaurant and entertainment space; 110,000 sq. ft. of office space; a 175-room boutique hotel; 750 apartments; 133 townhouses and a 25,000-sq.-ft. plaza.
A new Boardwalk at Town Center will anchor a new 21-acre park next to Johns Creek City Hall.
Image courtesy of City of Johns Creek.
All of this is being built on the former 53-acre campus of State Farm Regional Headquarters in Johns Creek. When State Farm consolidated and closed that campus, the move gave the city more than 50 acres of blank-slate opportunity. Johns Creek is planning to use 43 acres of that land for Medley and 10 acres for Boston Scientific.
Allonce says that high-end projects like these, along with a commitment to preserve the natural outdoor amenities of the community, contributed to U.S. News naming Johns Creek the No. 1 Best Place to Live in America. A search of the U.S. News website reveals that the publisher builds scores of criteria into its comprehensive index to determine the annual ranking. Factors include quality of education, quality and availability of health care, air quality index, environmental risk, state economy, state infrastructure, housing affordability, cost of living, crime rates, climate, a culture and leisure index, commuting times and traffic congestion, local job market and a host of other criteria.
A map shows Johns Creek’s location in Metro Atlanta.
Image courtesy of City of Johns Creek.
Based on these factors, Johns Creek finished first in the nation this year, followed by Carmel, Indiana; Pearland, Texas; Fishers, Indiana; Cary, North Carolina; League City, Texas; Apex, North Carolina; Leander, Texas; Rochester Hills, Michigan, and Troy, Michigan.
Serving a Higher Purpose
“Johns Creek is an exceptional place,” says Allonce. “People come here because we are rooted in top-tier education. Our public schools rank in the top 10 in Georgia. We have more than 400 acres of parkland across nine parks. We have the No. 2-ranked dog park in the country. We were recently named the Best Suburb in America, and we offer a very business-friendly environment. We constantly invest in our public infrastructure, and we have decided to focus on health care and life sciences as our target industries.”
The result is a model community, says Johns Creek city communications director Bob Mullen. “It is a testament to all of the hard work from so many people in the community,” he says. “We put a premium on public safety and invest in our police and fire, and it shows. For a city that is not even 20 years old, this is remarkable.”
John Creek, GA Profile:
Population:
82,230 (2025)
Land Area:
32 square miles
Location:
North Fulton County; 24 miles north of downtown Atlanta;
40 miles north of Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Median Household Income:
$153,882 per year
Employment:
Over 26,000 people work in the city
Office Space:
Over 1.5 million sq. ft.
Office Rental Rate:
$25-plus per sq. ft.
Notable Neighborhoods:
Atlanta Athletic Club; Country Club of the South; St. Ives; Seven Oaks
Source: City of Johns Creek Market Profile
Others are taking notice. Niche.com named Johns Creek the No. 1 Suburb in Atlanta and the No. 1 Best Place to Raise a Family in Georgia. Johns Creek has three of the Top 20 High Schools in Georgia, and Travel & Leisure named Johns Creek the No. 1 Best Suburb to Live in the U.S. in 2024.
The accolades are nice, notes Allonce, but what really motivates him, he says, is a desire to help people experience the highest possible quality of life — and that stems from the fact that he experienced the opposite of that in his younger years.
Growing up in Haiti, he was attending college in Port-au-Prince when a devastating earthquake rocked the island nation to its core in 2010. “I was in law school when the earthquake happened,” he says. “I had to walk to my house in the suburbs. That was a five-hour journey. Everywhere I went, I saw collapsed buildings and people wandering in the streets. It was clear to me that I needed to do something else. My public service journey is part of my story.”
With his father living in Stockbridge, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, Allonce had a path to the United States, which he used to enroll in law school at the University of Georgia and ultimately earn his Master of Public Administration and his Ph.D.
Today, Allonce feels like he is exactly where he is supposed to be. “We are building a hub for civic life at the new Johns Creek Town Center,” he says. “After the earthquake, I made a commitment to myself that whatever I was going to pursue, it was going to be about serving the public interest.”
He adds that “what I like about Johns Creek is that we are creating a community gathering place. People used to complain that ‘there was no there there in Johns Creek,’ but that is not true anymore. The ‘there there’ is being implemented and people are excited about it.”
The Lunar New Year celebration is a popular annual event in Johns Creek. Over 32% of the city’s population is Asian or East Asian.
Image courtesy of City of Johns Creek.
