Rowen’s first building set to break ground next year

The Rowen Foundation is getting ready to break ground next year on the first building that will be part of the sprawling 2,000-acre knowledge community in eastern Gwinnett County.

Rowen officials announced on Monday that they will break ground on development’s 10,000-sqaure-foot Convergence Center in mid-2026. The center is intended to be the interdisciplinary collaboration hub for the development, which is intended to be a research and innovation hub for the fields of agriculture, medicine and environmental science.

“Through the years, both history and our Convergence Summit have shown that when talented people from a variety of disciplines come together, discovery accelerates,” Rowen Foundation President & CEO Mason Ailstock said. “With the Convergence Center, we are creating a home for that spirit year-round — ensuring Georgia becomes the place where the next generation of innovators, dreamers, and creators can thrive.”

The announcement about the Convergence Center groundbreaking came during the Rowen Convergence Summit at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta. About 200 scientists, artists, educators and business leaders participated in the morning portion of the summit, whose theme was “The Science of Art in Discovery, Research & Innovation.”

Rowen officials said the Convergence Center will offer spaces for research, performance, exhibitions and convenings and serve as a physical anchor for partnerships created each year at the annual summit and for innovations created by Living Lab partnerships with higher education institutions and other organizations.

Rowen currently has five Living Labs set up with higher education institutions around Georgia.

Ailstock had teased the Convergence Center at a presentation to the Gwinnett Chamber earlier this year. At that time, the center was still in the design phase, but Ailstock said it would be located in the “Rowen Village,” which will be a central mixture of office, lab, retail and multifamily housing spaces in the middle of the Rowen development.

Rowen is a major undertaking in Gwinnett. When it was first announced more than five years ago, it was touted as a knowledge community on par with the Research Triangle in North Carolina and other similar developments around the nation. In addition to research and innovation centers, it is also expected to have residential and retail areas.

The goal is that, over a span of several decades, Rowen will eventually bring about 100,000 new jobs to eastern Gwinnett, on a broad swatch of land situated between Dacula and the Gwinnett-Barrow County line.

The installation of $30 million in infrastructure, including roads, water and sewer lines and walking trails for the Rowen development wrapped up at the beginning of this year.

The Rowen Foundation is also starting to move forward with the housing portion of the development. A Request For Proposals to find a developer for the multifamily housing that will be located in the “Rowen Village” has been issued. It is not clear yet when a multifamily developer for that portion of the project will be announced.

Rowen officials said they will release additional information about their plans for the “Rowen Village” at a later date within the next few months.

“While housing is not a core part of our vision at Rowen, we have said all along that a vibrant mixed-use village will need to have residential options for the scientists, scholars, educators, researchers, employees and others who may be working at Rowen in the years ahead,” Ailstock said. “This RFP will allow us to find the right partner to help launch the village in a way that complements the Convergence Center and gives certainty and opportunity to the prospects we are recruiting.”