If you have driven down Hill Street in the last few months, you already know something big is happening across from City Hall. The old Roswell Police Department headquarters is gone. In its place, cranes and grading equipment are working through seven acres of what used to be one of the most underused pieces of land in downtown Roswell.

That project is Hillrose Market, and it is the largest single piece of the downtown building boom that has been reshaping this city since 2024. It sits a short walk from Canton Street, it will add 159 new homes and 75,000 square feet of shops, restaurants, and offices, and it is scheduled to open in the second half of 2027.

Here is what is actually being built, who is paying for it, what it gives Roswell, and the one open question the city has not answered yet.

Figures current as of August 30, 2026. Construction projects move. Refresh before reshare.

Understanding Hillrose Market

Start with the address, because it explains the whole project. 39 Hill Street was the Roswell Police Department headquarters until the department moved to its facility on Holcomb Bridge Road. That left the city holding a large, centrally located, city-owned property one block off Atlanta Street and within easy walking distance of the Canton Street Historic District.

Cities do not often get that kind of chance. A seven-acre assemblage inside a historic downtown core, already publicly owned, with no residents to displace and no historic structures to demolish. The question was never whether to do something with it. The question was what.

The answer is a mixed-use district that the developer describes as a neighborhood village rather than a shopping center. The distinction matters more than it sounds. A shopping center is a destination you drive to, park at, transact in, and leave. A village is a place where people live upstairs from the businesses, where the parking is shared rather than dedicated per store, and where the walk between two destinations is part of the experience instead of an obstacle.

Hillrose Market is being developed by Atlanta-based The Atlantic Companies in a public-private partnership with the City of Roswell through the Roswell Downtown Development Authority. Architecture is by ASD | SKY. The for-sale townhome component is being built by The Providence Group. Construction financing closed in late February 2026 and site work began immediately, with a ceremonial groundbreaking held at City Hall on April 29, 2026.

Hillrose Market at a Glance

Detail	What We Know
Location	39 Hill Street, between Atlanta Street and Ellis Street, across from Roswell City Hall
Site size	7 acres (the redevelopment footprint has been described as 6.5 acres in council documents)
Developer	The Atlantic Companies, in partnership with the Roswell Downtown Development Authority
Architect	ASD | SKY
General contractor	New South Construction
Retail and dining	75,000 sq ft across a six-building retail village around a central green
Standalone office	18,000 sq ft at “25 Hill,” fronting Atlanta Street
Adaptive reuse	“Station 37,” the former police HQ, with ground-floor retail and 11,000 sq ft of second-floor workspace
Rental housing	143 luxury rental flats with resort-style amenities
For-sale housing	16 brownstone-style townhomes by The Providence Group
Parking	Surface parking, valet for the retail district, and an on-site Hillrose parking deck
Reported project cost	Reported between $120 million and $140 million depending on the source
Economic impact	Roughly 550 construction jobs and 273 permanent jobs, per a KB Advisory Group analysis cited by the city
Construction start	Financing closed and site work began February 2026
Target delivery	Second half of 2027

From a Failed Apartment Project to a Neighborhood Village

Hillrose Market is the second answer to this site, not the first.

The 2019 plan. The original approved concept for the Hill Street property was a 96-unit, high-density residential project on about 1.3 acres. It did not move forward, and the land sat.

The 2022 redesign. City leadership went back to the drawing board and pushed the plan in a specific direction: less residential density, more commercial footprint, spread across a larger portion of the site. That is an unusual instruction for a city to give a developer. Most municipalities negotiate density down because residents demand it, then accept whatever commercial the market will bear. Roswell traded apartment count for retail, restaurant, office, and public green space, and expanded the development area from roughly 1.3 acres to 6.5.

The October 2025 approval. City Council unanimously approved the finalized plan, including building elevations, the design and landscape package, and the master sign plan, at its October 14, 2025 meeting. Then-Mayor Kurt Wilson called it a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape downtown. The city closed on the property later that month.

The 2026 start. Atlantic closed private construction financing with SouthState Bank alongside a revenue bond issued by the Roswell Downtown Development Authority, and construction commenced. Mayor Mary Robichaux, who took office after the plan was approved, has framed the result as a combined residential, commercial, and community asset for residents.

Six years from a stalled apartment plan to steel in the ground is not fast. But the thing that got built is materially different from, and better than, the thing that was originally approved, and that gap is the argument for the delay.

What Is Actually Getting Built

The site plan breaks into five distinct pieces, which is why “mixed-use” undersells it.

The retail village. Six buildings totaling 75,000 square feet of retail, dining, and small commercial space, arranged around a central community green rather than a parking field. The developer has described the leasing target as recognized retailers, small-batch brands, and chef-led dining concepts. Retail leasing is being run by Bridger Properties. No tenants have been publicly announced as of this writing.

Station 37. The adaptive reuse of the former police headquarters building. Ground-floor retail with 11,000 square feet of second-floor workspace above. This is the piece worth watching architecturally, because keeping the police building instead of scraping it is what will give the district a sense of having been there before it was there. New construction cannot fake a building with history in it.

25 Hill. A standalone 18,000 square foot office building positioned at the Atlanta Street corner for visibility. Office leasing is being handled by Cushman & Wakefield.

The flats. 143 luxury rental units with resort-style amenities, with interiors led by Crosby Design Group.

The brownstones. 16 for-sale, brownstone-style townhomes by The Providence Group. This is the smallest number in the project and arguably the most interesting one, because for-sale attached housing inside a walkable downtown core is close to nonexistent in Roswell. Sixteen units will not move the housing market. It will, however, tell the city whether there is real demand for that product here.

What This Gives Roswell

Jobs and tax base. The economic analysis the city has cited, prepared by KB Advisory Group, projects roughly 550 construction jobs during the build and 273 permanent jobs once the district is operating. Those permanent jobs are mostly retail, restaurant, and office positions, which is exactly the employment mix a downtown needs to stay busy on a Tuesday afternoon and not just on a Saturday night.

The tax argument is the quieter one. A police headquarters generates no property tax. It is a municipal cost center on prime land. Converting that parcel into a $120 million-plus taxable, revenue-producing district changes the math on the city’s balance sheet permanently, and it does it without annexing anything or extending a single new mile of infrastructure.

Downtown that works past 9 p.m. Roswell’s downtown problem has never been charm. It has been that the charm is concentrated on a few blocks of Canton Street and evaporates quickly at the edges. Adding 159 households inside the district creates built-in weekday foot traffic for businesses that currently live or die on weekend crowds. That is the same logic behind Southern Post, and Hillrose Market extends it across Atlanta Street.

The trail connection. This may end up being the most durable public benefit. Hillrose Market is planned with a walkable trail link to the Canton Street Historic District, and the developer identifies the site as a hub for the planned Roswell North-South Corridor Trail. Combined with the Green Street Activation Plan, which converted Green Street to one-way southbound and added a brick-paved multi-use trail near the new parking deck, the city is quietly assembling something it has never had: a continuous pedestrian spine from the river up through the historic district and out the other side. Buildings are the visible part of this project. The trail connections are the part that will still be paying dividends in 2060.

Public green space. The central community green is programmed as the anchor of the retail village rather than a leftover setback. Downtown Roswell has Heart of Roswell Park and the City Hall lawn. A third real gathering space, one that is actually surrounded by active ground-floor uses, is a meaningful addition.

The Parking Question, Honestly

This is the part of the Hillrose story that has not been resolved, and any local coverage that skips it is not telling you the whole thing.

The project’s financing structure is tied to downtown parking revenue. Appen Media reported that the Hillrose financing relies on revenue from the new 394-space Green Street parking deck, and that the plan is sensitive to how much free parking remains available at City Hall. That is the direct reason the parking conversation and the Hillrose conversation keep landing on the same council agenda.

Here is where things actually stand. The Green Street deck opened May 4, 2026 with 394 spaces, funded by $20 million from the $179.6 million bond package Roswell voters approved in November 2022. On March 9, 2026, City Council voted 4-2 to approve a paid parking pilot running through December 31, 2026. An earlier concept that would have let Roswell residents park free was dropped as unworkable at the scale of a city of nearly 100,000 people. Decisions on City Hall parking and on parking at Hillrose itself were deferred pending additional staff data. Council is expected to take up whether to make the pilot permanent in January 2027.

So the honest summary is this: Hillrose Market will add substantial on-site parking, including surface spaces, valet service for the retail district, and its own deck. What nobody can tell you yet is what any of it will cost to use, or what the City Hall lot across the street will cost by the time Hillrose opens. If you want the current rules and rates while that gets sorted out, we keep them updated in the Roswell Parking Guide and in the Roswell Downtown Parking Wizard, which recalculates the best free option in real time.

One more caution worth naming. Construction runs through 2027 on a site directly across from City Hall, on the same downtown blocks already absorbing the Green Street work and The Chambray hotel project. Roswell is going to be under construction, in multiple places at once, for the next year and a half. Existing downtown businesses are going to feel that before they feel any of the upside.

Hillrose Market in Context: Roswell’s Downtown Building Boom

Hillrose Market is not happening in isolation, and understanding the cluster is the difference between reading this as one project and reading it as a plan.

Southern Post opened its first phases on Alpharetta Street and brought mixed-use density, structured parking, and ground-floor retail to the west side of the historic district. The Chambray, a restaurant-topped Hyatt hotel concept, broke ground next to Southern Post in early 2026, roughly a month before Hillrose construction started. The Green Street parking deck opened May 4, 2026 with 394 spaces, the largest facility the city has built since City Hall went up in the early 1990s. The Green Street Activation Plan is converting Green Street to one-way southbound with a brick-paved multi-use trail and a pedestrian connection through Plum Tree Street to Canton.

Draw those on a map and a shape appears. Roswell is not adding buildings at random. It is filling in the blocks between Atlanta Street, Green Street, Hill Street, and Canton Street, adding the parking and trail infrastructure to move people between them on foot, and putting residents inside the district so the ground-floor businesses have customers on weekdays.

Hillrose Market is the largest single piece of that, and the piece that closes the gap on the east side of Atlanta Street. If it works, downtown Roswell stops being one great street with parking anxiety attached and becomes an actual walkable district.

Who is building it. Beyond Atlantic Companies and ASD | SKY, the team includes New South Construction as general contractor, Kimley-Horn as project engineer, Crosby Design Group on multifamily interiors, Westbridge as commercial consultant, The Patterson Real Estate Advisory Group on financing, Bridger Properties on retail leasing, and Cushman & Wakefield on office leasing. That is a deep Atlanta bench, not a first-time suburban infill team, which is a reasonable proxy for the odds of the project actually delivering on schedule.

What to Watch Between Now and Delivery

Tenant announcements. The leasing search opened publicly when construction started in early 2026. The first two or three signed restaurant and retail names will tell you more about what this district becomes than any rendering will. Watch whether Atlantic lands local and regional operators or defaults to national credit tenants.

The January 2027 parking vote. This determines the cost of visiting downtown Roswell for everyone, and it is directly entangled with Hillrose’s financing.

Brownstone pricing. When The Providence Group releases pricing on the 16 townhomes, that number becomes the new benchmark for what walkable, for-sale downtown Roswell housing is worth.

Delivery timing. Second half of 2027 is the current target and it has held steady since financing closed. Large mixed-use projects with five distinct building types rarely all open the same week, so expect phased openings rather than one ribbon cutting.

Final Thoughts

The easy read on Hillrose Market is that Roswell is getting more shops and more apartments. That read is too small.

What actually happened here is that a city took a piece of land it already owned, chose to trade residential density for commercial and public space, waited six years to get the plan right, structured a public-private partnership to finance it, and is converting a municipal cost center into a permanent, taxable, walkable district with trail connections to the rest of downtown. Whether you love every element of the design, that is a coherent decision made on purpose.

The risks are real and worth stating plainly. The parking economics are unsettled and politically live. The construction period is going to be genuinely disruptive for businesses that are already tired. And “luxury rental flats” plus curated retail is a formula that can produce a district that feels imported rather than local, which is precisely the failure mode a historic downtown cannot recover from. The adaptive reuse of Station 37 and the tenant mix are the two things that will decide which way that goes.

But the alternative was leaving seven acres of empty police station across from City Hall. Measured against that, this is a city doing the harder, better thing. Ask again in the second half of 2027, when we can walk it.

Roswell Pulse covers what is being built here, who is building it, and what it will actually mean for the people who live here.