Vinings is not really an official city that one would see marked on a map with official boundaries; but rather a region that locals define by the small part of Cobb county that is located “Inside the Perimeter” (inside the 285 beltway circle – the official city of Atlanta boundaries). In the pre motor vehicle days, the Vinings area was actually a place where the wealthy folks in Atlanta would have second homes and take the full day ride on their horse and buggies to Vinings where they would have a weekend retreat away from the hustle bustle of the city. Today, the full day horse and buggy ride is shortened to a 10 minute ride in a car. The Vinings area remains charming and has become a very expensive part of Atlanta. During the boom of the 1990’s, developers go the idea to develop subdivisions just on the other side of I-285; which is part of Smyrna and put the word Vinings in the name. So, as you drive through Smyrna today, you see community after community with the word “Vinings” in part of their subdivision name. They were piggy backing on the prestige of the Vinings area in what was previously a much less expensive area. So much of this took place that people began to refer to the entire area as Smynings – combining Smyrna and Vinings into one larger region.

If you lived in Smyrna 20 years ago, moved away and revisited the area now, you wouldn’t even recognize it. In the late 1990’s, a new community center was built and one of the first mixed use complexes (with houses, shops, etc.) was constructed in Smyrna. This was a big success and acted as a catalyst to spawn massive redevelopment of this area. After that, several other similar mixed use complexes popped up and many notable urban Atlanta restaurants began to open satellite locations in some of these complexes. The availability of new homes, new upscale shopping and dining, close proximity to down town Atlanta and both I-75 and I-285 have contributed to the rapid growth of this area. The Smyrna area offers all kinds of housing options; but if you are specifically interested in a row house (townhome) type property, you will find more of this there than many other parts of metro Atlanta have to offer. Residents here enjoy the Silver Comet Trail for biking and jogging as well as the Market Village and several other mixed use complexes. Those who work in Midtown Atlanta also enjoy a very easy back roads commute that gets them there in much less time than many other suburbs would allow. Because of the redevelopment in this area, there is a big discrepancy in price between newer construction and older homes with newer homes selling at a massive premium over same square footage older homes.