Suwanee to mimic Atlanta Beltline Lantern Parade with ‘Glow in the Park’

This Saturday, come one, come all to the latest showing of a metro Atlanta suburb, ahem, pretending to be the city.

The Gwinnett County live-work-play hotbed of Suwanee will host its inaugural “Glow in the Park” lantern parade April 14—the plans for which look eerily similar to the massive, illuminated march that takes place on the Atlanta Beltline each fall.

Festivities kick off at 5 p.m. with “food and fun” at Suwanee's Town Center Park, and the parade will start moving as the sun goes down, according to the event’s web page.

All of which sounds just like the Beltline’s annual lantern parade, which began in 2010 and now summons tens of thousands of participants to stride up the Eastside Trail.

City of Suwanee

But imitation is of course the sincerest form of flattery, and this event comes as no surprise, especially after real estate executive Norman Radow told Curbed Atlanta recently how suburbs have been replicating intown living to woo millennials to move there.

This trend of mimicry can also been seen in places like Alpharetta, the north Fulton city that boasts Avalon, a live-work-play complex similar to Atlantic Station, which also has plans to create its own Beltline-style multi-use trail network.

Curbed Atlanta

And then there’s Snellville, another Gwinnett suburb that's developing its own supposed carbon copy of Krog Street Market—something Alpharetta and Marietta are doing, too.

During Suwanee's lantern extravaganza, floating lights and aerial drones will be prohibited, as will lanterns that launch into the sky. Suwanee says those eventually fall from the sky as "flaming litter."

Attendees of Saturday's event are also invited to pre-parade lantern-building workshops hosted by none other than the brains behind the Beltline's yearly light show, Chantelle Rytter.

So, okay, it might be kind of legit then.

• Q&A: Real estate investor raps metro Atlanta’s ‘suburban renaissance’ [Curbed]
• Alpharetta’s ‘Beltline’ plans are latest example of Atlanta envy [Curbed]
• Since when do Atlanta suburbs want to be Atlanta? [Curbed]