Norcross Put Thirteen Bronze Squirrels Around Downtown, and the Map They Chose Tells You Where the City Is Headed Next

You notice the first one by accident. Maybe it's on a bench near the fountain at Discovery Garden Park, catching the afternoon light in a way that makes you do a double take, because a squirrel that color should not exist in nature and yet somehow does, right here in Norcross. That's Sage. She's bronze, she's about the size of the real thing, and she's sitting exactly where the city's landscaping crew and a permaculture designer just spent months building out a new pollinator garden along Lawrenceville Street.

Sage is one of six named sculptures the Norcross Public Arts Commission has installed so far this year as part of a project called the White Squirrels of Norcross. By the time you read this, there may be more. The commission has thirteen planned for its first phase, and it isn't just filling downtown with cute yard art. Look at where the squirrels are landing and where they're headed next, and you can see the city sketching out its own expansion plan in bronze.

Why There's a Bronze Squirrel on a Park Bench

The white squirrels are real, first. Norcross has a small population of Eastern gray squirrels with leucism, a genetic condition that strips out most of their pigment without making them true albinos. Locals have spotted them in yards around town for generations. Mayor Craig Newton, who has lived in Norcross his whole life, says local folklore treats them as good luck.

NPAC turned that folklore into a public art hunt. The idea traces back to Mice on Main in Greenville, South Carolina, and it landed on the commission's priority list when the city adopted its Arts & Culture Master Plan back in 2022. It took until 2024 for the project to rise to the top of NPAC's list, and until this spring for the funding to catch up with the ambition.

The first five sculptures went up on May 5 at Thrasher Park, Betty Mauldin Park, Lillian Webb Park, Discovery Garden Park, and Norcross Gallery & Studios on Carlyle Street. A sixth, named Vincent, joined the Gallery location through a private donation, and got its formal name reveal at a May 14 ribbon-cutting. Each piece starts as a hand-sculpted clay model before Atlanta-based Cherrylion Studios casts it in bronze using the traditional lost-wax method, then finishes it with a custom white patina. The whole process takes four to five months per squirrel, which is part of why the full set of thirteen is arriving in waves rather than all at once.

NPAC Chair Liz Simpson has said the goal is for each squirrel to carry its own bit of local history tied to its specific spot, turning the walk between them into something closer to a scavenger hunt than a static art trail. One sculpture, the thirteenth, will be a "traveler" that moves locations throughout the year, so the hunt never fully settles down.

The Squirrel Map Is Also a Development Map

Here's the detail that matters if you actually live in Norcross rather than just visiting it for a festival weekend. All six installed sculptures sit inside the historic downtown core, the same handful of blocks anchored by Thrasher Park and the shops along South Peachtree Street. That's the safe, proven part of the plan.

The next phase isn't staying there. At its May 4 meeting, the Norcross City Council approved expanding the project into Pinnacle Park, adding five to seven more sculptures along its walking trails. Pinnacle Park sits south of Buford Highway, outside the historic district that's absorbed most of downtown's recent investment. Simpson put it plainly to the council: extending the art hunt across Buford Highway "adds inclusivity."

That's a small phrase doing a lot of work. Buford Highway has functioned as a rough dividing line in Norcross for years, with the polished, festival-ready downtown on one side and a denser, more international commercial strip on the other. Sending public art south of that line before any bigger capital project gets announced is the kind of move a city makes when it wants foot traffic to start crossing that boundary on its own, ahead of whatever comes next. The Discovery Garden Park renovation that gave Sage her bench followed the same pattern on a smaller scale. City staff, former beautification manager Hunter Rawls, and Sara Nelligan of Shades of Green Permaculture spent months adding native plantings, a youth sensory garden area, and new gathering space, with support from the Food Well Alliance. The bronze squirrel wasn't an afterthought bolted onto a finished park. It was installed as part of the same push to make an underused corner of downtown worth walking to.

NPAC is still raising money for the buildout. As of mid-May the commission had collected roughly $3,400 toward a $25,000 goal, much of it through $800 marble squirrel keepsakes and $200 marble acorns sold directly to residents. It's a modest number next to a municipal budget line, but it says something that a neighborhood group could crowdfund its way into shaping where the city's public art dollars go next.

Two Different Kinds of Art, Running at the Same Time

What makes this fall different from any other in Norcross is that two entirely separate art strategies are live at once, and they pull in opposite directions on purpose.

The squirrel hunt is slow and ambient. It rewards an ordinary Tuesday walk, the kind of thing you do because you're already downtown for coffee and decide to see how many you can spot. There's no ticket, no schedule, no reason to plan around it.

The Norcross Art Splash Festival is the opposite. It's concentrated, dated, and loud on purpose. This year marks its twenty-third run, and it returns to Thrasher Park on Saturday, October 3 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, October 4 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Over a hundred artists are expected, working in paintings, clay, jewelry, woodwork, metalwork, fiber, glass, and photography. There's a Kidz Zone with face painting and sand art, food vendors lining Park Drive, and a stage that closes out Sunday with a set from The Epics, a band that built a following at Norcross Porch Fest earlier this year. Local guitarist Joe Caporaso, who performs as Joe Capo Guitar, plays a Piedmont-style set blending blues and jazz.

The overlap is not an accident of timing. Thrasher Park already has one of the six installed squirrels sitting inside the festival footprint. Anyone who walks the art fair this year will pass a piece of the permanent hunt without realizing it's a different project entirely, unless someone points it out.

As Mayor Newton put it when the sculptures were unveiled, "we invite residents and visitors to explore Norcross, learn about its history and enjoy public art in a fun and engaging way." That line was written for the squirrel project specifically, but it works just as well as a description of the whole fall calendar downtown is running right now.

How to Actually Spend the First Weekend of October

If you're local and want to see both halves of this at once, the logic is simple.

1. Go early on Saturday, October 3, before the festival crowd peaks. Park along South Peachtree Street or College Street if you can find a spot, or use the Gwinnett County Library lot on Buford Highway if downtown fills up.
2. Walk Thrasher Park first. Find the squirrel before the art booths pull your attention elsewhere.
3. Cut over to Discovery Garden Park on Lawrenceville Street to see Sage and the new pollinator garden while the light is still good for photos.
4. Head to Norcross Gallery & Studios on Carlyle Street for Vincent, then loop back for the afternoon of the festival, ending with music if you're staying for The Epics on Sunday instead.

None of this requires a special trip. It's a normal Saturday with one extra layer built into it, which is exactly what NPAC seems to be aiming for.

What This Says About Downtown Norcross Right Now

A city doesn't fund a slow-burn public art hunt and a two-day festival in the same season by accident. Norcross is running both an immediate draw, the kind that fills Thrasher Park for one loud weekend, and a longer game designed to get people walking into corners of downtown they wouldn't otherwise visit, including across a highway that's historically marked where the investment stopped. The squirrels are the quiet half of that plan. The festival is the loud half. Watching where the next few sculptures land, especially once Pinnacle Park's additions go in, will tell you more about where Norcross is actually putting its attention than any press release would.

If you're curious what it's actually like to live within walking distance of Thrasher Park, or anywhere else in this stretch of Gwinnett County, La'Tep Real Estate Group knows these blocks well enough to talk you through them in plain terms, in English or in Vietnamese. Schedule your free bilingual home consultation whenever you're ready to see it in person.