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A year after it formed, the Stone Mountain Community Improvement District (CID) is expanding.

The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners voted June 16 to expand the Stone Mountain CID, which began last year with of 88 property owners with a total property value of approximately $241 million.

With the expansion, the Stone Mountain CID would increase by approximately 90 property owners and a property value of $91 million.

“This is a great way to improve the economy in DeKalb County,” said Emory Morsberger, president of the CID. “This is a public-private partnership that works.”

The expansion takes in commercial properties in the Bibb Boulevard area and along Mountain Industrial Boulevard to the Gwinnett County line. Much of the area is in the Royal Atlanta Office Industrial Park.

The Stone Mountain CID was formed after a group of businesses in the Mountain Industrial Boulevard corridor voted to tax itself to improve the industrial park.

Business owners say their investment is paying off as crime has been cut and the corridor is better maintained.

The group is also seeking to add 2,000 jobs to the area by the end of 2013 by filling some of the two million square feet of empty commercial space in the industrial park. The largest empty area in the CID, which has six million square feet of commercial space, is a 63-acre tract that once housed a Sears processing center.

On June 20, Georgia’s State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) announced that it had given $500,000 to the Stone Mountain CID to help the group with several road-related enhancement projects within the Mountain Industrial Boulevard corridor.

Morsberger said the grant will help the Stone Mountain CID “restore this area’s standing as an economic development powerhouse.”

The Stone Mountain CID is planning to use the grant to improve turning distances and the width and length of turning lanes at the Mountain Industrial Boulevard and East Ponce de Leon Avenue intersection.

The grant will also be used to replace the damaged guardrail on Mountain Industrial Boulevard’s crossing of the CSX rail line; add illuminated street signs to the new intersection mast arms; remove abandoned CSX rail crossings; and streetlights at the Mountain Industrial Boulevard and U.S. Highway 78 interchange.

Earlier this year, the CID received an $80,000 grant from Atlanta Regional Commission and $20,000 from the DeKalb Development Authority.

The Stone Mountain CID is one of two inDeKalb. The other one is the Central CID, which, along with one in Fulton County, forms the Perimeter CIDs.

The Perimeter CIDs was awarded a $1 million Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank grant for Lake Hearn Drive and Peachtree Dunwoody Road streetscape and intersection improvements.