Downtown inertia finally overcome
Inertia: a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.
Matter can be anything, from a body at rest to an area of town. If you remain a couch potato for too long, the only thing that happens is your mass increases. If your downtown area remains in a state of static inertia, empty store fronts appear, property values decline and people leave.
Such was the case in downtown Macon. The area had been declared dead in 1975 after the Macon Mall opened on Eisenhower Parkway. Downtown had had a good ride, but for the next 35 years inertia set in. There were valiant attempts at creating some sort of momentum. Emmett Barnes bet big on downtown, but his timing, a critical component in real estate development, was off. Some say he held properties too long and was the cause of his own demise. Others in big ways and small tried, but nothing was concrete enough to provide the continuous spark to get the area out of the starting blocks.
Now, it seems almost expected that more development will come to the area once shunned. Monday, Planning & Zoning gave the first approval for a $50 million proposal that will change, if completed, the face of a city block surrounded by Poplar, Second, Plum and First streets, just south of the Government Center (formerly City Hall). Plans include a 95-room major brand hotel, retail and a 300-space parking deck.
One the other side of the Government Center the Capricorn Building on D.T. Walton Sr. Way is being prepared for development, and on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard the famous record label’s studios are giving way to Mercer at Capricorn, a $25 million project that will feature apartments, offices and recording space for musicians.
The catalyst for this new day has been partnerships and a new mindset. The theater of the possible started by NewTown Macon 20 years ago has led to millions of dollars in investment by the Peyton Anderson Foundation and the Knight Foundation, among many others. Mercer University and the Medical Center, Navicent Health’s fingerprints are on many of the projects bringing young professionals into the new loft developments and into the historic intown neighborhoods.
While government is rarely given credit, Mayor Robert Reichert’s commitment — in the face of much criticism — to a revitalized downtown, almost from his first day he took office in December 2007, has been critical to the success at this point of downtown. The theme of his inaugural address was, “Let’s move on, move in, move up, Macon.” That December night, Reichert compared the city to a great lady who had “stumbled and been pushed down.” He said, “it is up to us to come to her aid and help her up. If we all work together, we will lift Macon to a new level, build a more attractive city, and make this community one of the best in the country.”
This is not to say we have arrived. That great lady is not doing wind sprints yet. Far from it, particularly downtown. There remains an empty hulk of a hotel that has had many names bounded by First Street, Riverside Drive and Walnut Street. There’s the Dempsey Hotel, at Third and Cherry streets, not the best location to provide services to the people who reside there, and the brownfields — easy to ignore but could be used for development. An EPA study on that matter should come out early in 2017.
Still, great lady’s futures are looking up. As the Second Street Corridor work continues and new housing is developed across from Mercer in the old Tindall Heights space and the Mercer University interchange becomes the official gateway to the city, the eyes of more developers will open and their entrepreneurial spirits will rise.
We will certainly find more bumps in the new road, but just as a resting body of mass tends to stay in that condition, once the effort has been expended to get that body up and moving again, it’s hard to stop.
This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Downtown inertia finally overcome."