Metro Spirit - 09.07.17

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Sports Development, LLC. “As a result of all that, it’s experiencing significant operating losses,
and it hasn’t contributed to the economic redevelopment or revitalization of downtown.”
During a 2002 press conference to announce the results of the feasibility study, Stern said
that the current civic center has actually acted as a wall, dividing Augusta’s neighborhoods
from the downtown commercial district along the Savannah River.
“It is an arena in a sea of parking,” Stern said. “It’s the kind of building we tend to find out on
an interstate or out on a suburban site, rather than the center of downtown. In a sense, it has
created a barrier of a kind between the neighborhoods and the rest of downtown and the river.”
Initially, Stern recommended that the city tear down the existing arena and build a new $89.7
million entertainment and sports complex along the River Watch Parkway and Interstate 20.
The proposed 12,000-seat arena would have included 20 suites, 500 club seats, a press box,
a club lounge and a privately funded equestrian facility with 600 permanent horse stalls, a
covered outdoor arena and cattle-holding pens.
“The new location needs to be where the people are,” said John Shreve of HOK Sport +Venue
+Event, a Kansas City-based sports development company, said back in 2002. “It needs to be
near the population center. It also needs to be accessible to the entire region.”
Stern also said that the new arena needed to be a comfortable facility.
“The experience of the spectator is what drives the building,” he said. “It has to be a building
that people want to come back to.”
Stern suggested the the city fund the majority of the $89.7 million civic arena by asking the
citizens the following year to vote to extend the then 1-cent sales tax at least 10 years.
But, as most things in Augusta, politics began to play a major role in the proposed
development.
Over the next two years, the entire plan was turned upside down and a new site was
introduced.
Can anyone guess where?
That’s right. The former Regency Mall location.
Voters were asked in 2004 to support the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or
SPLOST V list, that included $81.4 million for a new sports arena at Regency Mall.
Locals began jokingly calling the proposed $89 million sports arena, the “Billy Barn,” after
William S. Morris III.
But the proposed arena didn’t have a chance. It was a disastrous year for SPLOST.
Augusta commissioners turned their SPLOST “need” list into their “want” list, and it exploded
into an enormous $486 million SPLOST issue.
In the end, even Morris himself couldn’t vote for the SPLOST list. He had no choice but to
vote against the proposed “Billy Barn.”
“Even with the funding for these projects, the irrational array of other projects included, the
irresponsible manner in which they were put together and the sheer magnitude of the total
price tag — and the years necessary to pay for it — make the SPLOST initiative impossible to
support,” Morris wrote in a 2004 editorial. “This city can’t afford the financial burden or the
incomprehensible waste offered to taxpayers.”
Needless to say, the SPLOST list, along with the proposed arena, was shot down by voters.
Since that time, the Regency Mall site has remained vacant and completely untouched.
But now,13 years later, the idea of a new multi-million dollar arena at Regency Mall once
again has reared its head.
Isn’t history fascinating?
Thank goodness the Metro Spirit has been around to cover it all.
7SEPTEMBER2017