1736 Magazine - Fall 2018

PHOTO BY MICHAEL HOLAHAN
UPSCALE ON THE RIVER
North Augusta turns long-neglected shoreline into a showpiece
By Damon Cline
The fastest growing neighborhood in
Augusta’s urban core is, technically,
not in Augusta.
It’s in North Augusta, just across
the invisible state line formed by
the meandering waters of the Savannah River.
There, next to low-lying land along the 13th
Street bridge, city leaders and private-sector
investors are creating a $230 million urban oasis
called Riverside Village.
The finishing touches won’t be put on the
35-acre site until early next year, but there
already is nothing else like it in the metro area.
The self-contained district just east of the Hammond’s
Ferry neighborhood boasts hundreds of
luxury apartments, 60,000 square feet of specialty
retail and restaurant space, 132,000 square
feet of office and commercial, a 180-room hotel
and – its most prominent feature – the 4,500-
seat SRP Park for the Augusta GreenJackets.
Just a couple of decades ago, the once floodprone
property was an overgrown thicket sealing
off North August from its riverfront.
“Transformative may be the right adjective
to describe the City Council’s action years
ago to purchase tracts of riverfront land where
Hammond’s Ferry and Riverside Village are now
being developed,” North Augusta Mayor Bob
Pettit said. “The decision by our previous council
members to build SRP Park as the centerpiece of
Riverside Village was equally, what’s the right
word, daring?”
With its sidewalks, narrow streets and compact
homesites, the mixed-use neo-traditional
community is deliberately dense, dynamic and
different, which is what many people are looking
for in a neighborhood where they can “live,
work and play,” project investors say.
“If we had all the apartments available,
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