Beautification Edition - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2019

Willing investors face
multiple challenges,
resistance in breathing
new life into old buildings
VACANT TO VIBRANT
By DAMON CLINE
ABOVE: The 972 Broad building in September 2017,
before Loop Recruiting and Milestone Construction
started renovations. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA
CHRONICLE]
LEFT: John Barksdale (from left), Donald King,
Jason Kennedy, Charlie Wall and Miles Dunston
stand in front of the new Loop Recruiting and
Milestone Construction offices on Broad Street
in early July. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA
CHRONICLE]
The building at 972 Broad St. has
stood out in downtown Augusta
for more than a century – but
not always in a good way.
Its prominent feature, a
four-story facade, is an architectural flourish
commissioned by its original owner, the E.M.
Andrews Furniture Co., to make the building
downtown’s “tallest store.”
Although the building would eventually
lose that distinction to downtown’s newer
department stores – J.B. White, J.C. Penney,
Cullum’s, Davison’s and H.L. Green – it continued
to cut a striking figure in the central
business district for decades.
Then the shopping malls came to town;
nearly every traditional retailer on downtown’s
main street closed or relocated to new
space in the suburbs.
By 1979, 972 Broad’s final retail tenant –
the Cohen family’s Bee Hive children’s
clothing store – was gone, too.
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