Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

The low occupancy isn’t a sign of weak market
demand so much as Meybohm’s admittedly stringent
standards. The company isn’t developing just another
shopping center; it’s trying to create a walkable, highdensity
development brimming with niche tenants and
an upscale flair.
Company officials point to developments such as
Revel in Gwinett County, Avalon in Alpharetta, Ga., and
Charlotte N.C.’s Birkdale Village. The closest analogue
in metro Augusta, they say, would be Surrey Center.
“Those are the prototypicals,” said Paul Myers,
Meybohm’s vice president of leasing. “We’re trying to
create a culture around a piece of real estate – where the
real estate itself becomes the destination, not necessarily
any one retailer.”
The vision is aligned with Columbia County’s
leadership, which began exploring the concept of creating
a “downtown” in Evans through a public-private
partnership with Meybohm more than four years ago.
The county acquired the 26-acre “Marshall Tract”
property in 2010 with the goal of developing a mixeduse
space for community gatherings. A deliberately
engineered downtown was a product of necessity, as
the unincorporated community never had the chance to
develop one organically – the high-growth area transitioned
from mostly rural to fully suburban in just three
decades.
“We didn’t have the benefit of an old downtown we
could just redo,” Columbia County Administrator Scott
Johnson said. “So that was the vision way back then,
that there needs to be a downtown area for Columbia
County. It’s just very difficult to do that from scratch.”
Work progresses on the Columbia County Performing Arts Center in Evans, a central piece to the new-urban The Plaza development.
[MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE]
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