Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

WATERWAYS EDITION 

I SUMMER 2020 

ISSUE 3 | SPRING 2019 

1736Magazine.com • • $6.95 $5.95 

THE 

COVID-19: 

REVITALIZATION 

A HAPPY FACE? 

Downtown business owners try to 

of DOWNTOWN AUGUSTA 

keep smiling amid pandemic 

full_1736.indd 1 4/

A PRODUCT OF 

PRESIDENT 

TONY BERNADOS 

EDITOR 

DAMON CLINE 

DESIGNER 

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725 BROAD STREET, AUGUSTA, GA 30901 

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706.724.0851 

EDITORIAL: 

DAMON CLINE 706.823.3352 

DCLINE@AUGUSTACHRONICLE.COM 

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CONTENTS 

4 

PICTURE THIS 

6 

ON THE STREET: 

MARGARET WOODARD 

8 

COVER STORY: 

COVID-19 ERA COMMERCE 

16 

DOWNTOWN LIVING 

26 

TRACKING CONSUMERS 

30 

OFFICE DEMAND 

36 

TOURISM BUSINESS 

30 

38 

DOWNTOWN DISTRICTS 

42 

AUGUSTA TOMORROW 

50 

TURN BACK THE BLOCK 

60 

HISTORY STORY: 

DISASTERS OVER TIME 

68 

BRIEFING 

70 

GRADING DOWNTOWN 

71 

FINAL WORDS 

8 

COVER ILLUSTRATION: IMAGES BY TRANTERGREY MEDIA; DESIGN BY KATHERINE SILVIA 

IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF 1736 

The Augusta Commission’s District 1 

runoff election is over. What are the new 

commissioner’s goals for the city’s urban 

core, and how does he plan to work with his 

geographically diverse group of colleagues to 

ensure downtown’s continued success? 

1736magazine.com | 3

PICTURE THIS 

4 | 1736magazine.com

Artist Cole Phail works on his James Brown 

mural, called “The Spirit of Funk,” in downtown 

Augusta, Wednesday evening, July 15, 2020. 

[MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


ON THE STREET 

CONSUMER SPENDING IS SOLUTION 

FOR SMALL BUSINESSES HIT BY COVID-19 

Margaret Woodard 

[FILE/THE AUGUSTA 

CHRONICLE] 

By MARGARET WOODARD 

Executive Director 

Augusta Downtown 

Development Authority 

According to the 

Small Business 

Administration, 

small 

businesses account for 

44% of the country’s 

economic activity and are 

the fabric of our downtowns. 

They provide our community 

an identity with a unique character 

and charm. 

In downtown Augusta there are 253 small 

businesses on the Broad Street corridor alone 

and well over 1,000 in the urban core. Collectively 

they are our largest employer and largest 

tax base. When we spend money with our small 

businesses, the tax dollars stay in our local community. 

Small businesses provide local jobs so our 

residents don’t have to travel outside the city 

for employment. And the businesses provide 

diverse, locally made products that boost tourism 

in our city. 

COVID-19 has caused small businesses 

around the country irreversible damage. The 

pandemic hit business owners nationwide 

astronomically resulting in hundreds of permanent 

closures, unemployment and increasing 

individual debt. 

The New York Times estimates a 14% closure 

rate. Business-review website Yelp estimates 

over 110,000 businesses have permanently 

closed their doors around the country. 

Leah Mason packs face masks to be used by customers into Ziploc bags at The Men’s Refinery BarberSpa in downtown 

Augusta during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in April. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


Tenpenny’s Cottage store in downtown North Augusta is open for business, but managers are still upholding coronavirus safety measures. 

[FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

It is estimated that one-third of all 

small businesses are likely to close over 

the next five months with the resurgence 

of the virus. Closings will start with local 

retailers and move on to local restaurants. 

Can you imagine what downtown 

Augusta would look like if this is the case? 

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? 

If ever there were a call to action to support 

small business and support downtown 

Augusta, it is now. 

Consumer spending is the key to helping 

local businesses and saving many 

owners from debt, financial stress and 

permanent closure. 

Our small businesses are doing their 

part. Downtown businesses are fighting to 

keep customers comfortable and extending 

their resources and finances to reassure 

coronavirus-weary customers. 

Local boutiques and retailers, for 

example, have started online stores to 

allow customers to continue purchasing 

local merchandise. Many businesses have 

implemented “effortless shopping” in the 

form of services such as curbside pickup, 

sanitized spaces, no-contact delivery 

drop-offs and appointment shopping. 

Downtown restaurants have partnered 

with food delivery services such 

as Grubhub and Uber Eats to highlight 

local cuisine, curbside pick-up and home 

delivery. Outside seating has increased 

for many restaurants due to the revised 

sidewalk ordinance. 

Finally, many businesses are offering 

incentives, such as discounted gift cards 

and merchandise to keep shopping local. 

HOW CAN WE HELP? 

Stop shopping for convenience. Stay 

away from large corporate businesses 

and that shopping cart icon on your cellphone 

and computer. 

Look at your pre-pandemic bank 

statement and see what you spent on a 

monthly basis at small businesses. Mindfully 

commit to continue this support. 

Purchase gift cards for special occasions 

and donate to GoFundMe initiatives. 

Purchase items and meals over the phone 

or online. Use curbside pick-up and 

home delivery. 

We can all put a name and a face to the 

owners of our favorite shops and eateries. 

These are our neighbors and friends 

who are involved in our community. 

They sponsor our little league teams 

and donate to food banks and homeless 

shelters. 

These business owners are fighting to 

keep their doors open for us. We need to 

do the same. 


COVER STORY 

Shelley Craft, owner of The Men’s Refinery BarberSpa, gives a haircut to Kenneth Gregory at her salon in downtown Augusta. 

‘SKIMMING BY’ 

Downtown businesses whipsawed by COVID-19 pandemic 

Story by DAMON CLINE | Photos by MICHAEL HOLAHAN 

There are times when shopkeeper 

Jennifer Tinsley goes 

the whole day without so 

much as a phone call. 

“If I have days when there 

are no customers, I just have to hang out,” 

said Tinsley, owner of Field Botanicals, 

which sells natural- and cruelty-free cosmetics. 

“It’s never been so bad to where I 

had to shut down the business, but we’re 

just skimming by.” 

Most downtown businesses are in the 

same boat as Tinsley. 

With comparatively few people living in 

Augusta’s urban core, there is little need 

for most of the city’s consumers to make a 

special trip downtown, where the business 

mix is primarily bars, restaurants and 

niche retailers. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only 

scared off many potential customers, it 

has caused untold numbers of downtown 

office employees to work from home, 

reducing the weekday lunch and happyhour 

crowd even further. 

“Nothing beats that high-traffic office 

user,” said Parker Dye, a specialist in 

downtown real estate with Jordan Trotter 

Commercial Real Estate. 

And adding to the economic injury: 

There are no major conferences, conventions 

or trade shows on the calendar at the 

city’s convention center, so businesses can 

say goodbye to expense-account wielding 

professionals looking for good food and a 

good time. 

Luigi’s restaurant, an institution in 

downtown Augusta for 70 years, has been 

closed since mid-March. 


Co-owner and general manager 

Penelope Ballas said it’s not worth the 

risk or the cost to open for only a handful 

of customers a day. The Italian and Greek 

eatery, she said, is too “old school” to start 

doing take-out or third-party delivery 

orders like other downtown restaurants. 

“I’m just trying to wait this out,” she 

said. “A lot of restaurants that went ahead 

and opened have closed back down again. 

Most of our employees are wanting to stay 

home; they’re putting their health over 

their paycheck.” 

Forecasts for the most unpredictable 

economic calamity to ever hit Augusta’s 

urban core are dire. Main Street America 

projects up to one-third of the nation’s 

30.2 million small businesses are at risk 

of permanent closure as the coronavirus 

pandemic plods along. 

A survey by the National Federation of 

Independent Businesses in the spring said 

six in 10 businesses could fold if the pandemic 

lasts until Labor Day. The federal 

Small Business Administration has said 

one-third of small businesses will close. 

When Margaret Woodard first heard 

the statistics, she “couldn’t sleep for three 

nights in a row.” 

Jennifer Tinsley uses small strips for perfume samples at the Field Botanicals store in downtown 

Augusta. 

“There is no playbook for this,” 

said Woodard, director of the Augusta 

Downtown Development Authority. 

Woodard’s organization and the 

Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau 

teamed up early in the summer to hire local 

marketing firm TranterGrey to produce a 

series of 30- and 60-second public service 

announcements featuring downtown 

employees following safety protocols as 

well as portraits of well-known downtown 

business owners. 

FACES OF DOWNTOWN 

David Long 

When supplies of hand sanitizers 

started disappearing from 

store shelves and warehouses, it 

didn’t take David Long very long to figure out 

he could help. 

After all, making alcohol is his day job. 

The owner of 2nd City Distilling Co. along 

the riverfront began shifting production from 

small batch whiskeys, vodkas and rum to 

pure alcohol for hand sanitizers for front-line 

health care workers. 

“With the small amount we can produce 

we decided to try our best to get it 

to essential workers and folks that are in 

the healthcare industries, the emergency 

responders,” Long said. 

Long produced more than 500 eightounce 

bottles a week. The distilling wasn’t 

a problem – it was getting ingredients such 

as glycerin to give the mixture a gel-like 

David Long, of 2nd City Distilling Co, holds some bottles of hand sanitizer he started making when 

supplies ran low early in the COVID-19 pandemic. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

consistency. 

Long and his friend, Cal Bowie, started 

making alcohol in 2013 in Edgefield, S.C., as 

Carolina Moon Distillery. Long opened 2nd 

City Distilling Co. in downtown Augusta in 

early 2019. 


Whiskey Bar Kitchen associates, from left, Riley Morrison, 

Lindsay Minnick and Genesia Brown wait outside for the lunch 

crowd to arrive at the restaurant on Broad Street in mid-July. 

The eatery and bar closed several days later for an indefinite 

time period after an employee tested positive for COVID-19. 

“The whole thought process was these are 

the faces of downtown, these are people you 

know, these are your neighbors,” Woodard said. 

“When you go to T.J. Maxx, you can’t put a face 

on that.” 

It is unclear how much revenue downtown 

merchants have lost. Based on Woodard’s 

survey of businesses that remain open, receipts 

are down by more than half. 

The State of Georgia’s June net tax collections 

– which include more than just sales 

tax – were $1.94 billion, or $187 million lower 

than June 2019’s collections of $2.12 billion. 

That’s an -8.8% decrease in revenue. June’s 

jobless rate, the latest date for which statistics 

are available, was 7.2% compared to June 

2019’s 4.4%. 

The DDA has changed from a business-recruitment 

organization to a 

business-retention organization in a matter of 

days. 

“It’s really been a strategic pivot,” DDA 

Chairman Jack Evans said. “We’ve had to go 

from people who are looking for a business 

to people who can hold onto their business. 

Nobody knows what’s in store for the fall.” 

Indeed, the worst part is uncertainty of the 

future. How long will the pandemic last? When 

will there be an antidote? Will government 

restrictions – similar to those issued early in the 

pandemic’s early weeks – return to states and 

municipalities? Will COVID-19 permanently 

alter consumer shopping and dining patterns?

Marquis Francis looks at the signs on the door as he calls in his lunch order outside Cafe 209 in 

downtown Augusta. The restaurant has been closed to dine-in traffic since spring because of the 

COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I think curbside (pickup) is here to stay; 

I think Americans have fallen in love with 

it,” Woodard said, adding that she is going 

to advocate for an ordinance that would 

set aside two parking spaces on each block 

of Broad Street for delivery pickup. 

The Augusta Commission in June 

approved an ordinance allowing downtown 

restaurants to expand outdoor 

seating beyond their sidewalk footprint 

so long as they had permission from the 

neighboring property owner and registered 

for the $25 permit. 

So far, restaurants such as Whiskey 

Bar Kitchen have taken advantage of the 

additional outdoor seating capacity, which 

makes customers feel safer and provides 

overflow for dining areas that require 

tables be at least six feet apart. 

The Augusta Commission also has 

approved a measure allowing downtown 

business owners to apply for a permit 

to temporarily close Broad Street’s side 

streets for outdoor drinking and dining. 

Similar measures have been passed in 

other Georgia cities. 

The first test of the local ordinance was 

supposed to occur on a section of 10th 

Street on Saturday, June 6. The event, 

organized by Woodard and downtown 

restaurateurs Brad Usry, Sean Wight, Eric 

Kinlaw, Allan Soto and bar owner Coco 

Rubio, would have put 20 tables on the 

street just south of Broad. 

However, the event fell through when 

the permit was rejected by the Richmond 

County Sheriff’s Office, which cited public 

safety issues. 

Open containers of alcohol are not permitted 

on Augusta streets. Drinks in public 

can only be consumed at outdoor events 

with a permit, such as the annual Arts in 

the Heart festival – which this year has 

been canceled – or at a licensed establishment’s 

outdoor tables. 

Chief Deputy Patrick Clayton said 

Sheriff Richard Roundtree is concerned the 

special permit is a slippery slope to open 

containers outside the permit area. 

“One thing we are vehemently opposed 

to is creating a situation where you have 

more alcohol downtown on the streets,” 

Clayton said. “On a sustained basis, that 

normally creates a big increase in violent 

crime. When you start getting young men 

with copious amounts of alcohol, that is 


Dana Keen Phillips 

Keen Signs & Graphics is used to 

putting graphics and words on the 

acrylic sheets it fabricates at its 

Reynolds Street shop. 

But in the early days of the coronavirus 

pandemic, the company found its customers 

were more in need of barriers than signage. 

So Dana Keen Phillips shifted production 

to start making sneeze guards to protect 

clerks, receptionists, bank tellers and other 

employees who come into contact with the 

general public. 

“It’s something people need right now. 

Everyone is doing their best to stop the 

spread of this, keep your germs to yourself,” 

said Phillips, the company’s vice president 

of sales. “Times have been really difficult for 

small businesses right now, so we are just 

trying to innovate.” 

The 10-employee operation has made 

guards for “everything from restaurants to 

manufacturing facilities to nursing homes to 

medical facilities,” Phillips said. 

It takes a day or two to turn around a 

sneeze guard order, depending on the size. 

“If you just need a few sneeze guards, we 

are getting those to you very quickly,” she 

said. 

Dana Keen Phillips, vice president of sales for Keen Signs & Graphics, holds one of the sneeze guards 

it produced at its Reynolds Street shop in downtown Augusta. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


Penelope Ballas-Stewart, who manages the family-owned Luigi’s restaurant, has had the Italian and Greek eatery closed since late March. The 70-year-old 

business owns its building, so it doesn’t have the overhead that many other downtown businesses have. 


Sean Mooney 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown 

that a little bit of effort can go a 

long way toward helping those in 

need. Sean Mooney and his fellow employees 

and the branding and merchandise 

company, Showpony, is a prime example. 

They raised more than $70,000 for cashstrapped 

downtown businesses whose 

revenues dried up overnight when the state 

declared emergency measures in late March. 

And all it took was a T-shirt campaign: 

#WeGiveAShirt. 

The shirts, designed by Showpony and 

sister company on Broad Street, Wier/ 

Stewart, sold close to 7,000 of the $20 shirts. 

Half the revenue was donated to businesses 

and half was used to cover production costs. 

“When the official restrictions came down, 

we were really concerned about a lot of the 

local businesses that we have as clients, as 

well as other local businesses and how they 

were affected,” Mooney said. “We tried to 

think of a way in which we could help them.” 

The company makes and sells a lot of 

Sean Mooney of 

Showpony models 

a shirt designed 

for Fat Man’s 

as part of the 

#WeGiveAShirt 

fundraising 

initiative. 


CHRONICLE] 

T-shirts anyway, so it was glad to lend a 

helping hand to support its fellow downtown 

merchants. 

“We launched with seven shirts, and the 

response from the community was really 

solid. More and more businesses asked us to 

be a part of it,” Mooney said. 


Firearms merchant M. Steven Fishman, president of Sidney’s Department Store & Uniforms on Broad Street, says business has been good during the 

coronavirus lockdown. 


Eric Parker 

When protective face masks were 

in short supply, Eric Parker and 

the Clubhou.se set out to find a 

solution. 

“We had doctors reaching out to us 

wanting us to help fix this and willing to 

give us all the feedback about what works 

and what doesn’t work,” said Parker, who 

co-founded the business incubator in 2012. 

“To me this is the best demonstration 

of how entrepreneurship is supposed to 

work.” 

The 3D-printed plastic mask that Parker’s 

group produced in their offices at the 

Georgia Cyber Center began with an opensource 

design conceived by physicians in 

Montana. 

After six iterations, the Clubhou.se 

produced an N95 mask that was lighter and 

had better elastic straps. Grips were added 

to make unscrewing the disposable filter 

easier. 

Health care workers and first responders 

can use the Augusta mask under an emergency 

use authorization the Food and Drug 

Administration issued in April. 

“The initial feedback was the Montana 

Mask didn’t have enough airflow, and they 

liked the original design we had of this 

Eric Parker, 

co-founder and 

president of the 

Clubhou.se, holds 

one of the 3D printed 

masks designed 

at the business 

incubator and 

accelerator in April. 


CHRONICLE] 

but it was too heavy,” he said. “...We’ve 

worn these for a full day and not had any 

problems.” 

The Clubhou.se is partnering with Valor 

Station, a nonprofit for recovering first 

responders, and 10% of the mask proceeds 

go to them. What was going to be called the 

Augusta Mask will now be called the Valor 

Mask in their honor, Parker said. 


normally a breeding ground for violence.” 

Woodard disagrees that the street closures 

would become rowdy because the event would 

close at 10 p.m. and be monitored by paid, off-duty 

sheriff’s deputies. 

The debate is moot for the moment, as summertime 

weather has made the prospect of outdoor 

seating on sun-baked asphalt unappealing. But 

Woodard and business owners intend to resume 

pushing the issue in the fall. 

Clayton said Sheriff Roundtree understands 

“this is a bad economic time for everybody” and 

that he is willing to help as long as public health 

and safety is not compromised. 

“We’re still working with the Downtown 

Development Authority,” Clayton said. “We’re 

still trying to work something out.” 

Not all downtown businesses have been suffering 

from the pandemic. Steven Fishman’s firearms 

and apparel store on lower Broad Street, Sidney’s 

Department Store and Uniforms, has never closed. 

Firearms and ammunition sales have been up 

nationwide, and Fishman’s shop hasn’t been an 

exception. 

“It’s been extraordinary,” he said. “...People 

have been coming on a regular basis. Because other 

people have closed, our business has boomed.” 

Jayden Lynch takes a food order to a customer 

in a car outside Cafe 209 in Augusta. 


Brad & Havird Usry 

The father-son culinary duo of Brad 

and Havird Usry are not only the 

faces of well known eateries such 

as Fat Man’s and The Southern Salad, they 

know the stress health care workers are 

under from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Usrys hear their stories and see the 

looks on their faces when they cater events 

at area hospitals and clinics. So when 

an opportunity arose to say thanks, they 

jumped at the chance. 

The family’s Fat Man’s Hospitality Group 

partnered with Augusta University Health on 

the #OurAUHeroes gift card program, which 

lets people purchase gift cards to local restaurants 

for workers on the front lines of the 

coronavirus pandemic. 

The restaurant group and the health 

system assembled a group of local 

restaurants at hubaugusta.com offering 

gift cards for 

carry-out or 

delivery options. 

Donors can mail 

the gift cars or 

send e-gift cards 

through the 

internet. 

“Times are 

hard for restaurants 

right 

now, and we are 

hurting because 

of the restrictions on public gathering, 

but I’ve seen what our health care providers 

are dealing with, and it’s hard to even 

believe,” Brad Usry said. “This campaign is 

a great way for people to feed their families, 

support area restaurants, and share their 

appreciation.” 

Havird Usry, left, and Brad Usry stand 

in their restaurant, The Southern Salad, 

on Broad Street. The two partnered with 

Augusta University to launch a gift-card 

program for frontline health care workers. 



DOWNTOWN LIVING 

DENSITY COMES DOWNTOWN 

Multifamily developments in urban core chase next generation of city dwellers 

Ryan Downs (from left), senior vice president of WDM Family Enterprises; Joe Kinsey, senior project 

manager for McKnight Construction Co.; and Matt and Mark Ivey, co-owners of Ivey Development, gather 

at the 11th Street construction site for Millhouse Station, an upscale multifamily community seen as a 

catalyst for new development between downtown Augusta’s central business and medical districts. 



At first glance, the 4-acre parcel 

at 636 11th St. appears to be an 

unlikely place for an upscale apartment 

complex. 

The wedge-shaped tract shares the street 

with a demolition contractor and a commercial 

printer. Freight trains roll along the 

tracks that form the property’s southern 

boundary. And slowly meandering along the 

north side is the Augusta Canal – which once 

supplied hydroelectric power to massive 

iron and steel mills that occupied the land for 

most of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

But if one stands on the sidewalk facing the 

future entrance to the 155-unit Millhouse Station 

project, the vision behind the “class A” 

multifamily development comes into focus. 

Turn your head to the left: there’s a direct, 

four-block pathway to the central business 

district and Georgia Cyber Center campus. A 

glance right reveals the rooftops of hospitals 

and education facilities three blocks away 

in the city’s medical district. Look straight 

ahead and you’ll see a par-5 shot to the James 

Brown Arena-anchored Augusta Entertainment 

Complex. 

Through the eyes of a young professional or 

college student wanting to live where they work 

and play, the former industrial property is an 

ideal place for an upscale apartment complex. 

“This location has some great connecting 

points,” said Matt Ivey, co-owner of 

Ivey Development, Millhouse Station’s lead 

investor and developer. “We really felt like 

this location is a good location for folks with 

an active lifestyle.” 

Ivey, who runs the company with his 

brother, Mark, primarily builds single-family 

homes and apartments in metro Augusta’s 

suburban areas. But the critical mass forming 

around downtown’s growing technology, 

education and health care industries convinced 

the company that it’s newest – and 

most complex development – should be in 

the urban core. 

DOWNTOWN LIVING continues on 18 


DOWNTOWN LIVING continued from 17 

Much like other recent high-density developments 

in the city center, such as the recently 

opened Beacon Station on Wrightsboro Road 

and The Clubhouse at North Augusta’s Riverside 

Village neighborhood, Millhouse Station 

is aiming to be a magnet for upwardly mobile 

millennials seeking an urban lifestyle. 

GROWING DEMAND 

The expansion of Fort Gordon’s electronic 

warfare mission during the past several years 

appears to have stoked such demand. The 

Department of Defense announced in late 2013 

that Army Cyber Command – and the roughly 

5,000 active duty and civilian employees it 

supports – would move to Augusta from Fort 

Belvoir, Virginia, by 2020. 

According to a residential real estate study 

conducted during the spring for the Augusta 

Downtown Development Authority, more than 

675 rental units have been created in the urban 

core since 2014. That figure doesn’t include the 

155 future units at Millhouse Station. 

The annualized rate of construction during 

the six-year period, 112 units, is more than 

twice the historical rate of 50. 

“There has been a steady demand for 

apartments in downtown and I think that will 

continue,” said Jane Ellis an authority board 

member and a real estate agent with Sherman 

& Hemstreet, which conducted the market 

survey. “There are sufficient jobs in cyber 

and medical, and there is a growing student 

population.” 

The study included the historic Harrisburg, 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem and Olde Town 

neighborhoods as well as the central business 

district. The 221-unit Beacon Station complex 

was the only government-assisted project in 

the study. 

Properties with less than four units were not 

included in the study. Neither were loft apartments 

over commercial buildings. However, 

former commercial buildings that have been 

converted entirely to multifamily use were 

included. 

The increased demand has caused a steady 

rise in rental rates since 2014, with average 

per-square-foot rates rising from just under 

70 cents to $1.05. Average downtown rents, 

regardless of size, have risen from $625 to 

$957, an annual increase of 8.8%. The average 

rate of inflation for the nation during the same 

period was 1.5%. 

“Rental rates have risen, which is good from 

a landlord’s point of view, but rates are beginning 

to stabilize,” Ellis said, noting that the 

rate of growth began slowing in mid-2017. 

Roughly 83.5% of all urban core rental properties 

are occupied, with the average studio 

apartment renting for $630 a month; one-bedroom 

units for $916; two-bedroom units for 

$965 and three-bedroom units for $1,728. 

Downtown Augusta’s 16.5% vacancy rate is 

double the national average, though the rate 

has been somewhat skewed by the addition of 

Beacon Station, a public-private partnership 

between the city’s Housing and Community 

Development Department and an Atlantabased 

developer. 

The $32 million project added 221 market-rate 

units to urban core apartment inventory when it 

began leasing in late 2019. The complex, across 

the street from Augusta University’s Dental 

College of Georgia, is designed to increase the 

population and per-capita income in the Laney- 

Walker/Bethlehem neighborhood. 

Hawthorne Welcher Jr., the city’s Housing 

and Community Development director, said 

Beacon Station was 65% occupied as of mid- 

July, with roughly 45 to 50 pre-lease agreements 

in place during the next two months. 

“We’re trending to be at 85% based on current 

projections,” he said. “So this project is 


Construction workers with AFB Concrete lay the foundation for Millhouse Station, a 155-unit “Class A” apartment community under 

development at 636 11th St. in Augusta, on Wednesday morning, July 9, 2020. 

doing what the project was meant to do. We’re 

happy to be trending in the right direction.” 

Beacon Station has a mix of one-, two- and 

three-bedroom units as well as an in-house 

coffee shop operated by Augusta-based Inner 

Bean Cafe. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed 

the apartment community’s grand opening 

celebration in the spring. Welcher said the new 

date for the opening ceremony is tentatively 

set for Aug. 27. 

“I think our dreams are becoming true,” he 

said. “We’ve even stood the test of time during 

a pandemic and we are right on target.” 

In the heart of the central business district, 

at the corner of 10th and Ellis streets, is 

Augusta’s most recently announced multifamily 

project – The Atticus. 

The developer, Andrea Gibbs, who named 

the upscale complex as a tribute to her father – 

noted politician Atticus Jerome “Jack” Connell 

Jr. – intends to turn the 1-acre tract currently 

occupied by Connell’s former Sandwich City 

and Merchants Credit Bureau buildings into a 

luxury mid-rise with approximately 80 units. 

Her proposal, recently approved by the 

city Planning and Zoning Commission, initially 

started as a 54-unit development with 

10,000-square-feet of ground-level retail 

space. Gibbs said metro Augusta’s growing 

housing market and the arrival of Army Cyber 

Command convinced her to boost the building’s 

number of apartments. 

“We are adding more units and reducing 

the commercial space,” said Gibbs, adding 

that 1,500-square-feet in the building will be 

earmarked for commercial use. “The look of 

the building will remain the same as well as all 

of our amenities.” 

The four-story building will feature a rooftop 

patio, gated entryways and high-tech keyless 

entry locks designed to appeal to urbanminded 

young professionals and empty nesters 

downsizing from single-family homes. 

The exterior design is a mostly traditional 




brick-and-stone motif that blends in with the surrounding 

architecture, including the century-old 

Cobb House apartment building directly across 

10th Street. 

The project is expected to open next year – 

making it the first all-new multifamily construction 

project in the central business district in decades. 

BRIDGING THE GAP 

What makes Millhouse Station an outlier – and 

somewhat of a testbed for urban core residential 

development – is its unique location between the 

city’s central business and medical districts, an 

area that in recent decades primarily has been 

home to government facilities, warehouses and 

heavy industry. 

Ryan Downs, senior vice president of WDM 

Family Enterprises, a sister company to Millhouse 

Station’s general contractor, McKnight Construction 

Co., said the project could be a “catalyst” to 

encourage additional upscale investment between 

the two districts. 

McKnight was so enamored of the concept that it 

agreed to be a minority investor in the venture. 

“We agreed to co-invest six months before we 

signed on as contractor,” Downs points out. “The 

Iveys had a great long-term vision for this property 

and they have the skillset to make it happen.” 

The risk of investing in the less-developed section 

of Augusta’s urban core was offset by federal 

“Opportunity Zone” tax benefits, which were created 

by the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to spur 

investment in economically-distressed census tracts. 

Several sections of Augusta, including virtually 

all of the urban core, fall within the Opportunity 

Zone boundaries, providing tax incentives for 

developers to sink unrealized capital gains into 

underdeveloped areas. 

“This project may or may not have happened 

without the Opportunity Zone (designation),” 

Downs said. “Having the zone is what helped push 

it over the edge.” 

Millhouse Station’s one- and two-bedroom 

units – expected to fetch between $1,000 to 


An artist rendering depicts one of the two apartment buildings Ivey Development plans to build on a 4.2-acre tract on 11th Street in 

downtown Augusta. The 155-unit complex will be named Millhouse Station. [SPECIAL/HUMPHREYS & PARTNERS] 



$1,400 a month – are high by Augusta 

standards but modest when compared 

to developments with similar amenities 

in other Southeastern markets. 

“The cost is the same to build in 

Augusta as it is in Greenville (S.C.), 

but rents in Augusta aren’t where 

Greenville’s are, so the Opportunity 

Zone made this a viable project,” Matt 

Ivey said, noting that all his investors 

in the project are local. “These 

are folks who wanted to be part of this 

transformation that is happening and 

have put their money behind the vision 

of what we see happening in this area.” 

Residential units in the central business 

district are largely limited to loftstyle 

apartments over retail storefronts 

and former commercial buildings that 

have been renovated for residential use. 

Ivey noted that the transition zone 

is one of the few remaining places 

in Augusta’s urban core with large 

tracts to build new residential from 

the ground up without running afoul 

of historic preservation standards or 

hidden costs in bringing century-old 

structures up to modern fire codes. 

“This is where the land is,” Matt 

Ivey said. “This is where the larger 

tracts are. When you get to (the central 

business district) it’s hard to do 

anything to scale.” 

Ivey Development acquired the 

property in December 2019 for $1.6 

million from a limited liability company 

affiliated with Phoenix Printing. 

The total capital investment for the 

project has not been disclosed. 

The layout will consist of two, fourstory 

structures with brick and concrete-fiber 

facades; one large building 

with 115 units and the leasing office and 

a smaller 40-unit building. Each will 

have extended architectural elements 

on the roof visible from both the central 

business and medical districts. 

Amenities will feature a clubhouse, 

pool, covered parking, a dog park, 

electric-vehicle charging stations, 

24-hour gated access, 1-gigabyte 

broadband connections and concierge 

trash pickup service. 

“All you have to do is leave it out by 

your door and we’ll have folks come by 

An artist rendering shows a Greene Street view of The Atticus, 

an 80-plus unit apartment building planned for corner 10th and Telfair streets. 

[SPECIAL/CHRISTOPHER BOOKER & ASSOCIATES] 

DOWNTOWN LIVING continued on 24 



Nan Connell (left), widow of Georgia legislator Jack Connell, and daughter Andrea 

Gibbs stand in front of the family-owned property at 10th and Ellis streets, which is 

slated to become a mixed-use residential building named The Atticus, a reference to 

Jack Connell’s first name. 


and pick it up for you,” Mark Ivey said. 

The development’s name pays homage 

to the property’s roots as an iron and steel 

foundry and fabrication shop. The site 

was developed in the 1860s as the Pendleton 

& Boardman Foundry. The facility 

and adjacent foundries were merged to 

create Lombard Iron Works, which grew 

to become one of the South’s leading metal 

fabricators. In the 1940s, the company 

was renamed Augusta Iron & Steel Works. 

The family-owned company still exists but 

now operates in Martinez, having sold the 

original downtown mill in the late 1990s. 

Construction crews have unearthed 

several vestiges of the property’s industrial 

past, including an anvil, a section of 

hydroelectric turbine, stone-chiseled iron 

molds and sections of iron pipe fittings, 

which were used to connect early utility 

pipes made from hollowed-out tree trunks. 

Matt Ivey said the company is looking 

for ways to display the artifacts, as well as 

historic photos of the mill operations, into 

the clubhouse. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit 

Georgia in March, Ivey Development 

began using a web-based app to show 

its model homes and apartments to 

prospective buyers and tenants. The 

contact-free system lets prospective 

residents tour properties on their own 

schedule using an access code. 

“If the leasing office closes at 5:30 p.m. 

but you don’t get off work until 6, this 

would still let you still see a property at 

6:30,” Matt Ivey said. 

Ivey said he does not expect the pandemic 

to have negative long-term ramifications 

for downtown’s residential market. 

“This is a 10-year project,” he said. 

“We knew we were going to have some 

ups and downs – one of them just came 

a little earlier than anticipated, but we 

still believe in the long-term growth of 

Augusta and the viability of the project.” 



TRACKING CUSTOMERS 

FOLLOWING THE 

DIGITAL FOOTPRINT 

An Augusta University student talks on his cell phone at the Summerville Campus. Technology that tracks a cell phone’s location is 

being used by a Birmingham, Ala., company to analyze traffic patterns in the urban core with the goal of attracting new retail and 

restaurants. Only the phone’s location is pinged, not information about the person. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

DDA’s new retail recruiter uses cell phone data to tell where 

people are coming from — and where they’re going 

Just about everyone has a cell phone 

these days, from senior citizens to 

children, but most are unaware those 

phones leave a trace everywhere 

their owners go. 

Tracking those digital footprints is 

now possible at Augusta’s Downtown 

Development Authority. 

Earlier this year the agency contracted 

with Birmingham, Ala.-based NextSite, a 

retail consulting firm whose specialty is analyzing 

cell phone data to see where people are 

coming from and where they are going. 

The company doesn’t know who you are; 

they just follow the “pings” created by your 

cell phone or mobile device through your 

service provider’s GPS tracking system, 

By DAMON CLINE 

when your phone moves from one cellular 

tower to another, when you connect to a 

Wi-Fi network and so on. 

“All of this data is anonymous,” said 

Chuck Branch, NextSite’s managing partner. 

“I don’t know who the end user is, who controls 

that mobile device. We’re simply tracking 

consumer travel patterns and customer 

journeys.” 

The analysis of metro Augusta’s consumer 

travel patterns can be used to target specific 

types of businesses that would do well in the 

city’s central business district. 

“Our strategy is going to be leveraging 

the current vibrancy of downtown to recruit 

additional retailers and restaurant concepts,” 

Branch said. “(The data) has signifi- 

TRACKING CUSTOMERS continues on 28 


DOWNTOWN AUGUSTA: 

COMING AND GOING 

Birmingham, Ala.-based NextSite focused on 

cell phone “pings” in a six-block area of Broad 

Street to find out where people were coming 

from and going to as part of their journeys. 

A view of the Augusta metro area shows where people who visit downtown 

work based on geo-locating data from individual cellular phones. [NEXTSITE] 

Most popular locations 

before visiting downtown: 

1) Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center 

2) University Hospital 

3) Augusta Mall 

4) Augusta Exchange shopping center 

5) James Brown Arena 

6) The Partridge Inn 

7) Holiday Inn Express Downtown 

8) Augusta University-Summerville Campus 

9) Augusta Riverwalk 

10) Augusta University Medical Center 

11) Crowne Plaza North Augusta 

12) Children’s Hospital of Georgia 

13) Riverfront Pub & Sports Bar 

14) Boeckh Park 

15) Washington Square shopping center 

Most popular locations 

after leaving downtown: 

1) Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center 

2) Augusta Exchange shopping center 

3) Shoppes at North Augusta 

4) Boll Weevil Cafe 

5) University Hospital 

6) James Brown Arena 

7) Holiday Inn Express Augusta Downtown 

8) Augusta Riverwalk 

9) Washington Crossing shopping center 

10) North Augusta Plaza shopping center 

11) The Partridge Inn 

12) Augusta Mall 

13) Costco Wholesale 

14) Washington Square shopping center 

15) Washington Walk shopping center 

A view of the Augusta metro area shows where people who visit downtown 

live based on geo-locating data from individual cellular phones. [NEXTSITE] 


TRACKING CUSTOMERS continued from 26 

cantly transformed how developers 

and tenants and retailers view 

markets.” 

NextSite has pre-pandemic traffic 

patterns as well as more current 

data, the latter of which shows 

a significant drop in visits to the 

central business district. Branch 

said the pandemic will take “a lot of 

national retailers out of the picture” 

for recruiting until the economy 

stabilizes. 

However, NextSite can use the 2019 

data to show prospective small business 

owners and developers what downtown 

Augusta looks like when it’s “normal” so 

they can consider it an option for their 

next expansion. 

“We want to be able to say ‘This is 

how robust the Augusta downtown 

market was. These are the travel 

patterns, these are the customer 

journeys,’ ” Branch said. 

Using GPS technology, the company 

can tell exactly what downtown 

businesses people visit. And 

analyzing where the mobile-device 

signals originate gives the company a 

demographic profile of who is visiting 

downtown. 

For example, a significant number of 

consumers coming from high-income 

census tracts to visit a particular restaurant 

could be used to interest business 

operators with similar concepts in 

downtown Augusta. 

“I’m certain that existing and prospective 

businesses in the area can 

benefit from a better understanding 

of how people spend their time and 

money downtown, but that understanding 

won’t be very helpful if it’s 

just a ‘data dump,’ ” said Jack Evans, 

DDA chairman and vice president 

for communications and marketing 

at Augusta University. “NextSite is 

helping us to focus on and interpret 

meaningful metrics that we can use 

to help the business community gain 

practical and useful insights about 

downtown Augusta, and potentially 

to uncover opportunities that may 

have been overlooked or seem underdeveloped 

compared to other areas 

with similar attributes.” 

A man talks on his cell phone as he walks along the lower level of the Augusta 

Riverwalk. 

NextSite already was working with 

the Augusta University-affiliated 

Medical College of Georgia Foundation 

to redevelop its 15th Street property 

– the former Kroger-anchored 

Central Square shopping center 

– when the DDA approached the 

analytics firm to be its retail consulting 

firm. The DDA’s previous retail 

partner was Retail Strategies, also a 

Birmingham-based company. 

The MCG Foundation has used 

NextSite’s data to work on a development 

plan with Daniel Communities, 

a subsidiary of Birminghambased 

Daniel Corp. which develops 

office, multifamily hospital, medical 

and retail properties. The MCG 

Foundation has previously stated it 

intends to develop the 15th Street 

property into a mixed-use project 

to serve as an attractive gateway to 

Augusta University’s Health Sciences 

Campus and the rest of the 

medical district. 

“We’ve always been of the opinion 

that eventually downtown and the 

medical district are going to be connected,” 

Branch said. 

NextSite can also measure traffic 

on days of the week to determine 

days and times that traffic is most 

robust. It can see where people are 

going before they go downtown and 

where they are going after they leave. 

“So in addition to seeing that people 

are coming from different parts of 

the metro area – North Augusta, 

Aiken, over into Martinez, Evans and 

Grovetown – we can tell the authority 

these are the 60 locations they visited 

before they came downtown and these 

are the 60 locations they left downtown 

and went to,” Branch said. “It 

allows us to then start understanding 

the retailers and other service-related 

entities. Then it allows us to take that 

information and start building consumer 

profiles based on where they’re 

traveling from.” 

Again, the company does not know 

the identity of the individuals carrying 

mobile devices, but it can tell the 

type of businesses they are interested 

in visiting. It can determine where 

out-of-town visitors are from, and 

what they’re doing when they stay in 

Augusta. Then it does a “peer analysis” 

in which Augusta is compared to 

similar-sized cities throughout the 

Southeast to determine businesses it is 

lacking. 

“Without the pandemic, the downtown 

and medical district are robust 

enough to support multiple national 

or regional concepts,” Branch said. 

“More retail and restaurants, in turn, 

will have a greater impact on people 

wanting to live in downtown, which 

then has an impact on multifamily 

housing developers wanting to do 

projects in and around downtown.” 


Sunday, August 23, 2020 T29

OFFICE DEMAND 

The SunTrust Building at 801 Broad St., 

undergoing roofing work in this July 15 

image, is among the properties offering 

more than 4.6 million square feet of 

office space in Augusta’s urban core. 


The 

case 

space 

for 

Pandemic may slow downtown 

office demand – but it won’t stop it 

Perspecta Vice President Jennifer Napper and Michael Shaffer, executive 

vice president for strategic partnerships and economic development at 

Augusta University, show the workspaces being built for Perspecta at 

the Georgia Cyber Center in Augusta, 

Building materials sit in the Georgia Cyber Center Shaffer-MacCartney 

building’s third floor, which is the only section of the 165,000-squarefoot 

facility not under a lease. 


Michael Shaffer walks through the 

vacant third floor of the Georgia 

Cyber Center building, where bare 

concrete floors and unfinished drywall 

make the space smell like a building-supply 

wing of a hardware store. 

The floor that could comfortably accommodate 

up to nine office suites is the only nonleased 

space left in the 165,000-square-foot 

building that partly bears Shaffer’s name. 

The fourth story has some vacancy, but that 

space is being subleased by the floor’s sole 

tenant, Parsons Corp., an engineering and 

cybersecurity firm. The fifth floor is empty but 

already spoken for; Shaffer declined to name the 

tenant until an official announcement is made 

later this year. 

Just east of the Shaffer-MacCartney Building 

sits its architectural twin, the 167,000-squarefoot 

Hull-McKnight Building. It is fully occupied. 

Which begs the question: If demand at the 

relatively new innovation and education complex 

is so brisk, is the $100 million campus in 

need of a new building? 

Shaffer, Augusta University’s executive vice 

president for strategic partnerships and economic 

development, answers without hesitation. 

“Yes, there is need for another building,” he 

said. “I don’t have a problem saying that. Dr. 

(AU President Brooks) Keel and I have had that 

discussion, so I don’t mind saying that.” 

To the west of the two cyber center buildings 

lie eight acres of state-owned property that at one 

time was slated to be the botanical gardens for the 

ill-fated Georgia Golf Hall of Fame project. 

A new building, or buildings, could certainly 

go there. And it would make the cyber campus – 

already the largest single investment in cybersecurity 

by any state government in America 

– even bigger. 

The facility, which already houses academic, 

government (multiple “three-letter agencies,” 

Shaffer said) and private-sector military contractors 

such as BAE Systems, SOFTACT Solutions 

and OPS Consulting, added a new tenant 

this summer: Perspecta. 

The Virginia-based company, which in February 

won a $905 million contract to provide 

cyberspace support operations to Army Cyber 

Command, will use the office for training, onboarding 

and research for up to three-dozen 

OFFICE DEMAND continues on 32 


OFFICE DEMAND continued from 31 

employees. The company’s Fort Gordon 

office employs about 150 people. 

“This space was needed because you need 

this kind of facility to do the things that you 

might not necessarily need to do out there 

(at Fort Gordon),” said Jennifer Napper, 

Perspecta vice president and account manager 

for the Army contract. 

For example, the space will enable new 

employees to work while their security 

clearances are being completed. The office 

can also handle non-technical minutiae 

such as payroll processing and other human 

resources functions. But it also will have 

access to the cyber center’s “virtual assured 

network,” which lets engineers create any 

type of cybersecurity scenario without 

using the military’s actual electronic warfare 

equipment. 

“We’re looking to do that without having 

to buy all the radios, all the satellite time,” 

she said. “All of that stuff we’re doing by 

computer simulations.” 

Perspecta’s office space was built out before 

the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a 

national emergency, but it will function quite 

well in the coronavirus era, as workspaces 

already are more than six feet apart and partially 

sectioned off by cubicle walls designed to muffle 

private phone conversations. 

“The other advantage of a new building 

that is probably not discussed a lot is 

the new ventilation system,” Napper said, 

referring to dust and other particles that 

accumulate in mechanical systems over 

time. “I would not want to work in an old 

building in a COVID environment.” 

‘PUSHING THE PAUSE BUTTON’ 

At the moment, it doesn’t matter what 

downtown office building you are talking 

about – most have seen prospective tenants 

adopt a wait-and-see attitude since the coronavirus 

pandemic hit Georgia this spring. 

“In general, the office market in Augusta 

is very moderate,” said Jane Ellis, a board 

member of the Augusta Downtown Development 

Authority and a commercial real 

estate agent with Sherman & Hemstreet. 

“We don’t have a terribly large amount of 

vacancy, but we have some because of the 

cyber center being added.” 

Indeed, the rapid construction of the 

332,000-square-foot Georgia Cyber Center 

Michael Shaffer, executive vice president for strategic partnerships and economic 

development at Augusta University, stands on the eastern side of the Georgia Cyber 

Center’s Shaffer-MacCartney Building’s third floor, the last remaining section of the 

building available for lease. 

Jennifer Napper, vice president and account manager for Perspecta’s Army Cyber 

Command contract, poses in the company’s office being built out on the second floor of 

the Georgia Cyber Center’s Shaffer-MacCartney Building in Augusta, 


Attorney Benjamin H. Brewton’s office in the SunTrust Building offers a bird’s-eye view of downtown Augusta. “It was very clear 

to me that the office space needed to be downtown,” he said of Balch & Bingham LLP. Attorney Benjamin H. Brewton’s office in 

the SunTrust Building offers a bird’s-eye view of downtown Augusta. “It was very clear to me that the office space needed to be 

downtown,” he said of Balch & Bingham LLP. 

complex – the largest new office development in downtown 

in decades – caused some temporary distortions in 

what was a predominantly slow-growth asset class. 

“The numbers have climbed over the past few years 

across the board,” Parker Dye, who specializes in downtown 

properties for Jordan Trotter Commercial Real 

Estate. “Especially since the cyber center came online.” 

A DDA-commissioned office report conducted by 

Sherman & Hemstreet showed year-over-year rental 

rate increases for all offices in the urban core – regardless 

of their age – peaked in 2018, the year Gov. Nathan 

Deal announced the cyber center project. The 2020 

growth rate is flat, and the report forecasts rates to be flat 

through mid-2023. 

Average office rates in Augusta range from $27.45 

per square foot for 4- to 5-star buildings, what most 

people would call “class A” office space, to $14.24 per 

square foot for 1- to 2-star buildings. The vacancy rate 

for all properties is 16.6%. The report relies on data from 

CoStar, a national firm that tracks 83% percent of commercial 

real estate transactions. 

The decision to open or relocate an office is a costly 

proposition at any time, but the pandemic adds an element 

of risk to the decision. 

“We still see new tenant activity, but its definitely 

slowed,” said Derek May, president of Azalea Investments, 

a real estate company whose portfolio includes 

the Augusta University mid-rise at 699 Broad St. and the 

Augusta Riverfront Center at 1 10th St. “A lot of people 

are playing wait-and-see. They’re pushing the pause 

button to see how all this shakes out.” 

Dye said property showings have noticeably decreased, 

but the pandemic has had more of an impact on sales and 

development, which are more capital-intensive than 

leases because they require investors to make longerterm 

commitments. 

Still, he said, the economic downturn has not caused 

downtown property prices to plummet to fire-sale levels. 

Augusta’s overall economy is too robust for that. 

“I don’t see where people are looking to sell for pennies 

on the dollar,” Dye said. “Every market is different – you 

can go an hour or two down the road and somebody may 

have a different outlook – but our downtown has grown 

so much in the past few years and I don’t see any real 

signs that will stop.” 

He said the most significant impact appears to have 

been on project timelines. Supply-chain problems have 

made it more challenging to procure certain types of 

flooring or fixtures a tenant may want, and the host of 

professionals who help design, engineer and build office 

space may be suffering from COVID-19 disruptions in 

their own offices. 

“If you need a plat done, for example, it might be 

harder to get those guys to come out to do it depending on 

if they’re working a full schedule or not,” Dye said. 

The commercial real estate industry has historically 

lagged the overall economy by six months, so the pandemic’s 

true impact may not be seen until 2021 or 2022. 

OFFICE DEMAND continues on 34 


The conference room in Balch & Bingham LLP’s office suite in the SunTrust Building offers a wide view of downtown Augusta. 

OFFICE DEMAND continued from 33 

THE NEW OFFICE 

The pandemic may have companies paying rent, or a 

mortgage, on office buildings they are not fully occupying. 

Many employees are working from home or coming 

into offices in staggered shifts to ensure maximum social 

distancing. 

The desire for isolation is particularly challenging in 

new offices, many of which have adopted open floor plans 

to remove perceived barriers between employee groups 

and promote collaboration. Offices such as TaxSlayer’s 

recently opened headquarters and Innovation & Technology 

Campus at the former YMCA building on Broad Street 

is 50,000 square feet of mostly open-office architecture. 

“Our employees have been resilient as we’ve seen 

changes to the way that we work,” TaxSlayer CEO Brian 

Rhodes said. 

The building at 945 Broad St. employs nearly 150, 

who help support the 300 customer service and seasonal 

employees who work in the company’s Evans office. 

“We are reevaluating our employee and workplace 

policies regularly and taking guidance from health 

officials. One thing is certain – our team at TaxSlayer 

has been adaptable” as the company worked through an 

extended tax season, Rhodes said. 

May believes the rebellion against 1980s-era cubicle 

culture in recent years will lose momentum the longer 

the pandemic grinds on. 

“All of a sudden you don’t want to be sitting three feet 

away from your buddy who’s coughing,” May said. 

However, he said he doesn’t believe future office 

Clients in the waiting area at Balch & Bingham LLP can see 

directly into a glass-walled meeting space. 

tenants will want a full-fledged return to compartmentalized 

offices. He expects to see hybrid designs that promote 

teamwork but give employees the option to meet in 

private when necessary. 

“I believe that face-to-face collaboration is important 

to the success of a business,” he said. “While a lot can be 

done at home, there is a lot to be said for a gathering place at 

work. At the end of the day, we’re social creatures.” 

Some believe Augusta stands to gain office jobs in the 

post-pandemic economy as employers and workers seek 

out lower-density cities that are less congested with 

people and cars. 

Augusta Downtown Development Authority Director 

Margaret Woodard said her group of counterparts 

in other cities across the state refer to the theory as the 

“rural renaissance.” 


The 165,000-square-foot Shaffer-MacCartney Building, an architectural twin of the Hull-McKnight Building at the Georgia Cyber Center 

complex, is 80% occupied. Photographed in Augusta . 

“People are going to want more open spaces, more 

bike lanes and things like that,” she said. “Mid-sized 

cities like Augusta have a great opportunity to pick up 

workers looking for places that are less crowded and 

more affordable. The pandemic has proven you can 

work from anywhere.” 

The pandemic didn’t exist last spring when Benjamin H. 

Brewton needed a place to locate Birmingham, Ala.-based 

Balch & Bingham LLP’s new Augusta office. 

The attorney, whose primary focus is on heavily 

regulated industries, such as utilities, health care and 

banking, has practiced law in Augusta for 30 years. 

He previously worked for a firm whose office was in a 

172-year-old renovated home on Greene Street. 

There is more than 4.6 million square feet of office 

space in Augusta’s urban core, but there was only one 

place Brewton wanted to be: the central business district. 

“It was very clear to me that the office space needed 

to be downtown,” Brewton said from his suite on the 

eighth floor of the SunTrust Building at 801 Broad St. 

“A great deal of what I do is litigation, and the courthouses 

are here, and I can look out the window and see 

all the hospitals and Plant Vogtle in the distance.” 

Brewton said he likes being able to walk to restaurants, 

the Augusta Common and Riverwalk Augusta. He said the 

pandemic has not made him regret his decision to open an 

office in the city’s most densely populated area. 

“Hopefully, it is a temporary thing that will be 

brought to heel,” he said. 


TOURISM 

A view from the top of the 

Hyatt House hotel in March 

shows the normally bustling 

Broad Street largely empty 

during the early weeks of the 



WIDE 

OPEN 

SPACES 

Downtown hotels have plenty of 

‘room at the inn’ as pandemic drags on 


It's a balmy July afternoon when Darryl Leech 

grabs a two-way radio to ask an employee of the 

Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center to 

turn on the lights in its largest room. 

The 53,000-square-foot Olmstead Exhibit Hall 

has been untouched since late February. As the 

mercury-vapor lamps warm up, a startling sight comes 

into view: 100 fully-set banquet tables carefully arranged 

around a dance floor and large projection screen. 

The 1,000 guests the room was supposed to accommodate 

on March 13 – attendees of the Alzheimer 

Association's annual Dancing Stars of Augusta gala – 

never showed up. There was no need to take down the 

elaborate setup; nobody else was in line to use the $50 

million venue. 

Consider it another local business causality in the ongoing 


TOURISM continues on 40 


A BANNER 

DOWNTOWN 

District-designation banners 

will go up this fall 


For much of its existence, downtown Augusta was a 

mish-mash of commerce. 

With the exception of a few theaters occupying the 

same general area, there was no logical clustering of 

businesses. That is, until the 1970s and ’80s, when the exodus 

of downtown commerce created a uniformity nobody wanted: 

vacant buildings. 

Then, in the early 1990s, the city convention center complex 

was built. Then art galleries started to open. Then bars and 

restaurants came. 

Patterns were beginning to develop organically as the 

central business district came back to life, with some blocks 

having a preponderance of a particular industry. 

Today, locals know where those blocks are, but visitors do 

not. That will soon change. 

One of the recommendations in the city's tourism plan, 

Destination Blueprint, was to delineate the “districts” that 

have naturally formed over time. Color-coded banners are 

being created to hang from city streetlight poles. 

“Defining the downtown into districts gives visitors a better 

sense upon arrival of what can be found,” said Jennifer Bowen, 

vice president of the Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau. 

The four distinct sub-districts within the central business 

district are: the convention district, the dining district, the 

arts/culture district and the entertainment district. 

Designs for the four banners are complete and are expected 

to be installed by traffic engineering officials in early fall. 

The banners are among the simpler recommendations in the 

Destination Blueprint plan, but their completion demonstrates 

work on the plan’s larger projects is ongoing. 

“I feel good about these being examples of progress,” CVB 

President Bennish Brown said. “What we are doing is bringing 

to life the recommendations of Destination Blueprint in a very 

tangible way.” 

An artist rendering 

shows what the district 

banners will look like 

once they are hung 

on city streetlight 

poles this fall. 

[SPECIAL/KRUHU] 

ABOVE: An Augusta Convention 

& Visitors Bureau-provided map 

shows the general boundaries 

of the four districts within 

downtown Augusta. The 

districts will act as wayfinding 

signs for downtown visitors. 

[SPECIAL/AUGUSTA CVB] 


AMPHITHEATER 

RIGHT: Color-coded 

banners are being 

created. Designs 

for the four banners 

are complete and 

are expected to 

be installed by 

traffic engineering 

officials in early fall. 


TOURISM continued from 36 

The COVID-19 crisis that quashed the 

nonprofit’s signature fundraiser was merely 

the first in a cavalcade of cancellations at 

the convention center, forcing the 372- 

room hotel complex to close its doors for 51 

days and shed nearly half its 215-employee 

workforce. 

“It breaks my heart to have to do that 

after the business that we’ve built here over 

the years,” said Leech, the hotel’s longtime 

vice president and general manager. “These 

people are like a second family to me.” 

The complex’s 44,000 square feet of 

city-owned conference space and the 

hotel’s 136-room suites tower remain 

locked behind a retractable security door as 

COVID-19 fears continue to keep conventions, 

events and trade shows at bay. 

Year-to-date revenues at the hotel/convention 

center are down more than 50 percent. 

The hotel’s flagship brand, Marriott 

International, forecasts the national hospitality 

industry won’t recover until 2022. 

STR, a Henderson, Tenn.-based hotel data 

analyst, estimates the industry won’t return 

to 2019 levels until 2023. 

“Locally, maybe we could do better 

because we could get some regional drive-to 

business,” Leech said. “But we don’t know 

when this is coming back. We just think it’s 

not coming back anytime soon.” 

The doldrums at the city’s downtown 

convention center complex is indicative 

of the pain felt throughout the urban core, 

40 | 1736magazine.com 

which partly relies on business travelers, 

conference attendees and sports-event 

participants for its customer base. 

Figures from the Augusta Convention 

& Visitors Bureau, the city’s lead tourism 

organization, and the Augusta Sports 

Council, a sister organization focused on 

athletic-event marketing, show the pandemic 

has resulted in the loss of at least 41 

spring and summer events, sapping more 

The large meeting hall at the Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center sits untouched since late 

February, when a charity event in March was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 


Darryl Leech, vice president and general manager of the Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center, 

stands near a closed, retractable fire door that has sealed off the hotel’s large meeting spaces and 

suites tower since March. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

than $17 million in direct visitor spending 

from the local economy. 

The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand 

Lodge of Georgia, an Atlanta-based Masonic 

group expected to bring 2,400 attendees in 

June: canceled. 

The annual Nike Peach Jam, expected to 

attract 10,000 high school basketball players, 

coaches and family members in July: 

canceled. 

The annual AFCEA’s TechNet in August, 

an internationally-known cyber conference 

and the city’s largest trade show: postponed 

to January. 

The list goes on. 

“Those were people who were going to be 

on the street looking for places to eat and 

places to shop,” Augusta CVB President 

Bennish Brown said. 

Other hotels in the central business 

district are feeling the pandemic’s painful 

pinch, including Broad Street’s Hyatt 

House, downtown’s newest hotel. The 100- 

room mid-rise has remained open during 

the pandemic despite low occupancy rates. 

“Over the last five months the hotel 

industry has engaged in a fight for survival,” 

the hotel’s operator, Augusta-based DTLR 

LLC, said in a statement. 

With the exception of the annual 

Masters Tournament – which this year 

TOURISM continues on 49

Alex Wier, founder and 

chief creative officer for 

Wier/Stewart, seated at 

the head of the table, 

and his partner, Daniel 

Stewart (left) discuss 

the Augusta Convention 

& Visitors Bureau’s new 

marketing campaign with 

bureau officials during 

a July 20 meeting. The 

campaign is expected to 

be unveiled in September. 

[SPECIAL/AUGUSTA 

CONVENTION & VISITORS 

BUREAU] 

No beach, no problem 

Augusta’s new marketing campaign seeks to lure 

visitors seeking respite from tourist-packed cities 


It's comfortable, friendly, authentic and charming. And 

it’s more than just home to the Masters Tournament. 

Those are among the messages promoting Augusta 

in a new marketing campaign produced for the Augusta 

Convention & Visitors Bureau by local creative firm 

Wier/Stewart. 

The campaign – expected to be unveiled in September – is 

designed to lure visitors within a 200-mile radius. Although 

work on the concept began before COVID-19 upended the tourism 

industry, the campaign’s messaging is just as relevant in the 

pandemic era because surveys show many people are afraid to 

travel by plane. And many don’t want to visit high-density tourist 

destinations, such as beachfront cities. 

“We think that we are actually in a pretty unique and fortuitous 

situation because travel by vehicle is going to be much 

more popular when things open back up,” Wier/Stewart partner 

Daniel Stewart said during a recent presentation to the CVB. 

The CVB gave a select group of business leaders a sneak peek 

over the summer to get their feedback. 

“It's very good, very high-quality work,” said Darryl Leech, 

vice president and general manager of the Augusta Marriott at 

the Convention Center. 

Elements of the marketing campaign are designed for use by 

other Augusta organizations to promote a consistent message on 

their websites and social media accounts. 

Jason Cuevas, Georgia Power's vice president for its Northeast 

Region, said the campaign not only positions the city as a visitor 

destination, but “helps encourage natives and transplants alike 

to explore this area’s many offerings.” 

“From outdoor activities to a thriving arts scene, the Augusta 

area has something for everyone,” Cuevas said. “One of the 

things I really like about this campaign is that it shines a light on 

what’s next for Augusta. While already strong, the arts, music, 

and food scenes, for example, are definitely on the rise here.” 



Revitalization 

REBOOT 

Augusta Tomorrow’s leadership passes 

from Boomers to Gen Xers, Millennials 

Lauren Dallas, new executive director 

of Augusta Tomorrow, holds one of the 

downtown revitalization organization’s old 

signs in front of recent aerial images at its 

offices in Enterprise Mill . 


Lauren Dallas, Augusta Tomorrow’s new 

executive director, wasn’t even born 

when the downtown revitalization group 

was founded in 1982. 

But her age is no strike against her. 

In fact, it is something of an asset. The 35-yearold 

Kentucky native is part of the largest generation 

in the American workforce, and it happens to be the 

same generation most interested in living in an urban 

environment. 

“Millennials want to live close to downtown, 

close to where they work,” said Dallas, who joined 

the organization in May. 

The new executive director isn’t the only fresh 

face leading Augusta Tomorrow. Earlier this year 

41-year-old Brian Rhodes was named president of 

the downtown advocacy group. Ryan Downs, 36, 

was named vice president. 

The leadership change is notable because the 

38-year-old organization has largely been under 

the direction of the Baby Boomer generation, some 

of whom have been involved with the organization 

since its inception. 

“We’ve added a lot of young folks over the past 

three, four, five years and now they’re moving into 

leadership roles,” said Robert Osborne, Augusta 

Tomorrow past president and a senior vice president 

for South State Bank. “We’ve got people sitting 

around the table with skin in the game – they 

own property downtown and they work downtown.” 

Rhodes, CEO of TaxSlayer, is an Augusta native. 

He was at the helm when the company made the 

decision to move its headquarters downtown to 

the former YMCA building on Broad Street, a 

50,000-square-foot building the software company 

AUGUSTA TOMORROW continues on 44 



AUGUSTA TOMORROW continued from 42 

now calls its “Innovation & Technology 

Campus.” 

Downs worked as an investment 

banker in New York City before moving 

to Augusta in 2016 to oversee the dayto-day 

operations of WDM Family 

Enterprises, a real estate development 

firm whose principals are the owners 

of McKnight Construction Co. WDM’s 

holdings include the SunTrust Building 

on Broad Street. 

Dallas, who works out of Augusta 

Tomorrow’s office in the Enterprise 

Mill complex has lived in Augusta 

more than a decade. She studied at the 

University of Georgia for a year before 

transferring to the University of Kentucky, 

where she earned a bachelor’s 

degree in integrated strategic communications. 

“I finished college in Kentucky, but 

I started in Georgia, and all of my favorite 

people were from Augusta,” she 

said. “So I always wanted to live here.” 

Dallas’ goal was realized in 2009 at 

age 24 when – after working at a series 

of marketing jobs in Kentucky and 

Ohio – Alex Wier asked her to join his 

Augusta-based Wier/Stewart marketing 

firm as a website developer. 

The position allowed her to hone 

her project management skills as well 

as give her an opportunity to meet her 

future husband, Al, who at the time was 

working as a client relations manager 

in the logistics industry. He later 

became former Augusta Mayor Deke 

Copenhaver’s executive assistant, and 

is currently chief of staff at the Georgia 

Cancer Center. 

Lauren Dallas was making moves, 

too. After nearly three years with Wier/ 

Stewart, she chose to take a marketing 

coordinator position in 2014 at the 

Augusta Sports Council, an affiliate 

of the Augusta Convention & Visitors 

Bureau that focuses on sports-based 

and economic development. 

The role was her first foray into the 

community- and economic-development 

world. The experience came in 

handy four years later when she was 

TheFounders 

Augusta Tomorrow founders H.M. “Monty” Osteen Jr., president of First Federal 

Savings & Loan Association; and D. Hugh Connolly, president of Sherman & 

Hemstreet; invited the following community leaders to join the board of directors: 

• Louis L. Battey, M.D. 

• James H. Hamilton, president, The Citizens and Southern National Bank 

• William B. Kuhlke Jr., president, Kuhlke Construction & Associates 

• Bryce H. Newman, president, Merry Land & Investment Co. 

• Robert C. Norman, partner, Hull, Towill, Norman & Barrett P.C. 

• Whitney C. O’Keeffe, president, The First National Bank & Trust Co. of Augusta 

• Charles B. Presley, chairman and CEO, Georgia Railroad Bank & Trust Co. 

• B.W. Rainwater, vice president, Georgia Power Company 

• Edward B. Skinner, general manager, The Augusta Chronicle/Herald 

Source: Augusta Tomorrow 

Augusta Tomorrow 

was founded by 

H.M. “Monty” 

Osteen Jr., above, 

and D. Hugh 

Connolly, below. 


CHRONICLE] 


named executive director of 

Turn Back The Block – a faithbased 

nonprofit dedicated to 

revitalizing the historic Harrisburg 

neighborhood. 

Looking back, Dallas said the 

experience helped prime her for 

her current job. 

“Harrisburg and Olde Town 

are the closest neighborhoods to 

downtown and they are prime 

areas for residential development,” 

she said. 

But Dallas wasn’t hunting for 

a new job when she received a 

call early this year from Downs, 

whom she befriended through 

the Augusta Metro Chamber 

of Commerce’s Leadership 

Augusta program in 2019. 

Downs told her Augusta 

Tomorrow’s longtime executive 

director, Camille Price, was 

retiring after 20 years with the 

organization and that Dallas 

should throw her hat in the ring. 

“After Camille had just told 

him (Rhodes) that she was retiring, 

the first person I thought 

about was Lauren,” Downs said. 

“To me, it was a perfect fit.” 

The Augusta Tomorrow board 

agreed, choosing Dallas from a 

list of candidates. 

Dallas said Price’s meticulous 

record-keeping and research 

made it easier for her to hit the 

ground running. 

“She took great notes, which 

has been great for me because a 

lot of times when someone is in a 

job for 20 years, when they leave, 

that institutional knowledge just 

goes away,” Dallas said. 


Brian Rhodes, president and CEO of TaxSlayer, was 

named president of Augusta Tomorrow in January. 


Ryan Downs, senior vice president of WDM Family 

Enterprises, was named vice president of the downtown 

revitalization group Augusta Tomorrow in January. 




Downs said following in the footsteps of 

Augusta Tomorrow’s previous leaders – some of 

whom have more than three decades of experience 

in downtown revitalization efforts – will 

be challenging. The group’s previous president, 

Robert Osborne, a senior vice president for 

South State Bank, has served multiple years as 

president during two different terms. 

Downs said the new leadership trio has the 

benefit of having a board of directors that he 

calls a true “working board,” which will help 

him and Rhodes lead the organization during 

a time when interest in downtown revitalization 

is peaking because of the city’s growing 

cybersecurity industry and the expansion of 

Augusta University’s downtown Health Sciences 

Campus. 

“I think one of the nice things is the way that 

the established leadership has gracefully transitioned 

over to give the younger generation a 

chance to start taking on some more responsibility 

with the safety net of their experience and 

guidance,” he said. “We just happen to have 

these titles. We’re not ‘taking over’ or making 

big changes.” 

But there are a few minor changes the new 

president and vice president have in mind. 

Rhodes said he wants to see the organization 

narrow its focus on downtown cleanliness 

and safety, governmental relations and the 

13th Street bridge project – a two-state effort 

to rebuild the bridge with enhanced pedestrian 

features to give downtown visitors and 

residents easier access to Augusta and North 

Augusta’s urban trail systems. 

“One of the things that I have thought about 

since joining the board was that we almost had 

too many initiatives, too many goals that we 

were trying to attain,” Rhodes said. “We don’t 

want to add anything else to our initiatives. We 

want to look back and say, ‘Hey, were we successful 

this year?’ It’s very important for our 

board to see the progress that we’re making. I 

think you are scattered all over the place, that 

makes it a little more difficult.” 

Downtown’s appearance and public safety 

perceptions are important because they have a 

direct impact on people’s willingness to “live, 

work and play” in the urban core, which in turn 

affects private-sector investment in new housing 

and businesses. 

Dallas said the organization’s overarching goal 

of making downtown better starts with the “live” 

part of the “live, work and play” mantra. 



AT A GLANCE 

History: Founded in 1982 by downtown business leaders to address 

the rapid decline of the central business district, which lost businesses, 

employees and visitors because of increased commercial development 

in suburban areas during the 1960s and 1970s, 

culminating with the near simultaneous opening of Regency 

Mall and Augusta Mall in 1978. 

With help from a Maryland-based developer, the group released its 

first revitalization master plan in December 1982, a $116 million 

initiative that included Riverwalk Augusta, a riverfront hotel and 

convention center, and Lafayette Center on Broad Street’s 900 block. 

The plan was last updated in 2009 and uses elements of The Westobou 

Vision Urban Area Master Plan, which includes parts of North Augusta 

and the urban neighborhoods of Harrisburg, 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem and Olde Town. 

Funding: Member contributions and private-sector donations 

Headquarters: Enterprise Mill, 1450 Greene St., Suite 85 

Officers: President Brian Rhodes, CEO of TaxSlayer 

Vice President Ryan Downs, senior vice president of WDM Family 

Enterprises 

Secretary/Treasurer H.M. “Monty” Osteen, president of 

Financial Holdings of Augusta Inc. 

Past President Robert Osborne, senior vice president for South State Bank 

Executive Director: Lauren Dallas 

Board of directors: 

• Rafi Bassali, principal, RB Capital Investments LLC 

• Derek May, president, Azalea Investments LLC 

• Tony Bernados, president, The Augusta Chronicle 

• Jay L. Murray, president, Truist Bank 

• Tom Blanchard III, president, Blanchard & Calhoun Real Estate Co. 

• W. Cameron Nixon, east Georgia regional president, Cadence Bank 

• Doug Cates IV, partner, Cherry, Bekaert & Holland LLP 

• Hardie Davis, mayor, city of Augusta 

• John Engler, vice president, McKnight Properties 

• Patrick Rice, CEO, Hull Barrett PC 

• Randall Hatcher, president, MAU Workforce Solutions 

• Tom Robertson Jr., vice president, Cranston Engineering Group PC 

• Andy Jones, CEO, Sprint Food Stores Inc. 

• Michael Schaffer, executive vice president, Augusta University 

• Steven Kendrick, chairman, Augusta Economic Development Authority 

• Barry Storey, principal, BLS Holdings Group LLC 

• Stephen King Jr., regional external affairs manger, Georgia Power 

• Dennis Trotter, partner, Jordan Trotter Commercial Real Estate 

• Bob Kuhar, vice president, Morris Communications 

• Alex Wier, chief operating officer, Wier/Stewart 

• Robert Wynn, president, Wynn Capital LLC 

Source: Augusta Tomorrow 


Augusta Tomorrow has updated its original 1982 master plan for downtown several times over the years, 

including this 2000 edition, which shows an enhanced Augusta Common on the cover. [SPECIAL/AUGUSTA TOMORROW] 



“It’s one of the biggest focus areas 

of this city,” she said. “Obviously, 

in order for (increased downtown 

population) to happen, you need a 

clean downtown so that people feel 

safe about living downtown. No 

21-year-old or even a 30-year-old 

is going to live downtown if it’s not 

clean and safe – plain and simple.” 

Improving governmental relations 

are important because prospective 

private-sector investment in downtown 

can be stymied without consensus 

from elected officials. Unlike other 

groups with an interest in downtown 

revitalization – such as the Augusta 

Economic Development Authority, 

the Augusta Coliseum Authority and 

the Augusta Downtown Development 

Authority – Augusta Tomorrow’s 

leaders are not appointed by Augusta 

commissioners. 

And unlike quasi-governmental 

entities such as the Augusta Convention 

& Visitors Bureau, Augusta 

Tomorrow receives no city funding, 

although it did for several years after 

its founding in 1982 to create a downtown 

revitalization plan in response 

to the massive decline in commercial 

activity caused by new shopping centers 

and malls in suburban areas. 

Riverwalk Augusta was a project 

outlined in Augusta Tomorrow’s 

1982 master plan. The plan’s 1995 

revision called for the creation of the 

Augusta Common, an urban park 

that serves as a venue for outdoor 

concerts and events such as the Arts 

in the Heart festival. 

As an independent group, Rhodes 

acknowledges that working with 

city officials is an arduous and 

time-consuming task; downtown is 

represented by only one of the city’s 

10 commission members. 

“We are trying to let the entire city 

know that downtown is vital to the 

success of Augusta,” he said. “We 

need all the commissioners to get 

any real things done. We can’t just 

have one or two on our side. So it’s a 

challenge. We’d be lying if we said it 

wasn’t. But I think we’re starting to 

get the game plan on how we can let 

everyone in their city, in their county, 

know that a successful downtown is 

vital to everyone.” 

Last summer Augusta Tomorrow 

began having one-on-one meetings 

with individual commissioners to 

build trust and keep them apprised 

of the group’s activities. Dallas said 

she plans to attend as many governmental 

meetings as possible to 

foster relationships, keep apprised 

of local developments and answer 

questions if need be. 

She also wants to create stronger 

connections with other groups with 

downtown improvement initiatives, 

such as the CVB, DDA and the Chamber 

of Commerce, as well as government 

agencies such as the Augusta 

Land Bank Authority. 

“There’s a lot of crossover. A lot 

of Augusta Tomorrow members are 

board members of the chamber, the 

CVB and other groups,” said Dallas, 

who is a board member of the Land 

Bank Authority. “There needs to be 

crossover because our visions have to 

be aligned, because if they weren’t, 

there wouldn’t be any progress.” 

Augusta Tomorrow was organized 

by H. Monty Osteen Jr., then president 

of Bankers First, and D. Hugh 

Connolly, then president of real 

estate firm Sherman & Hemstreet. 

Osteen is still active on the board; 

Connolly is retired. 

The city of Augusta paid half the 

cost for the group’s first downtown 

master plan, which was created with 

help from The American City Corp., 

a subsidiary of The Rouse Co., the 

Maryland-based developer whose 

urban renewal projects include Baltimore’s 

Harborplace and the Jacksonville 

Landing in Jacksonville, Fla. 

Augusta Tomorrow in recent years 

has brought in younger downtown 

stakeholders as members – such 

as real estate investor Rafy Bassali, 

financial adviser Rob Wynn and John 

Engler, a partner in the company that 

owns the Hyatt House – to help advocate 

for ongoing master plan projects, 

such as expanding the Augusta 

Common north to the riverfront. 

Although the new leaders want 

to develop better relationships with 

other downtown-focused entities 

and agencies, they still want Augusta 

Tomorrow to remain a “behind the 

scenes” organization. 

“We don’t want to be construed as 

taking credit for things because we 

can’t do any of it without help from 

other community leaders and the 

commission,” Rhodes said. 

To which Ryan adds: “We’re OK 

with other people taking credit for the 

work that we do as long as we accomplish 

our goal.” 

About 67% of the projects in 

Augusta Tomorrow’s 2009 downtown 

master plan have been completed, 

Dallas said. 

“There is obviously a lot of work to 

do,” she said. “But there has been a lot 

significant progress.” 

Rhodes said he is confident Dallas 

can improve the organization’s 

governmental relationships and help 

reduce the time it takes for plans to 

come to fruition. 

“What Ryan and I and the rest of 

the executive board talked about 

was that we needed to bring somebody 

in who was a little younger, a 

little hungrier to just start pushing 

our initiatives a little more,” he said. 

“We’re a working board, but we also 

want our executive driver to be working 

on the same issues we are. And I 

think Lauren has the perfect résumé 

and the demeanor to go out and to 

push Augusta Tomorrow’s initiatives 

across the community. We’re very 

excited to have her enthusiasm to 

continue the progress that we’ve had 

over the past several years.” 

Once Rhodes term as president 

expires, Downs will be next in line for 

the position. 

“He would probably hate me for 

saying this, but to have Brian Rhodes’, 

the CEO of TaxSlayer as president of 

the board – helping us make efficient 

and focused discussions – is very 

valuable,” Downs said. “And Robert 

(Osborne) is as good as it gets.” 

“The next guy in line is going to 

be a major step down,” Downs said 

jokingly. 


TOURISM continued from 40 

was postponed from April to November 

– Augusta is not a major destination for 

leisure travelers. As a mid-sized market 

with no beaches, resorts, theme parks or 

major tourist attractions, the city relies on 

regional sporting events, conventions and 

business travelers attending corporate or 

governmental meetings. 

But metro Augusta’s smaller size could 

work to its advantage as surveys have 

shown travelers are more comfortable 

visiting lower-density destinations. 

“We have seen some data showing that 

the medium-tier cities – which Augusta 

would fall into, opposed to the big metros 

– have fared much better,” said Lindsay 

Fruchtl, the CVB’s vice president of 

marketing. 

Leech said business travel, which has 

historically accounted for roughly half 

of his hotel’s revenue, will likely remain 

slack as long as the coronavirus pandemic 

continues to constrain corporate and government 

revenue streams. 

“(Gov. Brian) Kemp said to the state 

agencies you’ve got to cut 10% to 14% of 

your budgets,” he said. “What is one of 

the first things those agencies cut back 

on? Travel. We can’t gauge the transient 

business because people are afraid to get 

on a plane.” 

What would ordinarily be a spike in 

spring hotel occupancy and revenue 

because of the Masters Tournament 

instead became a valley. According to STR, 

occupancy for all Augusta hotels during 

March – which is considered the start of 

the pandemic in Georgia – fell 20% compared 

to the previous year. 

In April, the city’s hands-down most 

profitable hospitality month, occupancy 

was down 43%. And in May – the latest 

date for which statistics were available – 

data showed occupancy dipped 29%. 

The city of Augusta does not forecast 

hospitality tax revenues because the 

money does not go toward general fund 

operations. Lodging taxes, which are 

collected by the state and distributed to 

the city, are split between the Augusta- 

Richmond County Coliseum Authority 

and the Augusta CVB, which keeps 33% 

of its half and distributes the remainder to 

area organizations in the form of tourism 

grants. 

An additional $1 per night hotel/motel 

fee approved by the commission in 2008 

funds revitalization efforts in the historic 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem district. 

The city’s year-to-date hotel revenue 

through May, $32.7 million, was 46.2% 

lower than 2019’s $60.8 million, according 

to STR’s analysis. 

“That’s less revenue for everybody,” 

Leech said. “Hotel-motel tax collections 

are going to be down tremendously.” 

The uptick in COVID-19 cases during 

the summer casts doubts over events 

planned in the fall. For example, the 

IRONMAN 70.3 Augusta triathlon, which 

last year had an estimated $5.05 million 

impact, has not announced a change in its 

Sept. 27 schedule, though several other 

IRONMAN-affiliated events this summer 

have been postponed or canceled, including 

competitions in Waco, Texas, Lake 

Placid, N.Y., and Louisville, Ky. 

“Time will tell what the future holds,” 

Leech said. “Our sales team has said a lot 

of their customers are telling them that 

they’re dying to get back to face-to-face 

meetings and conventions.” 

“We are still seeing weddings being 

booked,” Leech added. “People are still 

getting married.” 


PROFILE 

‘NEW KID ON 

THE BLOCK’ 

Augusta native takes helm 

of Turn Back The Block 

revitalization organization 


Just a few weeks into her role as executive director 

of Turn Back The Block, Ashley Brown needed a 

permit for a home the nonprofit planned to build at 

1922 Battle Row. 

Such a routine task is part and parcel of leading an 

organization dedicated to revitalizing Augusta's historic 

Harrisburg neighborhood. 

There was just one little hitch: Brown had never applied 

for a building permit before. 

No problem – Brown is not only used to adversity, she's 

a quick learner. 

“Never did I feel that inexperience would hold me 

back,” Brown said. “I'm not afraid to say, ‘I don't know.’ ” 

The former schoolteacher, sales rep and community 

relations manager for Goodwill can roll with the punches, 

a skill that will come in handy as she works to advance the 

10-year-old organization's mission to “turn back” blight 

in one of the city's most storied neighborhoods. 

The 45-year-old Augusta native was named executive 

director in June of the grassroots organization that grew 

out of the faith-based Fuller Center for Housing in 2010. 

The volunteer group uses donated labor and supplies 

to build affordable housing in the inner-city neighborhood 

where more than one in five homes are vacant or 

abandoned. The once-stable, working-class neighborhood 

started to decline in the 1970s as families moved to 

newer suburbs. Originally developed in the 19th century 

to house employees of the city’s textile mills, Harrisburg’s 

deterioration accelerated in the 1990s as the industry 

shrank and eventually disappeared. 


Augusta native Ashley Brown 

was named executive director of 

Turn Back the Block, a Harrisburg 

revitalization nonprofit, in June. 

[SPECIAL/TURN BACK THE BLOCK] 


Today, more than half of homes in the Harrisburg- 

West End Historic District – which range from 

shotgun shacks to craftsman-style bungalows – are 

renter-occupied. 

Turn Back The Block gives low- and moderateincome 

people willing to go through home-ownership 

counseling and contribute “sweat equity” 

the chance to build and own their own homes as a 

strategy to restore a sense of community. 

Brown said she noticed a change in the neighborhood 

in just the six years she spent living in Savannah 

after graduating from the University of Georgia with 

a degree in education in 1998. 

“What I remember as a child being driven through 

(Harrisburg) was always being fascinated to see those 

houses,” said Brown, who graduated from the Academy 

of Richmond County, just south of the historic 

district. “You always saw someone on their porch. 

You always saw kids playing in the streets.” 

To date, the organization has helped build or renovate 

eight homes and build six new ones – primarily 

on Battle Row and Broad and Metcalf streets. It also 

owns nearly two dozen parcels for future redevelopment, 

most of which were donated from individuals 

or purchased with donated funds. 

The future home site at 1992 Battle Row, for example, 

will be built with substantial contributions from The 

Citizens of Georgia Power. Brown said her primary 

goal is to accelerate the organization's efforts through 

increased partnerships. 

“For me, coming in to such an established and 

well-regarded nonprofit, it is kind of being the new 

kid on the block,” she said. “The strategic plans that 

this board has are big and they're great. So it’s about 

incorporating myself in a way so that their goals 

become my goals and ‘How is Ashley going to help 

drive that?’ ” 

It’s a job that requires tenacity and a certain 

amount of fearlessness – traits Brown learned from a 

little girl named Frances. 

Ashley Brown, the new director of Turn Back the Block, a 

Harrisburg revitalization nonprofit that builds and sells new 

homes in the historic neighborhood, works in its offices on Battle 

Row in Augusta. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


Three houses on Metcalf Street in Augusta’s Harrisburg neighborhood are among those built by revitalization organization Turn 

Back the Block. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

CHANGE OF PLANS 

Brown's first job as a newly minted college grad was 

teaching for the Savannah-Chatham County Public 

School System. State statistics show more than 40% 

of Georgia public school teachers quit within the first 

five years. Brown lasted three. 

“It was insane,” Brown recalled. “I had 35 kids in a 

class and no teacher’s aide. I was new and I think I just 

got burned out. I give absolute kudos to teachers.” 

One of her student's parents told her she should give 

sales a try, which she did, with marketing advertising 

for radio broadcaster Cumulus Media. She and 

her husband, John-Clark Brown, a fellow Richmond 

Academy grad and co-owner of Timberland Holdings 

and Management Co., decided to move back to Augusta 

in 2003 shortly after the birth of their son John T., 

now a senior at Aquinas High School. 

Brown switched to pharmaceutical sales, marketing 

new medications as second-line therapies to physicians 

with patients not responding well to older generic 

drugs. Though she built up a successful network, 

health care industry changes forced drug companies to 

increasingly pare back their workforce. After surviving 

two rounds of corporate layoffs, Brown was let go 

in 2017. 

But the event was nowhere nearly as life-altering as 

the birth of her second child, Frances, on Jan. 29, 2007. 

Brown and her doctors knew something was wrong 

immediately after delivery. The baby had malformed 

feet and a reddish-purple discoloration from the neck 

down. 


“They whisked her off because they were 

thinking it was maybe a heart condition,” 

Brown said. “We were told it might be portwine 

stain.” 

The diagnosis that took geneticists nearly 

three months to determine was much more 

serious. The infant had macrocephaly-capillary 

malformation, a genetic disorder so rare 

that Frances was – at the time – one of only 

89 cases in the world. 

“At age 25 I had ‘this plan,’ “ Brown said. 

“John T. totally changed me as a person, 

but Frances was like tenfold. ‘So I have a 

child that is like one of 89 in the world? Like, 

what?’” 

M-CM is characterized by skin discoloration 

and abnormal growth in the limbs, head 

and brain. The genetic mutation meant the 

girl would have lifelong developmental disabilities. 

“It was always like having an infant but 

with a lot more needs,” Brown recalled, 

noting her own difficult decision to remain 

in the workforce to pay for Frances’ multiple 

surgeries and ongoing therapy. “I was a working 

mother. I had to be – I had no choice.” 

Considering the spectrum of outcomes for 

children with M-CM, Frances had a full life, 

learning to walk, talk and use mostly sign 

language as a means to communicate. And she 

loved attending Lake Forest Hills Elementary 

School, where she was a part of the deaf and 

hard-of-hearing class. 

“Frannie,” as her family called her, was 

an inspiration to parishioners at the family’s 

church, St. Mary on the Hill, as well as care 

providers at Augusta University’s Children’s 

Hospital of Georgia. Kelley Norris, a pediatric 

critical-care specialist at the hospital, was 

moved to create the nonprofit “Friends of 

Frances” organization along with her friend 

Mary Covington Coleman. 

The awareness organization, which helps 

fund medical equipment and therapy for 

Augusta-area children with genetic disorders, 

grew to be the largest charity team in 

the annual AU Half Marathon. The highlight 

culminated with Norris and Coleman rolling 

Frances across the finish line in her wheelchair. 

But no one was moved by the girl’s intrepid 

spirit more than her mother. 

“One of my biggest motivators was 

Frances,” Brown said. “She just made me 

more. She made me want more – to do 

more. Watching her made me do more than 

I thought was possible. We all have these 

ideas of what perfection looks like, and we 

sometimes let that hold us back out of fear. 

She inspired me to not stop doing something 

because of fear.” 

Her daughter’s candle burned bright, but 

not long. Frances’ final neurosurgery left 

her a quadriplegic, a complication the family 

knew was a risk. A subsequent cardiac arrest 

confined the girl to a ventilator. With her 

health deteriorating daily, physicians grimly 

advised Brown and her husband to place their 

daughter in hospice care. 

The couple and their then-15-year-old son 

were there to the very end. Frances Faughnan 

Brown died on March 26, 2018. She was 11. 

In the span of a year, Brown had lost a 

career and a child. 

“I had a whole year to spend with her before 

the end,” she said. “It was obviously a very 

emotional time. It’s still very difficult.” 

BROWN continues on 57 

The Turn Back the Block office 

in Augusta’s historic Harrisburg 

neighborhood is a converted 

warehouse. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/ 

THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


A map produced for a Georgia Conservancy report on the Harrisburg district shows the 

preponderance of renter-occupied housing (in red) around the neighborhood’s Lamar-Milledge 

Elementary School near the corner of Eve and Telfair streets. [SPECIAL/GEORGIA CONSERVANCY] 

WANT TO HELP? 

Turn Back The Block accepts 

tax-deductible donations as well 

as in-kind and direct-volunteer 

support from community members 

interested in revitalizing 

the Harrisburg neighborhood. 

Learn more about opportunities 

and upcoming events 

at turnbacktheblock.com/ 

how-can-i-help/ 

Former Turn Back the Block 

Executive Director Christel 

Snyder, right, and board Chairman 

Garon Muller help hand out trash 

bags in this 2015 file image of a 

community clean up day. [FILE/THE 

AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


Turn Back The Block construction volunteers, known as the “FROGS,” for Faithful Retired Old Guys Serving, help build one of the 

nonprofit’s homes in the historic Harrisburg neighborhood. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

TURNING BACK, FORGING AHEAD 

Brown was at a crossroads. She had nearly 20 

years of marketing experience under her belt, but 

little desire to return to a traditional “sales” job. 

“That's how I came into nonprofits,” said Brown, 

who joined Goodwill of Middle Georgia & the CSRA 

as a volunteer coordinator in Augusta two years 

ago. 

Over time, she was promoted to regional community 

relations manager, helping the career counseling 

and job-placement organization’s promotional 

and fundraising efforts in a 35-county region 

between Augusta and Macon. 

But in March, the COVID-19 pandemic ground 

Goodwill's education, job placement and thrift 

store operations to a virtual halt. Like many of the 

nonprofit's employees, Brown was furloughed. 

Around the same time, Turn Back The Block was 

searching for a new executive director. 

BROWN continues on 67 

Friends of Frances organizers Kelley Norris (left) and Mary 

Covington Coleman (right) cross the finish line with 6-year-old 

Frances Brown (center) during the 2013 Augusta University Half 

Marathon and 10K event. Frances died in 2018 of complications 

from a rare genetic disorder. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


LaDonna Doleman, manager of Golden Harvest Food Bank’s Masters Table Soup Kitchen, worked with Turn Back The Block three years to 

qualify for one of its Harrisburg homes, a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on Battle Row. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

Coming home 

South Augusta native’s dreams of 

returning to Harrisburg come true 


LaDonna Doleman didn’t grow up in Harrisburg, 

but Harrisburg grew on her. 

The self-described “country girl” from 

Hephzibah fell in love with the historic innercity 

neighborhood when she and her husband moved 

into a small rental home near the corner of Crawford 

Avenue and Broad Street two decades ago. 

“It used to be a very quiet and serene neighborhood,” 

the 44-year-old manager of Golden Harvest 

Food Bank’s Masters Table Soup Kitchen recalled. “I 

remember when we first lived there we enjoyed sitting 

on the porch, just watching cars and kids go by. People 

would wave to each other.” 

Then things started to change. Car and home burglaries 

began to rise. Doleman, who at the time was 

assistant food-service manager for Select Specialty 

Hospital, no longer felt safe when her husband, a longhaul 

truck driver, would be gone for days. 

HOME continues on 67 


HISTORY 

Downtown 

By DAMON CLINE and BILL KIRBY 

DISASTERS 

STREET-EMPTYING COVID-19 PANDEMIC ISN’T URBAN AREA’S FIRST CRISIS 

THE 1908 FLOOD 

1990 FLASH FLOOD 

KING MILL EXPLOSION 

1886 EARTHQUAKE 

THE FORGOTTEN FIRES 

1918 SPANISH FLU 

Derek May walked out of the Augusta University 

office tower at 699 Broad St. one 

afternoon this spring and saw an incredible 

sight: nothing. 

No people or traffic as far as the eye could see; 

downtown’s main thoroughfare, ordinarily bustling 

with activity, was eerily empty. 

“I was the only person on the street – anywhere,” 

said May, president of Azalea Investments, the company 

that owns the AU Building. 

What the executive saw, of course, were the effects 

of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose viral ebbs and 

flows have disrupted downtown commerce since mid- 

March. 

The coronavirus is unlike any public health crisis 

Augusta, and the rest of America, has ever seen. But 

even as the local and national death toll continues 

to rise, most people realize – that much like other 

calamities through history – this, too, will pass. 

In this edition of 1736, we are looking back at some 

Men stand in knee-deep water in front of a Broad Street 

business during the 1908 flood, which is notable because it 

convinced city leaders to agree to construction of a riverfront 

levee. [FILE PHOTOS/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

of downtown’s most memorable disruptions, distractions 

and disasters. 

Augusta has been flooded by the mighty Savannah 

River many times during its history – approximately 

20 major inundations between the 1700s and early 

1900s – but the flood of August 1908 was different. 

It prompted city leaders to finally build a levee along 

the southern banks of the state’s largest river. Interestingly, 

the Army Corps of Engineers, who today 

still has jurisdiction over the levee, had recommended 

building its construction as early as the 1870s. 


The flood of 1908 put more than 100 city blocks under 

water including all of the central business district. 

An out-of-town salesman, Clarence Sedberry, made 

a stop in Augusta and described the famous flood in a 

letter to his wife in Fayetteville, N.C. 

Sedberry was staying at the old Albion Hotel on the 

700 block when the water flowed on to city streets. His 

letter details a nearly hour-by-hour account between 

Aug 26-28. The note was discovered by Sedberry’s 

great-granddaughter in the late 1980s, who shared it 

with The Augusta Chronicle. 

“A store full of lime has just exploded,” he detailed at 

12:30 p.m. on the 26th. “Barrels of lime go floating by 

being slapped by the water as they float. Lots of water 

everywhere. Boats come into the lobby of the hotel. 

“Water continues to rise. It’s now up two steps in the 

hotel. A grand sight but terrible. No one knows where it 

will end.” 

Sedberry was clearly worried. At 2 p.m. the same day: 

“Everything wild. I have to be brief in what I say, if I 

ever get out and at home I will tell you all about it.” 

By the evening, fires burned throughout the city, which 

Sedberry could see from the roof of the six-story hotel. 

“Five large fires are now raging,” he wrote. “No lights 

in the hotel except candles and with so many drinking, I 

am afraid of trouble.” He had reason to worry: The flood 

claimed 25 lives and $1,500,000 in property damage. 

The waters began to recede the following day and the 

salesman made it home safely. “Wish I could write it all 

as I see (it),” he wrote. “It’s a sight and an experience of 

a lifetime.” 

One of the last great floods occurred in 1936, but such 

events largely disappeared after Congress authorized 

the construction of Clarks Hill Dam 21 miles upstream 

from Augusta (the structure was renamed the J. Strom 

Thurmond Dam in 1987). 

Two men take a boat into the Laney-Walker neighborhood during the 1990 flood, which was caused by heavy rain inundating the 

city’s inadequate stormwater runoff systems. 


Public safety officials survey the damage of an explosion caused by a leaky propane truck near The John P. King Manufacturing Co. 

textile mill in 1958. Six homes were destroyed and one man died in the calamity. 

This disaster had nothing to do with the river; it was 

Augusta’s aging stormwater drainage system that was 

overwhelmed by 8.5 inches of rain over 12 hours on Oct. 

11-12, 1990. 

Flash floods killed four and forced the evacuations of 

hundreds more people. The downpour was the result 

of a convergence of Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm 

Marco – as well as the dying remnants of Tropical 

Storm Klaus – over the Augusta area, causing an estimated 

$150 million in property damage. 

The flooding of Rae’s Creek wreaked havoc on the 

Amen Corner section of Augusta National Golf Club, 

destroying the entire 11th green and the members’ tee at 

the 13th hole. The green and the front bunker at the 12th 

hole also was damaged. 

The Augusta National rebuilt the 11th green to the 

original dimensions but changed the contours and 

made it two feet higher. It also widened Rae’s Creek and 

installed a dam for water control that is disguised by a 

wooden structure. 

Outside the club, taxpayers sank more than $14 million 

into flood-control projects along Rae’s Creek and 

its tributaries. 

Victims of the 1990 deluge included an 80-yearman 

who was swept away by swift-moving water as he 

and his wife struggled to get out their car at a flooded 

railroad crossing. Three others drowned in Jefferson 

County southwest of Augusta. 

“We got so much rain, so fast,” Pam Smith, thendirector 

of the Richmond County Emergency Management 

Agency, said. “We’ve never had anything like 

this.” 

Emory Farmer was shucking corn in her Harrisburg 

home on July 30, 1958. 

The popular TV game show” Beat the Clock” had just 

ended. Then she heard the roar of an explosion and felt 

its shockwave. Her door flew open, pictures fell from 

their hangers, an one of her walls had cracked. 


The sound, she said, “was like the whole world had 

blown up.” 

The driver of a propane truck, J.L. Allen, parked 

next to the The John P. King Manufacturing Co. 

textile mill and noticed a leak under the truck as he 

was unfolding a hose. Unable to stop it, Allen ran to 

nearby homes alerting residents to turn off their pilot 

lights and evacuate the area. 

The explosion destroyed six duplex homes, injured 

more than a dozen people, left 41 homeless and killed 

one man – Walter Redd, a 30-year-old Korean War 

veteran who succumbed to third-degree burns while 

rescuing his four children. 

Windows at King Mill shook but didn’t break. 

Children playing in the nearby Chaffee Park pool said 

they saw a fireball and felt water slosh over the side 

as if the pool were a tilted bowl. Some people thought 

the commotion was a plane crash. 

Officials said the explosion could have been much 

more deadly if the neighborhood residents hadn’t 

spread the word quickly to evacuate. 

“It demonstrated…that emergency forces in 

Augusta can be quickly mobilized when disaster 

strikes,” The Augusta Chronicle editorialized. 

“Praise goes also to the individuals who showed great 

courage and heroism in risking their lives by relaying 

the alarm, by herding children out of danger and by 

participating in the rescue work.” 

One of the most devastating earthquakes in American 

history shook the eastern United States on Aug. 

31, 1886. 

Most of the damage was centered on the Charleston, 

S.C., where more than five dozen people were killed and 

millions of dollars in inflation-adjusted dollars occurred. 

In Augusta, people ran outside because it seemed 

safer than being indoors, where plaster ceilings were 

being shaken loose, chimneys were collapsing and 

windows were breaking. 

People fled into the street, The Chronicle reported, 

“gesticulating excitedly and wondering whether their 

time had come or not.” 

Church bells rang all over town from the jostling, which 

some accounts say came in waves of about 13 aftershocks. 

Joseph R. Lamar, lawyer, judge, state legislator, and a 

future U.S. Supreme Court justice, reportedly escaped a 

room just before the entire ceiling collapsed. 

“Walls swayed, ground trembled,” read headlines 

in The Chronicle. “Second shock after people flocked 

into streets.” 

At St. James Methodist Church on Greene Street, workmen 

had been busy for months erecting a new facade, 

belfry and sanctuary. The contractor’s crew reportedly 

went back to the construction site to brace the walls and 

board up the windows to prevent damage. It apparently 

worked, because the structure still stands today. 


Most metro area residents have heard of the Great 

Fire of 1916, which burned many businesses in downtown 

and homes in the Olde Town neighborhood. 

But very few know about an equally devastating fire 

in 1829. 

That blaze, on April 3, destroyed parts of downtown 

and nearly 850 homes. Augusta was much smaller then, 

so the damage had an even greater impact on the pre- 

Industrial Revolution town. The aftermath was severe 

enough that city leaders passed an ordinance requiring 

buildings in certain areas be made of brick instead of 

wood. 

Another fire in 1858 resulted in the city getting a 

360-degree view of the marble obelisk in front of the 

Municipal Building on Greene Street. The 172-year-old 

monument marks the burial place of two of Georgia’s 

three signers of the Declaration of Independence – 

George Walton and Lyman Hall. 

Monument Street, the north-south thoroughfare cut 

in the middle of the 500 block, was not the result of 

forward-thinking city planners – it was the result of a 

fire that burned down buildings blocking its view. 

Everyone got so used to seeing the monument from 

Broad Street that the structures were never rebuilt. 

And 1921 was a banner year for fires – five major 

buildings were destroyed, including the Bon Air Hotel 

(which was rebuilt); the Albion Hotel (replaced by Richmond 

Hotel two years later); The Augusta Chronicle 

(which moved into the Augusta Herald building); and 

the Harrison and Johnson buildings (both of which were 

gutted and rebuilt). 

Augusta’s first serious epidemic showed up in 1839 – 

yellow fever. It afflicted about half the town’s residents, 

killing 240 of them, including one of the founders of the 

Medical College of Georgia, Dr. Milton Antony, who 

contracted the disease while tending to the sick. 

The disease came back in 1854. “The community, 

panic stricken, are fleeing in every direction to escape 

its ravages,” The Chronicle reported that year. 

Augusta residents have a “camping party” outdoors following the 1886 earthquake that rocked the Southeast. For a time, people felt 

safer outdoors than in buildings. 


An Augusta Chronicle newspaper clipping from 1918 reports on the outbreak of Spanish flu at Camp Hancock, the Army installation 

that later became Fort Gordon. 

But the global epidemic regarded by some 

as the deadliest in recorded history – the 1918 

Spanish Flu pandemic – is believed to have 

been brought to Augusta by soldiers arriving 

in Augusta by train. Troop transports from 

Fort Riley, Kan., and Camp Grant, Ill., are 

said to have introduced the influenza strain 

to Augusta through Camp Hancock, the forerunner 

to Fort Gordon. 

On Sept. 30, two soldiers were in the camp 

infirmary with flu-like symptoms. On Oct. 1, 

the number skyrocketed to 716. By the end of 

October, there were 3,000 hospitalized at the 

camp; 52 died in a single week, according to 

“The Story of Augusta” by Edward J. Cashin. 

“The Board of Health quarantined the 

Camp and closed all schools, churches and 

theaters in Augusta until the worst was over 

in late November,” Cashin wrote. 

Like many cities, Augusta was gripped by 

fear and its businesses suffered. Businessman 

Jack Wells, for example, opened his Wells 

Theater right before the pandemic hit. The 

venue folded and the property reopened the 

next year as the Imperial Theatre, which it 

remains today. 

Some 30,000 Georgians died from the 

Spanish flu by the time the pandemic ended 

in 1919. Interestingly, military trains also 

spread the virus to Army camps near Atlanta, 

Macon, and Columbus before it spread into 

the cities themselves. 

A 1921 fire destroyed the 

upper 700 block of Broad 

Street, including the Albion 

Hotel, shown in this photo 

along with the remains of 

the Harrison Building. 


BROWN continued from 57 

“I had every intention of going back (to Goodwill) 

but things kind of changed,” Brown said. “I didn’t take 

taking this position lightly. It took me saying to myself 

I can do this. Saying I can do what is more than possible. 

And that was all Frances.” 

Though Brown’s interview was conducted through 

a Zoom meeting, her experience – and earnestness – 

made an impression on board members who sought a 

professional who could relate to everyone from corporate 

executives to credit-challenged home applicants 

yearning for the American dream. 

“I learned so much to be who I am now,” Brown 

said. “I think those homeowners are reflective of that 

life process as well. What I see as the most successful 

homeowners in Harrisburg are the ones we have. 

They have been through something and they want this. 

They’re proud, they’re determined and they’re driven.” 

Brown is the organization’s sole paid employee and 

its fourth executive director: the first, Anne Catherine 

Murray – who co-founded the nonprofit with Augusta 

businessman Clay Boardman – is currently the 

Augusta Symphony’s executive director; the second, 

Christel Snyder, is now the administrative housing 

counselor for CSRA Economic Opportunity Authority, 

which helps identify and counsel Turn Back The Block 

home applicants; and the third, Lauren Dallas, is now 

executive director of Augusta Tomorrow, the downtown 

planning and revitalization group. 

Much of Brown’s day-to-day work at the organization’s 

Harrisburg office – a donated former storage 

facility – flies under the radar: interviewing potential 

homeowners, picking up trash and working with the 

“FROGS” – the close-knit group of home-building 

and supply-procuring volunteers whose cheeky moniker 

stands for Faithful Retired Old Guys Serving. 

“She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge 

to this position, plus a love for the people of her hometown,” 

Turn Back The Block Chairman Garon Muller 

said. “I know our homeowners, volunteers and donors 

are all going to appreciate working with her.” 

Brown’s overarching goal is to expand the mostly 

volunteer- and grant-funded nonprofit through 

increased partnerships with corporations and other 

community organizations. 

“That’s important to take us to the next level,” 

Brown said. “We have great partnerships and we 

accomplish great things, but we can do much more 

by holding hands with more people around us. Do we 

wish we could do more? Build more houses? Absolutely.” 

With faith, determination and inspiration from a 

doggedly determined little girl, Brown envisions the 

organization – and Harrisburg itself – turning the 

corner. 

“Not being there yet doesn’t mean we’re not going 

to get there,” she said. 

HOME continued from 58 

As the neighborhood spiraled downward, so did 

Doleman’s personal life. She was diagnosed with type 

2 diabetes. She lost her job at the hospital. She and her 

husband divorced. And then she moved her children to 

a two-bedroom apartment on Wrightsboro Road, aimlessly 

bouncing between jobs at restaurants and hotels. 

She was distant from Harrisburg physically, but not 

spiritually. 

“I felt that this was the neighborhood I needed to be 

in,” said Doleman, a member of Harriburg’s St. Luke 

United Methodist Church. 

On July 17, she made it back. That was the day she 

signed the closing papers for Turn Back The Block’s 

newest home at 2014 Battle Row. 

Doleman’s return journey began when St. Luke’s 

secretary, Marsha Jones, told her about the Harrisburg 

renewal organization’s home-ownership program, 

which helps credit-challenged applicants wanting to 

live in the neighborhood purchase new and renovated 

homes through “sweat equity” volunteerism and 

counseling in personal finance and life skills. 

Jones and a fellow friend, Kim Hines, executive 

director of Augusta Locally Grown, a Harrisburg- 

based urban farming organization, sponsored Doleman’s 

application in 2017. 

Doleman then began working with the CSRA 

Economic Opportunity Authority’s Christel Snyder 

(a former Turn Back The Block executive director) 

to get her personal finances in order while putting in 

the required volunteer hours. Three years of dutiful 

budgeting and debt repayment eventually boosted 

the single mother’s credit score from 519 to 645 – the 

minimum most lenders require for a loan. 

“Christel was pretty much like my financial adviser,” 

Doleman recalled. “I was like a kid in an open field. I 

was lost, completely. It was definitely life-changing.” 

Doleman’s new home – appraised at $127,500 – comes 

with a massive pantry (a bonus for the aspiring chef) and 

three bedrooms, which gives her two sons, 15-year-old 

Alphonso and 9-year-old Alexander, rooms of their own. 

But best of all, she feels like she’s back where she 

belongs. And she’s determined to be the best homeowner 

and neighbor she can be. 

“I want Harrisburg to be the old Harrisburg,” she 

said. “Harrisburg helped me rebuild myself, and I 

want to help rebuild Harrisburg.” 


BRIEFING 


HITS & MISSES 

COME BACK SOON: It’s a common sight to see film crews shooting footage 

in downtown Augusta, but it’s not very often they are shooting footage about 

downtown Augusta. Hats off to the folks at the Augusta Downtown Development 

Authority and Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau for creating a series of 

promotional public service announcements featuring some of downtown’s most 

well-known businesses. And thanks to TranterGrey Media for filming the spots and 

local TV affiliates who aired them. 

GOOD GUYS WEAR MASKS: Is wearing a face mask while you’re around 

others in public an unreasonable inconvenience? One might think so by the 

amount of backlash officials have received over public mask-mandates during the 

COVID-19 crisis. Ordinances passed in Savannah, Athens, Atlanta and in Augusta 

by Mayor Hardie Davis have even drawn the ire of Gov. Brian Kemp, who has said 

such local executive orders are null and void. Questions of legality aside, we think 

wearing a mask while you’re out and about is simply a smart thing to do, much 

like wearing a seat belt while you’re driving. A safety belt keeps you from hurting 

yourself; a mask keeps you from hurting others. 

SEEING THE LIGHT: It took more than a little work to convince the Augusta 

Commission that Beacon Station was a good idea, but it seems the trouble 

was worth it. The market-rate apartment complex near the Dental College of 

Georgia, a partnership between an Atlanta developer and the city’s Housing and 

Community Development Department, is on track for 85% occupancy this fall. The 

medical and education district needs more housing for workers and students, and 

Beacon Station provides a walkable solution. 

HOMAGE AT HOME: James Brown received more than a few accolades outside 

his hometown for almost single-handedly changing the face of funk and R&B. Now 

his legacy in Augusta will truly be celebrated with the James Brown Heritage Trail, 

an Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau-marketed tour of notable addresses in 

the soul legend’s life, including his boyhood home and his favorite pre-tour practice 

venue. As a bonus, you can listen to a podcast of local celebrities describing 

the site. 


HITS & MISSES 

HAND IT OVER: As of press time a deal is being worked out that will enable 

locals to take control of the New Savannah Bluff Lock & Dam. For more than two 

decades the New Deal-era structure that keeps the Savannah River nice and 

wide in downtown Augusta has been nothing but trouble under control of the 

Army Corps of Engineers, which has sought to tear it down and replace it with a 

fish-friendly pile of rocks. The new plan would keep the dam in place and build a 

rock pile for fish spawning downstream, letting us keep our downtown riverfront 

looking like it has for the past 80 years. 

STAYING CIVIL: Unlike many other cities across America, Augusta seems 

to understand the part of the First Amendment that gives “the right of the 

people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of 

grievances.” Several marches and gatherings in Augusta to denounce recent highprofile 

incidents of police brutality against African-American suspects have been 

crime-free. It means our residents have more civility, or our local law enforcement 

does a better job of maintaining order when emotions are running high. We’ll take 

it either way. 

IN THE RIGHT HANDS: Some people like to buy downtown properties and sit 

on them. Others like to buy downtown properties to redevelop them. Allan Soto 

is in the latter category. The 38-year-old president of Vinea Capital – a holding 

company for a collection of health care and social service organizations – has 

turned 1002 Broad St. into the Pineapple Ink Tavern. Next on the agenda is upgrading 

the mid-rise Leonard Building at 702 Broad St. into modern office suites with a 

ground-level restaurant. “We’re not playing a game of Monopoly down here,” Soto 

said in a recent interview. “If we get a great building, we’re thinking, ‘What are we 

going to do with it?’ ” This town could use a few more Sotos. 

IT’S TIME TO MOVE: History – warts and all – needs to be preserved, not 

erased. However, painful reminders need to be preserved in a manner that is 

appropriate for modern times, not anachronistic. It is no longer appropriate for 

Broad Street’s Confederate monument to occupy 784 square feet of median space 

on downtown’s main street. What was proper in 19th century Augusta is out of 

context in 21st century Augusta. A more suitable location for the 76-foot-tall 

memorial to Confederate dead would be at Magnolia Cemetery or, if the project 

comes to fruition, the Georgia Museum of Military History on the grounds of the 

old Academy of Richmond County. 


GRADING DOWNTOWN 

6.5 5.5 

8.0 

1.0 


PUBLIC SAFETY 

Previous Score: 6.5 

GOVERNMENT 


HOUSING 


PARKING 


The sheriff is adamant that Broad 

Street not turn into Bourbon 

Street, and for good reason: alcohol 

and roving crowds of young 

people are a recipe for disorder. 

But there has to be a happy 

medium between the sheriff’s 

office’s zero tolerance for open 

containers and the anything-goes 

atmosphere of New Orleans. 

When the weather gets cooler, 

we hope law enforcement and 

business owners can come to an 

agreement for expanding outdoor 

dining and drinking on closed side 

streets. 

When most of your attention 

is focused on regulating public 

behavior in the midst of a pandemic, 

other things tend to get 

put on hold. However, the city 

did give unanimous approval to 

an ordinance allowing downtown 

businesses to extend their sidewalk 

dining options to the spaces 

in front of neighboring businesses 

so long as they have permission 

from the property owner. Now 

that’s a step in the right direction. 

Construction has officially 

begun on the ambitious 155-unit 

Millhouse Station apartment community 

on 11th Street this past 

quarter. The project will be the 

first all-new market rate apartments 

built between the city’s 

central business and medical districts 

in decades. Hopefully it will 

be a harbinger of things to come 

in the less developed section of 

the urban core. Meanwhile, a 

host of other loft-style renovation 

projects continue on Broad and 

Greene streets. 

Nothing has changed. Literally. The 

issue that was a top priority just 

months ago has fallen completely 

off the radar thanks to the COVID-19 

pandemic reducing the number of 

workers, shoppers and diners in the 

central business district. Finding a 

parking space is no longer a problem. 

In fact, downtown officials are 

considering requesting two spaces 

on each block be permanently 

designated for customers doing 

curbside pick up, a trend that has 

exploded thanks to the pandemic. 

One outstanding problem: Unisys’ 

promise for 500 spaces from the city. 

If leaders have come up with a solution, 

we haven’t heard about it. 

7.5 6.5 7.0 3.0 

DEVELOPMENT INFRASTRUCTURE ARTS & CULTURE 




COMMERCE 


The loss of the Riverfront at the 

Depot project earlier this year 

seems to have cooled interest 

in large-scale public-private 

ventures. And the downturn in 

the hospitality industry means 

the Florence, S.C.-based hotelier 

operator who purchased most of 

the southside of the 1100 block 

for a new hotel is not going to be 

making a move for at least two to 

three years. Most private-sector 

reconstruction and renovation 

appears to be taking place at 

downtown’s two mid-rise office 

towers, the Augusta University 

Building at 699 Broad St. and the 

SunTrust Building at 801 Broad St. 

70 | 1736magazine.com 

Transportation Investment Actfunded 

projects in downtown are 

beginning to move along, including 

the James Brown Boulevard 

improvements between Laney- 

Walker Boulevard and Reynolds 

Street. Along with the recent 

improvements to 15th Street 

through the medical district, 

the streetscapes are part of an 

$80 million-plus plan to make 

downtown’s streetscapes more 

attractive, walkable and conducive 

to gathering – the perfect 

prescription for pent-up visitors 

and residents in post-pandemic 

Augusta. 

OVERALL SCORE: 

4.48 

Previous score: 5.87 

With entertainers canceling shows 

and venues closing down, it’s not 

a good time to be in the performing 

arts sector. Augusta’s historic 

downtown theaters are virtually 

locked down and discussions to 

expand the James Brown Arena 

have lost significant momentum. In 

mid-July, the Greater Augusta Arts 

Council announced the Arts in the 

Heart festival – about to mark its 

40th year in September – has been 

canceled. Among the bright spots 

are the new James Brown mural 

at Ninth and Broad streets as well 

as the establishment of a heritage 

trail highlighting the legendary 

performer’s history in Augusta. 

By most accounts, downtown 

businesses are earning half as 

much revenue as they did in 2019. 

Some businesses are earning 

much less. Restaurateurs have 

adapted and innovated by introducing 

deliveries and curbside 

pickup while shopkeepers have 

established websites to enable 

online ordering. Still, people are 

afraid to go out and are sticking 

to buying only the essentials from 

grocers, drug stores and mass 

merchandise retailers. Mayor 

Hardie Davis’ recent mask mandate, 

a very reasonable public 

health policy, could have a negative 

effect on people going out for 

get-togethers.

FINAL WORDS 

Downtown uncertainty 

abounds, but its 

fundamentals won’t change 

DAMON CLINE, EDITOR 

There was perhaps more 

uncertainty involved 

in the production of 

this particular issue 

than in any previous 

edition of 1736. 

There are many unknowns right 

now, and many could have an impact 

on what you read in this edition. 

For example, as of press time 

we have no clue what direction the 

commerce-disrupting COVID-19 

pandemic will take. It could worsen, 

stabilize or – if we’re lucky – scientists 

will have discovered a vaccine. 

That last one’s a longshot, but it 

could happen. 

Another wild card is the 2020 

Masters Tournament, Augusta’s 

single-largest economic event. Will 

the tournament run as usual? Will 

Augusta National Golf Club host it 

spectator-free, like other tournaments 

have done? Will the club 

just call the whole thing off (which 

is something it hasn’t done since 

World War II)? 

Another unknown is the city’s 

municipal runoff election, which will 

have been decided between the time 

I write this and the time you read 

it. All three seats up for grabs are 

important to the future of downtown 

because it takes consensus for 

Augusta commissioners to shape 

public policy. 

But the most important of the 

three is the District 1 runoff; the district 

covers all of downtown and far 

east Augusta. The race between real 

estate investor Michael Thurman 

and Jordan Johnson, director of the 

nonprofit Boys and Girls Club organization, 

is one where the ultimate 

winner has an opportunity to be a 

true “champion” for downtown. 

And downtown needs a champion 

in city government. I’ve lived in 

metro Augusta for 23 years, and I can 

honestly say no District 1 representative 

during that time has fit my 

personal criteria for being a true 

advocate. 

Perhaps my bar is too high. 

Perhaps it’s because I consider 

District 1 to be the most important 

district in the city. 

District 1 is pure, concentrated 

“Augusta.” It is the true embodiment 

of the city for visitors and residents 

alike. It’s the cultural, entertainment, 

employment and economic 

epicenter of the city. 

The district’s new commissioner 

needs to be as in tune with 

its commercial property owners, 

shopkeepers and other stakeholders 

as he is with homeowners in the 

historic neighborhoods surrounding 

the central business district. 

The two constituent groups are 

more connected than one may think. 

What benefits urban neighborhoods 

benefits the central business district 

and vice-versa. The best way to 

improve downtown – and the city’s 

overall tax base – is to get more 

people living there. 

Promoting the creation of new 

and renovated market-rate housing 

units in the urban core should be 

the new commissioner’s No. 1 goal. 

Increasing residential density in an 

area where infrastructure already 

exists can help fund projects in the 

county’s other areas, which need 

parks, trails, better streets and a host 

of other public services. 

Regardless of who wins the runoff, 

and regardless of the pandemic and 

the Masters Tournament, downtown 

Augusta will be A-OK in the long 

run. It has fundamentally turned a 

corner in the past couple of decades, 

from a gritty but charming place 

to grab a quick bite and a drink to a 

place where you can dine on unique 

chef-inspired entrees and catch 

first-rate shows (when there is not a 

pandemic, of course). 

Downtown still has some gritty 

areas, but most people seem fine 

with that. It makes our downtown 

look “lived in” and authentic, which 

is something visitors increasingly 

seek in their tourism experiences. 

Just keep downtown relatively 

safe and clean and it will continue to 

prosper. 

Bottom line: No short-term 

uncertainties can change the fundamentals 

of Augusta’s downtown. 

Months from now, people will still 

want to live there. People will still 

want to work there. And people will 

still want to be entertained there. 

And as everybody knows, when 

people really want something, they 

can only be slowed. They can’t be 

stopped. 


T72 Sunday, August 23, 2020

Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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