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

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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. 30 | 1736magazine.com
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. Story by DAMON CLINE | Photos by MICHAEL HOLAHAN 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 1736magazine.com | 31
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Page 6 and 7: ON THE STREET CONSUMER SPENDING IS
Page 8 and 9: COVER STORY Shelley Craft, owner of
Page 10: Whiskey Bar Kitchen associates, fro
Page 13 and 14: Penelope Ballas-Stewart, who manage
Page 15 and 16: normally a breeding ground for viol
Page 17 and 18: Story by DAMON CLINE | Photos by MI
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Page 24 and 25: Nan Connell (left), widow of Georgi
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Page 34 and 35: The conference room in Balch & Bing
Page 36: TOURISM A view from the top of the
Page 39 and 40: AMPHITHEATER RIGHT: Color-coded ban
Page 41 and 42: Alex Wier, founder and chief creati
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Page 45 and 46: named executive director of Turn Ba
Page 47 and 48: Augusta Tomorrow has updated its or
Page 49 and 50: TOURISM continued from 40 was postp
Page 51 and 52: Augusta native Ashley Brown was nam
Page 54 and 55: Three houses on Metcalf Street in A
Page 56 and 57: A map produced for a Georgia Conser
Page 58: LaDonna Doleman, manager of Golden
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Page 65: An Augusta Chronicle newspaper clip
Page 68 and 69: BRIEFING By DAMON CLINE HITS & MISS
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Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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