1736 Magazine - Vision for the Future

By capturing and studying the
movement of residents’ cellphones,
Woodard said, interesting patterns
emerged showing visitors’ habits.
Some traits didn’t change despite
the pandemic. Hourly visits to
downtown still generally peaked
at mealtimes, and daily visits
peaked on weekends, according to
NextSite. Most visitors still come
from a 30-mile radius.
There were about 1 million fewer
visits to downtown in 2020 than
2019. But the average number of
visits didn’t change much. In 2019,
a customer would visit downtown
4.49 times a year. During the
pandemic, despite a sharp drop in
the number of visits between mid-
March and mid-May, a customer
averaged 4.07 visits, the NextSite
report said.
The number of visitors expectedly
went down. While about 727,600
people came downtown in 2019,
only about 558,100 did last year.
There also weren’t the traditional
spikes in visitor numbers, seen
typically around St. Patrick’s Day,
the Fourth of July, Christmas, and
in the fall when the city plays host
to its Ironman competition and the
Arts in the Heart and Westobou
festivals.
“The traffic is still down, but
not nearly as down as it was at
the beginning of the pandemic,”
Woodard said. “People are returning
downtown but not just at
capacity.”
Another interesting aberration,
Woodard said: In the first few
monthly reports during the pandemic,
downtown would see visitor
spikes on Tuesdays, “because
people were just tired of being at
home,” she said. “They’d be sheltered
in place, and they picked up
curbside.”
Curbside service was one of the
tweaks to city ordinances designed
to help keep businesses running.
Other changes allowed more seating
for customers on sidewalks.
More recently, the Augusta Com-
The new Hyatt House Hotel in downtown Augusta. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE]
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