1736 Magazine - Vision for the Future

Jeff Gorelick and Bonnie Ruben are the owners of Ruben’s Department Store, which has been on Broad Street for more than 120 years.
Downtowns across America saw
their height just prior to World
War II with bustling shoppers
frequenting department stores on
main streets, according to Margaret
Woodard, executive director for the
Augusta Downtown Development
Authority. When troops returned
home from battle, subsidies gave
them the ability to move from
downtown to the suburbs and took
away much of the street traffic to
which stores were accustomed. It
would be another 30 years before
retailers would catch on to the
trend and move stores into malls
and strip malls.
“All the retail literally left,”
Woodard said. “There really wasn’t
a living presence in downtown
Augusta with the exception of Old
Towne.”
In the 1980s, the General
Assembly in Atlanta authorized the
Downtown Development Authority
to help struggling downtown
Ruben’s Department Store has been a fixture on Broad Street in Augusta since the 1890s.
areas regain strength. For Augusta,
that meant the development of
Artist’s Row on the 1000 block of
Broad Street. Restaurants including
Nacho Mama’s and bars like Soul
Bar opened around the same time in
response to the initiative.
In recent years, Baby Boomers
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