Based on new businesses and housing units, downtown Augusta is having a banner year. But blight and crime remain concerns.
That was the takeaway from a presentation by Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Margaret Woodard last week.
“We did have another record-breaking year in downtown Augusta,” said Woodard, who has led the downtown authority since 2005.
In 2022 the DDA saw a net gain of 47 new businesses and 11 expansions, Woodard said. The DDA’s footprint runs from Olde Town and the medical district to Milledge Road.
Over 36% of the new businesses were minority or women-owned, she said.
New apartment units are opening so fast that Woodard said her two-week-old PowerPoint presentation was already outdated.
Developers broke ground on 245 new units at King Mill that day. Completion of the Row, loft apartments converted from an old train warehouse, added 170 market-rate apartments in the last year.
Another 421 units went under construction in the last year, she said. Completion of units for the Atticus, the James, the Marion and Lamar buildings and a complex on upper Broad Street is expected to add more than 1,100 units as they open over the next couple of years, she said.
The DDA secured a $2.35 million grant through Sen. Raphael Warnock’s office that it’s using to convert the former chamber building in the 600 block of Broad Street to a micro-enterprise center.
Another $1.176 million grant will fund a new downtown connector running from the Augusta Common across James Brown Boulevard (Ninth Street) and along Jones Street to the Augusta Convention Center.
“During the pandemic, all these businesses opened up on the Ninth Street corridor,” Woodard said. “You had Bike, Bike Baby, Laziza Mediterranean and Vances’s Bakery Bar and you had Draft Society and you had Taste.”
Georgia Power’s annual $50,000 grants continue to fund the facade renovations that benefited nine businesses over the last year, she said.
Blight remains a problem and the authority has identified 13 buildings on the Broad Street corridor that are blighted, she said.
Response to the Augusta City Enterprises, or ACE, program has been very positive, she said. The maintenance team picks up trash, pressure-washes sidewalks and performs emergency repair services.
Since July 2022 the team has power-washed 17,779 block faces, disposed of 817 bags of trash and spent 610 hours power-wahsing and 759 hours on special projects, she said.
Commissioner Sean Frantom said the DDA had a “shining year” for which Woodard was heavily responsible. He asked when the DDA-sponsored gateway arches will installed around the Riverwalk. Woodard said the DDA hoped to have them in by the end of 2023.
Talking with businesses, Woodard said the biggest recent concern was safety, especially after outbreaks of violence July 4 and the recent shooting of a police officer on Ellis Street.
