Some call him the modern Godfather of the Augusta Canal, and others refer to him as the quiet force behind the downtown renaissance. No matter what he is called, Dayton Sherrouse, current executive director of the Augusta Canal Authority, has spent nearly 50 years serving the citizens of Augusta.
Tom Robertson of Cranston Engineering and a former Augusta Canal Authority member has worked with Sherrouse on projects from Riverwalk to the Augusta Canal for well over 30 years.
“Dayton is a man of many talents, from getting down in the wheel pit and working with the laborers on repairing the water turbines and getting grease under his fingernails all the way up to testifying before Congress and everything in between,” Robertson said.
When Sherrouse came to Augusta in 1968, he was hired to work for the Richmond County Planning Commission and later served as the county administrator, both jobs that had him working basically on the outskirts of what was town.
“Back in those days, there were no malls, just small shopping centers. Everything was centered downtown,” Sherrouse said.
Years later, in 1984, Sherrouse joined Augusta Tomorrow and, by that time, the tables had turned. Sherrouse’s work had helped bring enormous growth to the suburbs, but the city proper had degraded into almost a no man’s land.
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The once opulent movie theaters on Broad Street had caved to the suburban multiplexes and showed mainly soft-core porn films. Strip clubs dotted the downtown landscape, and the buildings that once housed retail shops were boarded up, their facades sagged from neglect.
There were no parking issues downtown because hardly anyone ever went there.
When the idea of Riverwalk was floated, Sherrouse said he was all ears; however, there was a problem. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controlled the levee that spans the entire downtown riverfront, and the Corps was not keen on breaching the levee to allow the city to have a park.
Sherrouse successfully led a delegation to lobby Congress to allow the cut-throughs at 8th Street and 10th Street. Then-Augusta Mayor Charles DeVaney was in charge of selling the idea to the public while Sherrouse went about behind the scenes making the mile long park a reality.
In 1989, an act was passed creating the Augusta Canal Authority, but the effects of the act were slow going at first. There was no budget to hire a staff, so Sherrouse made room in the Augusta Tomorrow office to accommodate the Authority, and, in 1998, Sherrouse took on the job as executive director.
In a short time, Sherrouse found himself in charge of yet another dump.
By the early 1990s, the land around the canal had for decades been an unofficial city landfill. Piles of old roofing shingles, mounds of tires and other assorted trash filled the area that was populated primarily by homeless people and squatters who lived in tin shacks.
Sherrouse recalls that he received phone calls almost weekly about stolen cars being dumped into the waterway.
“There was a lot of contamination down there, but it had potential. I could see it one day becoming Augusta’s version of Central Park,” Sherrouse said.
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Fast forward to today, and the grass along the banks of the canal and towpath is meticulously tended, miles of hiking trails snake throughout the forests and over wooden footbridges, Petersburg Boats ply the canal waters and comfort stations are available for public use.
Almost all of the funding for the upgrades made to the area have come in the form of grants and electricity generation. Not one dime has come from the city’s operating budget.
The Augusta Canal Authority does normally receive SPLOST funding and Sherrouse says that money is always used as matching funding for the grants the Authority receives.
In fact, this is the first year that the Augusta Canal Heritage Area was not included in SPLOST funding, but Sherrouse waves that off as yet another challenge.
Margaret Woodard, director of the Downtown Development Authority, says she is not looking forward to the day Sherrouse finally decides to retire.
“He is a legend in what he has accomplished. He’s a quiet leader who doesn’t ever want credit, he just wants to get things done. And he truly loves Augusta,” Woodard said.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
