Steven Kendrick, former tax commissioner, Augusta Economic Development Authority chairman and candidate for mayor of Augusta, held a town hall at the Diamond Lakes Community Center on Monday evening and has another one scheduled Wednesday evening at the Henry Brigham Community Center.
These events come on the heels of Kendrick’s announcement on May 30 about the Regency Mall redevelopment project, called Cardinal Town Square, amid the controversy surrounding it and at the home stretch of Kendrick’s own runoff campaign against Garnett Johnson.
But Kendrick’s presentation at the town hall and the discourse that followed was less about the Regency Mall development in particular, and more about developing south Augusta in general.
MORE: Kendrick addresses developing south Augusta, Regency Mall project at town hall meeting
“When you’re doing basic economic development, it requires people,” said Kendrick before the audience Monday. “Businesses follow people.”
Kendrick was talking about why apartments are part of the Cardinal Town Square development, and why market rate housing is as necessary for economic development. As an example of how this would be applied to south Augusta and Regency Mall, he mentioned the 118,000-square-foot Kroger in the works at the intersection of Jimmie Dyess Parkway and Harper Franklin Avenue, saying that one reason Kroger chose to build a new location in that area is because “that corridor is booming.”
“You put 2,000 people there and probably some more, all of a sudden you’ve changed the dynamic of an area,” Kendrick said.
He then went on mention talks with Henry Scheer, owner of Tbonz Steakhouse of Augusta, and Cassandra Brinson of Café 209, about bringing locations to south Augusta.
Robert Buchwitz, chairman of both the Hephzibah City Commission and the governing board of the Georgia School of Innovation and the Classics, expressed his commitment alongside Kendrick to the Cardinal Town Square development for the sake of placing the Hephzibah charter school there.
Besides Buchwitz, Augusta commissioners Ben Hasan and Brandon Garrett, Richmond County Board of Education member Wayne Frazier and Georgia Senator Harold V. Jones all attended to the town hall meeting and spoke briefly to express their support for Kendrick.
“If you’re just running around and talking, saying we’re going to do this and that, that’s never going to work and that’s why I was never there,” said Jones about why he’s vouching for Kendrick and Kendrick’s involvement in redeveloping Regency Mall. “He has an understanding of the real problems that exist, but we have to be proactive to actually solve it. And when you hear somebody talking about planned communities, that means somebody actually has a true point.”
MORE: Two proposed subdivisions in south Augusta back on the agenda for Planning Commission
Kendrick noted that he’d seen “pretty pictures before,” but that the renderings and plans for Cardinal Town Square were put together by Cranston Engineers and the architects Booker and Associates, hired by Regency Mall owners—and, Kendrick also noted, the developers of the project—Cardinale Management Group, and actually submitted to Planning and Zoning.
“If planning approves, the next step is in the owners’ hand as to what to do,” Kendrick said.
He also said that even if he’s not elected mayor, he is “still working on this project” because “this is what Augusta needs.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
