Planning/having a business east of Milledge Road or south of Gordon Hwy is like a journey of a fly on the tail of a galloping horse.
In an Augusta Press guest column on March 6, Penelope Ballas-Stewart made an excellent argument against the current TIA project being considered for Broad Street.
You see, Mrs. Ballas Stewart is an heir to Luigi’s. That gives her standing in the case. The improvement project adds greenspace and bike paths, yadi, yadi, yada. Oh, by the way, it reduces parking. Dramatically for Luigi’s, from 56 spaces currently to 20 in the future.
I wish downtown businesses the best, I really do. But her letter points out a dichotomy of philosophy (if one exists) in Richmond County planning.
Broad Street revitalizations
Believe it or not, Broad Street used to be much broader – one of the widest streets in America. “Chronicle” archives show that at one time it was 300 feet across. That is a football field. It was so wide that in the early 1900s, a fair called Merry Makers Week set up their carnival grounds in the middle of the street between Sixth and 10th.
Broad Street has been “revitalized” so many times in my lifetime, I can’t count. Each time, in modern history, it seems to be to the detriment of Broad Street businesses. Either disruption to access or parking disappearing, each effort hurts those trying to thrive and serve Augustans and visitors.
If I understand from Mrs. Ballas-Stewart’s letter, this redo is for greenspace and bicycle paths. There was a time when a rustic green space called Oglethorpe Park existed. On the banks of the Savannah, there were raw walking paths where nature could be experienced in it’s most natural setting. Oh, but we needed a Riverwalk, so all of that was bulldozed for a brick levee walkway we do not maintain or police.
To the point! The city of Augusta, or the leadership, or the government seems to lack any semblance of a plan for our community. The powers that be fight like crazy for certain things such as the downtown location of the James Brown Auditorium, then plan projects that strip downtown businesses of vital parking.
Through the years, I have seen road project after road project designed to speed the exit of downtown employees (primarily the medical district) directed towards West Augusta or Evans homes. We even widened Wrightsboro Road to allow quicker access to Grovetown to the point the bottleneck is now in Columbia County.
When Fort Gordon was named the site for Cyber Security HQ, I thought for sure the southern Gate 5 at Tobacco Road would be reopened and more heavily used, bringing an explosion of housing starts to south Richmond County. Instead, that never happened, and Gate 1 with Jimmy Dyess Pkwy access exploded, and all of the commerce from population growth squeezed to the north and northwest.
Make no mistake I have no grudge against Columbia County nor her inhabitants, many of whom were raised in Richmond County. I knew many of them when they were barefoot and had dirt rings around the neck from summer play in the heat. I have long maintained that Columbia County’s growth was not from their government’s successful planning but rather Richmond County’s lack of planning. “And the rest is the tail of the cow.” I am sure there is some pithy saying that would fit better, but this is the best I could conjure.
So, I ask, what does Augusta want to be when she grows up? Does she want downtown to be a destination? A host to premier medical education? A greenspace, known for Ironman competitions, a bike riding mecca? Time was there were long-term plans that were followed, yet we seem to be like a rudderless ship drifting this way than that on the latest whim or power shift. Efforts to change seem not necessarily to be efforts to improve.
Failure to plan is planning to fail. My heart goes out to the Ballas Family, to the Fulcher’s of T’s restaurant and many others who have quietly folded their tent and packed it in. Kudos to those so successful like the Whytes who have split or hedged between both counties.
