Tuesday’s City Talk looked at the new Embassy Suites on West Oglethorpe Avenue and the relatively quick pace of development in the general neighborhood.
The blocks around the Embassy Suites are clearly now part of “downtown,” however we define it. The visitors in the hotels and the SCAD students in the dorms have become critical to the downtown economy.
At the same time, sites west of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard — the Visitor Information Center, Georgia State Railroad Museum, Savannah Children’s Museum and SCAD Museum of Art — have become destinations for people staying on the east side of MLK.
As the economy improves, we are going to see similar development pressures in other areas adjacent to the downtown core.
I have noted that this inevitable expansion is a trend worth watching, but which areas will actually see significant development in the relatively near future? And which won’t?
I’m using the term “development” pretty broadly here to mean anything from infill housing to hotels, from institutional uses to large retailers.
Obviously, there needs to be sufficient demand and available capital before development can even be considered.
But future development radiating from the Historic District will also rely on other factors. Three of the most important of those factors seem to be proximity, ease of access and the availability of underutilized properties.
By those measures, the neighborhood south of Oglethorpe Avenue between MLK and Boundary Street was ripe for the kind of development that we’ve seen over the past decade.
Perhaps there are areas near the core of the city that are primed and ready for the same sort of investment, but it’s hard to see any obvious ones.
To a casual passerby, the Bull Street corridor between Park Avenue and 33rd Street might look like a prime target for development.
Those blocks along Bull certainly have proximity and easy access to thriving sections of downtown.
Last month, I wrote about a significant new development on the vacant lot at the corner of Bull Street and Park Avenue, but I don’t know if we’ll see that effort replicated anytime soon. There are plenty of underutilized properties farther south on Bull, but few are available for development.
The old Sears building at Bull and Henry streets has been for sale in recent years, but the price has been too high to entice investors.
Immediately south of the old Sears, a BellSouth building and its gated parking lot take up a city block. That building is obviously in use, but its forbidding architecture is antithetical to vibrant urban life.
As I have discussed before, that portion of the Bull Street corridor also has numerous surface level parking lots, mostly owned by churches. Those properties are clearly underutilized, but the landowners have no incentive to convert them to uses that could benefit neighborhood life.
The Montgomery Street corridor between Gaston Street and Victory Drive would also seem like prime territory for an extension of downtown development patterns.
That stretch of road has many underutilized properties, including a significant number of vacant lots and buildings.
But access to Montgomery Street is problematic.
Because the street is one-way northbound between Liberty and Broughton streets, drivers and cyclists rarely use Montgomery as a main thoroughfare for leaving the Historic District.
The existing traffic patterns have undoubtedly had a profound impact on commerce and property values on Montgomery Street.
If the I-16 flyover is eventually removed, we would almost certainly see two-way traffic again on the entire length of Montgomery Street. From day one, businesses would be much more accessible and adjacent commercial property would be more valuable.
Questions about demand, proximity, access and land availability will obviously be of critical importance for various other downtown expansion areas.
Sure, Savannah River Landing is close to downtown, but it’s unclear how much demand there is for the property at the moment. The site has easy pedestrian access from River Street, but access from all other directions is problematic, at least for now.
Some developers are still expecting that there will eventually be demand on Hutchinson Island for fairly intense residential and commercial development, but the limited access to the island is a problem that isn’t going away.
The future shape of downtown Savannah will primarily be determined by private investors and private sector demand, but public policy will still play a significant role.
Public policy might have little or no impact on demand, proximity and the availability of property, but good planning can have a huge impact on vehicular and pedestrian access.
With a few good decisions, we could set the stage for considerable new investment, even in areas that many of us have written off.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.