Investment plan taking shape
Posted on Sun, Jul. 25, 2004
BY CHUCK WILLIAMS
Staff Writer
Pat McHenry has a love affair with downtown Columbus.
Big trees. Sleepy Sunday mornings.
He rides his bicycle to town on weekends, sits outside a coffee shop and watches the world pass.
"It is the urban center," said McHenry, assistant dean of Columbus State University's College of Arts and Letters. "It is a place that is not a strip mall or generic sprawl. When you stand here, you recognize this is Columbus."
It is definitely Columbus. And it is changing.
Thursday, Columbus State showed off plans for a new $30 million downtown theater and arts campus. It will bring nearly 600 additional students and faculty to downtown in the fall of 2006. Those people will join CSU music students and faculty already located in the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts. The CSU campus will stretch nearly two blocks from the RiverCenter to the river and include One Arsenal Place and a deserted cotton warehouse on Bay Avenue.
"No downtown can flourish without people," McHenry said. "This brings people -- and brings them all day."
CSU currently has 118 student beds in the Rankin. The additions will put about 250 more students living downtown.
Live, work and play
Those involved in downtown revitalization, a concerted public-private effort that has been evolving for two decades, say the arts campus is critical to the growing momentum.
"It's another major step in the continued revitalization of downtown," said Mat Swift, president of the W.C. Bradley Company's Real Estate Division. "We are where we are today because of incremental successes -- the Riverwalk, the Springer, the Rankin and the RiverCenter. This could be one of the biggest with widespread impact on artistic, education and tourism components."
The campus would be a component in an arts district that includes the Springer Opera House and the RiverCenter.
Swift envisions a 24-hour "live-work-and-play environment" downtown, and the components are beginning to come together:
• Residential: In addition to the CSU students, at least 50 loft apartments have been added in the last two years.
And there are more planned. W.C. Bradley has purchased the Eagle & Phenix Mill and is planning to put lofts overlooking the Chattahoochee.
• Entertainment: The 1000 block of Broadway has become a mini entertainment district.
• Business: Downtown is still the business center. The addition five years ago of the TSYS campus and its nearly 2,100 employees has given the northern end of downtown a major employment anchor. W.C. Bradley opened the Synovus Centre adjacent to the River Club in May. The building houses Synovus Financial Corp. executives and two large law firms, both relocated from downtown locations.
• Tourism: There are a number of tourist attractions including the Coca-Cola Space Science Center and the expanded Columbus Convention & Trade Center, which the city has pumped about $25 million into in hopes of getting more and larger conventions.
The biggest tourism carrot is still to come. Business and civic leaders are counting on the Chattahoochee whitewater project to further energize downtown.
• Retail: The retail landscape is beginning to change. Two weeks ago Kravtin's, a downtown clothing store for 83 years, announced plans to close. The owners sold their two buildings in the 1000 block to a local investor group. Plans for the buildings have not been announced.
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Contact Erin Simpson at (706) 571-8586 or esimpson@ledger-enquirer.com