College Hill Corridor_final_JWalden Cut

8/4/2019 College Hill Corridor_final_JWalden Cut

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Intown Influencers

Chris Horne

By developing properties, creating a pedestrian friendly path, attracting new businessesand engaging students and Intown neighborhoods with exciting events, the College Hill

Corridor Commission (CHCC), a public-private partnership between Mercer Universityand the City of Macon, is re-inventing the stretch between the campus and downtown as adestination for recreation, entertainment and dining. Funded by several sources – mostrecently receiving a $250,000 planning grant from the John S. and James L. KnightFoundation for the design of a master plan for the Corridor – the CHCC has entered justits second year. With the excitement of its visionaries at its helm, the CHCC and hasalready made progress in making more out of Macon for residents and students.

Seeing the Potential

Beverly Blake

Program Director for Columbus, Macon and Milledgeville, John S. and James L.Knight Foundation

Former CHCC member

On location in Bealle’s Hill neighborhood

The Fickling Company building isn’t the biggest in the world. It isn’t even a skyscraper.But standing at its large, bay windows overlooking downtown Macon is like a quick fixof hope. For some reason, from there, the way things could be are self-apparent.

Beverly Blake doesn’t loom long, but she admits that the view is nice. Then she flashesher 100-kilowatt smile and starts talking about the amazing work the John S. and James

L. Knight Foundation enables in 26 communities through their funding.

Asked about herself, she demurs. “No one wants to know about me.” A moment later,unguarded, she admits that Happy, Texas is her favorite movie. Better still, “I grew upreading Mad Magazine and Kurt Vonnegut.” Finally, she eases into the professional biography.

First with the Trust Company and then Wachovia, Blake worked with trusts for 26 yearsin Atlanta, thinking of places like Macon the way people in Atlanta tend to think of places like Macon: small, slow, boring.

Then she worked with Mercer through Wachovia, spending more and more time inMacon. When she took this position, which oversees grants and programs in Macon,Columbus and Milledgeville, she was hit with this city’s full charm.

“I couldn’t believe the beauty of the place, the history – and it sits in a perfect place onthe planet,” Blake says. “It is unique because of its architecture and its historic housingstock. It just doesn’t exist anywhere else.”



This unique place now has a unique organization that she’s helped bring into existence:the College Hill Corridor Commission. Getting permission to waive a foundation ruleagainst sitting on the board of any organization that they give grants to, Blake helpednavigate the CHCC through its early days. Once it was standing solid on both feet, sheresigned, but remains excited about its potential.

“The last thing I want would be to influence their decisions in any way. I want them tofeel the freedom to come up with the big ideas.”

To that end, the Knight Foundation awarded the CHCC a $250,000 planning grant to findan innovative firm for the corridor’s Master Plan design. Once complete, the CHCC willgo back hoping for additional funding to continue their plans, among which is building acoalition of businesses and organizations tied to the area.

She hopes this concerted effort to draw out the specific qualities of this small corridor will encourage others to begin thinking regionally in the same sense. In other words, to

package everything Central Georgia offers through Macon, Warner Robins andMilledgeville instead of thinking of them as irreconcilably separate. She sees success incohesiveness.

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Residency First

Kevin Dubose

Director, Economic and Community Development, The City of Macon

CHCC Co-Chair, The City of Macon

On location at Ingleside Village Pizza at Montpelier in Mercer Commons

When a delegation of Macon movers and shakers visited Knoxville, Tennessee, towitness, prod and question the town’s renaissance, CHCC co-chair Kevin Dubose stoodon familiar ground. He spent five years working on the downtown residential incentive program in Knoxville’s Community Development Division. Now, as the director of Macon’s Economic and Community Development (ECD), he was back, brushing up on a program whose success he’d like to duplicate in downtown Macon.



“They’d added about 500 units when I was there,” he says, talking about the number of residences Knoxville’s program opened up and filled. “And they’ve added about 500more since I left. When we started, people literally laughed at us because they didn’tthink there was any market at all, that no one would want to live downtown. Now, they’resaying it was too successful, that developers are making too much money.”

Half of that sounds very familiar in Macon – the battle between the naysayers and itslatent potential. Preaching “build up residency first,” Dubose’s job with the ECD requireshis attention citywide, but in his capacity with the CHCC, he’s able to focus hisexperience on growing the number of people living in and around downtown. With ahealthy city center, all of Macon prospers.

“We have over 1,000,000 vacant square feet in downtown Macon, above the storefronts,”he says with an assurance that shatters uncertainty about its feasibility. “If we stopchasing hotels and museums and retail outlets, we can fill those (buildings) with hip,young people.”

Entering his fourth year in Macon, Dubose’s faith in Macon is a combination of goodtiming and excellent vision.

During his tenure in Atlanta’s Coordinated Planning offices, he often had meetings here.“I always loved Macon,” he says. Dubose saw – and still sees – “all that could be.”

Leaving Tennessee this time, Dubose had learned something new. “As progressive as thecore group in Knoxville is, I don’t think they’re as progressive as the group in Macon. Ireally think we’re preparing to experience an explosion in five years.”

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Little Big Town

Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Assistant Professor, Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University

CHCC Co-Chair, representing Mercer University

On location with her family at their Intown home



Her day begins with her two young children, Eliot and Dean and everything it takes justto get them out the door is her early morning. Then Sarah Gerwig-Moore goes to her day job: Mercer Law and Public Service professor. At 3 p.m., she’s hearing pleas for billboards and daycare centers as a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission. The

moment she gets home, Gerwig-Moore starts basting a turkey for an evening dinner withfriends as she meets with her College Hill Corridor Commission cohorts, Kevin Duboseand Josh Rogers. Just after 9 p.m., the last of the guests leave, and she’s finally alonewith her children, her husband, Jesse and their pets in their 120-year-old Rembert Avenuehome.

QUOTE ON WHY THEY’VE CHOSEN TO LIVE AND RAISE FAMILY INTOWN.

Two years ago, before the PNZ, before the CHCC, she was just settling in at Mercer,transitioning from her work in Atlanta as a public defender and adjunct law professor. Now she was defining a young Law and Public Service program. This – at the college

where she enrolled in an English program as a 16-year-old early graduate from CentralHigh – had pulled her away from the bright lights, big city.

Initially, a career in international human rights defense was her goal, even taking her toSouth Africa. At Emory University’s Candler School, she matched her interest in social justice and religion with her dislike of law school. “I knew I wanted to be a lawyer but Ihated law school.” And so she left with a Masters of Theology and a law degree. Thenthe globetrotting and a trip to San Francisco, where she thought she’d found everything inthis progressive city that she could ever want. But during a speech on the failings of thelegal system in Alabama and Georgia to protect indigents she realized, begrudgingly, thather place was in the South.

“Atlanta was the compromise,” she says.

Her roles at Mercer, on the CHCC and in the community are hard to separate from theother. Gerwig-Moore does what she does because she enjoys it, because it needs to bedone and because it brings Macon one step closer to reaching the potential that hasalways been present. Her titles and responsibilities – if anything – simply give her anexcuse to throw herself full force into the things she loves doing most.

“It isn’t that anyone said I had to do this, but it works out well for me. I’m able to havemore impact here.”

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The Creative Classman

Josh Rogers

Director, College Hill Corridor Commission

On location at Mercer University

The creative class – the term was popularized by sociologist Richard Florida, who hashelped several cities realize the economic and cultural potential that is latent in the groupsof “knowledge workers” whose jobs place high value upon intellect and creativity.

Having previously worked with NewTown Macon to bring Mercer students downtownvia the trolley, Josh Rogers soon found himself volunteering with them. That eventually

led to a full-time job.

“I always liked the old buildings in downtown,” he says, explaining his passion for theunique and historic architecture in Macon.

On a Rotary scholarship, Rogers completed a master’s degree in historic preservation atUniversity of York in England and began looking for a job. The people at HistoricColumbia (South Carolina) laid an offer on the table, and he was almost certainly aboutto accept it when he found himself back in Macon, driving through on the way home toWaycross. ECD Director Kevin Dubose took him to lunch at the Market City Café.

“He brought Sarah [Gerwig-Moore], and they’d just started putting together the CollegeHill Corridor Commission. They said they had no money, but to give them two days tofigure it out,” he recalls.

Once they did, Rogers says, “It was an easy sell.” As CHCC director, he has theopportunity to not only save the old buildings he loves so much, but to help breathe newlife into them. That passion is evident in everything, from the fast re-population of the



buildings in Mercer Village to the campus bicycle loan program that encourages studentsto do as he does and pedal their way around town.

“They [Dubose and Gerwig-Moore] made me believe this project could and wouldsucceed, and that this could be the turning point for Macon,” Rogers says. “I really

believe that it will because we have all the right people at the table.”

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Connecting the Campus

Bill Underwood

President, Mercer University

On location at Jittery Joe’s coffee shop site in Mercer Commons

The 18th President of Mercer University is a giant man, tall and broad-shouldered. Heswings around the side of his large polished wood desk and sits down, making small talk about the historic Kirby Godsey Administration Building, named for his celebrated predecessor. This is the oldest building on campus, and everything about it seemsmajestic.

He says he played hard to get when Mercer came calling. A lawyer turned professor turned interim president of Baylor University, Underwood finally relented, but came acouple days earlier than his scheduled visit with the university. He rented a car, wanderedaround and was smitten with the city’s potential – not just in its historic architecture, butalso in the people he met, especially the young ones.

“This just looked to me like a community that was poised to really take off,” he recalls.“And I feel that way even more so since I’ve been here.”

When a group of Mercer undergrads presented their ideas to better connect the campuswith downtown – itself a product of a class project – President Underwood’s wheelsstarted turning. The general idea was something he’d already had, but their specific



points were almost revolutionary. He took them to then-Mayor C. Jack Ellis, and the twoleaders started the College Hill Corridor Commission on the spot.

He appointed Sarah Gerwig-Moore – “She is the sort of person I knew we wanted toattract, so I wanted her on the commission.” – and former Mayor Ellis appointed Kevin

Dubose – “I don’t think he could have made a better choice than Kevin.” His praise for Mercer grad and current CHCC director Josh Rogers is similar.

Underwood says, “I think one of the great opportunities I have is to find ways toempower these really bright and creative young people, let them see if they canaccomplish some things that could make Macon more special than it already is.”

It’s a unique approach in a city seemingly set in its ways, but with the CHCC, that’sexactly what he has done. He’s empowered them to move this project – and this city andhis university – forward.

Citing the impressive work the group has done with the “social dimension” of their plans – the Screen on the Green, the Second Sunday Gospel Brunch, Mercer Bike Week – Underwood says, “That’s why people will want to live here. Making this area moreattractive makes it easier for me to bring in the most talented students, faculty and staff.”

He says it all when he says, “As Macon goes, so goes Mercer.”

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