The final Livable Cities Initiative plan for central Winder that was presented Tuesday night to the city council will cost more than $50 million in public funding and will take more than 25 years to fully implement.
That begs the question: Can the improvements be made quickly enough to save downtown?
The chairman of the Winder Downtown Development Authority told the Barrow Journal that downtown businesses and restaurants have lost 35-45 percent of their sales from the double whammy of the drawn-out recession and last April’s relocation of the county courts from the historic courthouse on North Broad Street to the new criminal justice center off Hwy. 211.
And there is a third potential blow on the horizon.
The dean of Lanier Technical College’s Winder campus told the newspaper she wants to move the college’s credit programs, which draw hundreds of students downtown each week, out of the downtown facility to a new campus off GA-316 that would be jointly developed with Barrow County Schools for its proposed career academy.
Winder’s city government in 2008 completed the first phase of the streetscape project, which was to build a parking lot adjacent to the city’s gazebo at the corner of North Broad and East Candler Street. Across the street are some of the downtown businesses that benefited from the $25,000 facade improvement program in 2009. Photo by Jessica Brown
Saving downtown Winder: Can the changes happen fast enough?
That area of GA-316 south of downtown Winder is becoming a hot spot for economic development and may compete with downtown for new investment dollars.
Nearly all of the major new economic development in Barrow County outside of Braselton in the past year has taken place in the vicinity of the future Hwy. 81 interchange on GA-316.
The Barrow Crossing retail center and a McDonald’s restaurant opened there in 2009. Across the highway, Athens Regional First Care has opened, and a new Chick-fil-A restaurant is scheduled to open soon.
In fact, in a briefing to local officials three months ago, regional real estate prognosticator Frank Norton Jr. said that area in the coming years would develop on the scale of a city with a mix of retail, office and even residential development.
While the economic downturn has dashed – or at least delayed – some of Norton’s earlier forecasts for North Georgia, even one of his local competitors, Wayne Bartlett of Maynard & Bartlett Realty Group, agrees with the forecasted development around the Hwy. 81 interchange on GA-316.
“I’ve been saying for years that that is going to be the new Winder,” Bartlett said. “That will be where you will go to the movies, shopping, to eat. I think everything will happen in that location.”
The demographics within a five-mile radius of that interchange include Dacula in Gwinnett County and are better than for the area around Winder’s downtown, Bartlett said.
“There are more people there than in downtown Winder. The income is higher there. There is no doubt that that is going to be the new shopping district of the county. It already is that.”
Bartlett said he advocates major changes to downtown Winder.
“Look at how many businesses have closed in downtown. It’s alarming. Businesses come and open for six months and then close.”
He said the downtown district is just not inviting.
“You don’t feel like you want to get out of your car and stay. You park, run into a business, and leave,” Bartlett said. “They’ve got to make drastic changes to downtown Winder.”
For more on this story, see the March 10 edition of the Barrow Journal.
Nearly all of the major new economic development in Barrow County outside of Braselton in the past year has taken place in the vicinity of the future Hwy. 81 interchange on GA-316.
The Barrow Crossing retail center and a McDonald’s restaurant opened there in 2009. Across the highway, Athens Regional First Care has opened, and a new Chick-fil-A restaurant is scheduled to open soon.
In fact, in a briefing to local officials three months ago, regional real estate prognosticator Frank Norton Jr. said that area in the coming years would develop on the scale of a city with a mix of retail, office and even residential development.
When Winder city officials decided to purchase the old granite hotel at 52 North Broad Street, they planned to raze it for a parking lot. Now Winder officials, spurred on by local and state preservationists, want to salvage the state’s oldest standing, locally quarried granite structure. Photo by Jessica Brown
“I’ve been saying for years that that is going to be the new Winder,” Bartlett said. “That will be where you will go to the movies, shopping, to eat. I think everything will happen in that location.”
The demographics within a five-mile radius of that interchange include Dacula in Gwinnett County and are better than for the area around Winder’s downtown, Bartlett said.
“There are more people there than in downtown Winder. The income is higher there. There is no doubt that that is going to be the new shopping district of the county. It already is that.”
Bartlett said he advocates major changes to downtown Winder.
“Look at how many businesses have closed in downtown. It’s alarming. Businesses come and open for six months and then close.”
He said the downtown district is just not inviting.
“You don’t feel like you want to get out of your car and stay. You park, run into a business, and leave,” Bartlett said. “They’ve got to make drastic changes to downtown Winder.”
For more on this story, see the March 10 edition of the Barrow Journal.
I think the only thing that could save it is turning it into a tourist destination. There's just no reason for any other kind of business to move there rather than any of the large cities in the vicinity.
Winder has become a bedroom community, and I don't think anything will change that short of a change of purpose.