The audience is expected to be packed tonight when the Winder City Council at a called meeting votes on whether to accept a low-interest federal loan for $500,000 to help restore downtown’s century-old Granite Hotel.
Members of the Barrow Preservation Society Inc. are urging supporters of historic preservation and downtown revitalization to turn out for the 5:30 p.m. Aug. 19 meeting at the Winder Community Center.
Early Tuesday, council sources told the Barrow Journal that they expected the measure to fail. But with a new wave of public pressure, including numerous phone calls to council members, all bets about the outcome of the vote were off by Tuesday night.
“We have an opportunity to save the most historic building on the iconic intersection defining the early years of Winder and Barrow County,” said Helen Person, spokesperson for the preservation group that only weeks ago launched a “Save the Granite Hotel” fundraising campaign.
“We need as many people as possible to pack the Winder Community Center with signs and other symbols of support for the Granite Hotel. Let the city council know you care.”
THE NEW LOAN
The council’s problem with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loan is not the loan itself — it’s what the loan would not cover. The federal proceeds would pay only 42 percent of each project invoice and the city would have to cover the other 58 percent.
The preliminary cost estimate to stabilize and restore the building’s exterior and to finish the interior of the first of two floors is $1.2 million. That means the city would have to come up with at least $729,000 to cover architectural and construction costs over the next 12 months, when all of the federal loan proceeds must be spent.
For more on this story, see the August 18 edition of the Barrow Journal or click here to read the full story online when you subscribe to our new e-edition.
Given the urgent and pressing need for clearly diminishing revenue and thrift in spending at all levels of government, this is the last straw!
And the added bonus would be the saving of a wonderful old building.
It amazes me at how much Barrow wants to hang onto the past and yet they want to destroy what represents the past.
That old building tear it down ..... if you are "new arrivals" leave so we can go back to the way it was!
You should be looking to the future and saving what represented the past not the other way around.
I see the city purchased this property in 2004 and we're now talking about 6 years that the city has let the building further deteriorate.
Had they done something back then, when we weren't in a recession and everything would've been much cheaper, I would've been all for restoring it.
Anonymous, if you want the building to be restored, then you cough up the money it will take to restore it.
Any good development needs an anchor. The City has to send a signal to other property owners that it's time to step up to the plate and get their buildings in shape. Several viable business opportunities have expressed an interest in the hotel once it's completed: a couple of restaurants, a hotel chain, and independent retail, but it will be a couple of years before it is ready for them to move.
Grant makers need to see community involvement and support from the local government before they are willing to give money to a project. The City of Winder has made such a mess of The Granite Hotel's redevelopment since they bought it. The first thing they should have done was spend $40,000 to re-roof it so it wouldn't be pouring water every time it rains. The second thing they should have done was hire a project manager to oversee the work the developer was doing who, basically, ran off with over a quarter million dollars. The City Administrator is supposed to be handling the operations of the City, not building projects; that isn't his/her area of expertise.
The Winder City Council is seeing the fruit of their inaction. You can't expect someone else to come to town and do what you aren't willing to do yourself with your own building.
Parking is fixable. The traffic is being worked on and a bypass route should be ready by the time the hotel is back online.
We can do nothing and watch the town completely fold up OR
We can step up to the plate, get involved, pay attention to what our elected officials are doing and hold them accountable.
Then we'll see our town get back on track.
It'll never be the same as it was, but it will be equally as vibrant and active.
This is why Winder is in such rough shape. People raise history of questionable value so high above viability that we spend years bickering over how to pay for it, and none considering whether or not it's worth the trouble.
All the money sunk in to this rotting old building could have been spent revitalizing downtown and converting the enormous traffic Winder gets in to stable revenue.
Instead, we get a rotting money pit. Youth is leaving, investment is going elsewhere, the city is broke, and you still want to drop over half a million dollars on fixing up a building no one has a reason to move in to. What do you imagine will happen when it's fixed up? If you don't already have investors lined up and committed to fill the space, it's a bad investment.
If this were long ago, when the economy was good and the building was in better condition, it would be realistic. Hard choices need to be made now if Winder is to survive.
In fact, I've been surprised at how good the houses still look. You'd expect that to give out quick once the recession hit, but people seem to be keeping things tidy.
That looks like a nice, happy town. Somehow, there is a perspective that makes Winder look presentable.
Why would we spend all this money on a single building? How much could have been done with that money to make the base of this skyline an essential stop right in between Athens and Atlanta?
green space for the revitilazation of the downtown
area( I hope!). The land that the Granite Hotel is on
would make a great place for an intown park
with benches and a fountain as to where patrons of
the downtown area could stop and and take a break,
read a paper,and spend more time and money enjoying our
little town. Such a park could do nothing but add Charm to Winder. Thank you.