Is downtown Winder undergoing a rebirth?

Mike Rice, chairman of the Winder Downtown Development Authority, announced Tuesday that Community & Southern Bank moved into its new Broad Street location on Monday.

The site across from the former Peoples Bank headquarters building has a new façade and has been remodeled inside to accommodate teller and lending services, as well as the office of the bank’s East Region president, Pat McGoldrick.

Rice also talked about other recent improvements by the city government on portions of East Athens Street and Park Avenue.

The city spent about $60,000 on the sidewalk, curb, landscaping, paving and infrastructure improvements. The major expense was the $40,000 to replace water and sewer pipes and to add new stormwater infrastructure under Park Avenue, said city administrator Don Toms after the meeting.

Planning Director Barry Edgar told the DDA the city is hiring a traffic engineer to look at another change on East Athens Street – either making it a one-way road or removing the parallel parking spaces on the north side of the street in order to relieve a traffic bottleneck. A city council planning committee last week agreed to move forward with the study.

The city also is in the process of improving the back part of that same block off East Athens Street, which contains city hall, the Winder Cultural Arts Center and the Lanier Tech campus. Soon, the city will improve the entire portion of South Jackson Street from East Athens to May Street, adding new sidewalk to make it more pedestrian friendly, Toms said.

Mayor Chip Thompson said the small streetscape projects should give downtown business people and local residents an idea of how much better the Broad Street business district will look once the larger streetscape project is finished. That project is scheduled to begin early next year.

Rice also said Monday that he is completing the application process for $23,000 in DDA grants to help local businesses dress up their facades. One of the grants reportedly will be used to paint the large building at the corner of East Winder Street directly across from the Winder Community Center.

City Councilman Bob Dixon, who is the council’s liaison to the DDA, brought to the table an opportunity for Winder to obtain funding through a “Growing Forward” campaign that is trying to breathe life back into downtowns across Georgia.

Dixon, saying he is “fired up” about the potential of the program, said Winder is in a good position to qualify for funding for a new “master plan” that would incorporate all of the existing studies, such as the streetscape plan, the Livable Cities Initiative and the ongoing Georgia Initiative for Community Housing, which is targeting four downtown communities for redevelopment.

He also noted that the county government’s coming redevelopment of the historic courthouse complex off Broad Street would be a big boon to downtown. He said county offices might be relocated there from the current county administrative building off East Broad Street.

County officials also are hoping to convince state health officials to relocate the county health department to the former jail behind the old courthouse. That would enable the county to tap $1 million in sales tax proceeds in addition to the more than $3 million set aside for the courthouse renovation.