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Health & Fitness

"Build it and they will come" isn't a viable development strategy

Because Wal-Mart wasn’t in the picture this time, the second round of public expressions of concern regarding Selig Enterprises’ plan for a mixed-use development in the eastern edge of downtown Athens inspired more thoughtful commentary than the first round. It would be a good thing if we kept this conversation going on the way to the next downtown project.

One heartfelt offering was so superbly written that I’d sell my soul to anybody who could turn me into as good a writer. The author urged that we not sell ourselves short by thinking of our community as just a college town revolving around students.

“Think how nice it would be,” she wrote, “for UGA to have a nearby high-end, residential development designed for professionals and retirees where they could walk to work at UGA, walk to town, relax and recreate at the nearby park or utilize the Firefly Trail.”

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As I hope it did others, this eloquent plea prompted me to think about what it would take to persuade significant numbers of professionals and retirees to become permanent downtown residents here. While big-time developers can spend thousands of dollars identifying target markets, all I can do, for what it’s worth, is informally compare our circumstances with a couple of other places I’m familiar with to see how we stack up.

Atlanta’s Emory University, hardly in the habit of selling itself short, is addressing the same traffic problem as our downtown commercial zoning classification allowing 200 bedrooms per acre. Clifton Road, which bisects the Emory campus, turns into a parking lot twice a day, as the hordes who work at the university, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory Healthcare and other institutions along the corridor come and go.

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Emory’s response was to partner with one of Atlanta’s premier rental-property developers on a mixed-use project at the north end of the campus. Emory is getting a better-looking product than we are, very likely because it’s leasing, not selling, the site to the developer.

Although Emory Point, as the project is called, is being pitched to people who work along Clifton Road, I’m sure well-heeled retirees who find the development attractive won’t be turned away.

It’s not hard to see why Emory Point would be appealing to them. There’s a high-end supermarket a mile and a half away, Emory’s new performing arts center is a short distance in the opposite direction, there’s green space featuring trails and a lake steps away, world-class health care right down the street, and Emory’s free shuttle service when walking isn’t the best option.

A similar package is driving construction of a $55 million mixed-use development on the main street half a block from the center of Chapel Hill, N.C.

Unlike Emory Point, the residential units in the Chapel Hill project are being explicitly pitched to retirees. The marketing slogan, “Your heart is still in Chapel Hill. Why aren’t you?” struck a chord because the residences were 60 percent sold before the project was finished.

Small wonder. There’s a full-service supermarket practically next door. It’s a short, easy walk to the University of North Carolina’s art museum and its performing arts venue. The medical school is a three- or four-minute drive to the south. And world-class Duke University Medical Center is about 15 miles away.

With competition like that in the neighborhood, why would a developer pitch a downtown project here to retirees? The UGA’s art museum and its performing arts center are better than UNC’s. But I can’t see many of the retiree patrons of either hoofing it up the hills between there and downtown Athens. And while we have the state’s gracious permission to host a downtown grocery, so far that’s all we have. Athens Regional Medical Center and St. Mary’s Hospital are excellent regional facilities. But they’re not Emory or Duke. And while well-heeled retirees might find the campus and the greenway appealing, I don’t know that living hard by an entertainment district catering mainly to student revelers would be their first choice of a place to spend their golden years.

Even if none of this is disqualifying for a “high-end, residential development designed for professionals and retirees,” luring that population downtown would do nothing to relieve the traffic woes the downtown commercial zoning classification was meant to address. I don’t have the traffic studies to back me up, but my sense is that it’s not professionals, and certainly not retirees, who commit gridlock twice a day on the streets serving the UGA campus. It’s students.

So, much as we might wish it otherwise, “Build it and they will come” isn’t a viable development strategy except in the movies.

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