Urbanism blossoming near Georgia university

With construction of “The Lofts at Mercer Village,” a more urban style of living has arrived at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

The $10 million mixed-use development, in Macon’s College Hill Corridor, brings to fruition an idea that was suggested in a Knight Fellows charrette in 2001 and was later advanced by Mercer undergraduates as part of a class on “The Fate of the City.”

The development, which hugs the street in traditional urban fashion, opened in August, offering three stories of loft-style apartments on top of 13,750 square feet of commercial space. Half the ground-floor space is occupied by Mercer’s bookstore, operated by Barnes & Noble. Three other businesses, two of them food-related, make up the rest of the development.

In “Anchoring ‘College Town Cool,’” in the Fall 2011 issue of The Mercerian alumni magazine, Jennifer Bucholtz reports that the idea of creating a lively, mixed-use area — to attract Mercer students and people from nearby sections of the city — took years to catch hold, and received crucial help from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mercer, like many universities near declining neighborhoods, had cut itself off from its troubled surroundings — closing roads and bridges, acquiring some of the area to build a new medical school, and buying up nearby properties, according to Mercer Professor Peter C. Brown and Alex Morrison of the University of Georgia. Brown and Morrison carefully examine Mercer’s urban revitalization efforts in “Redevelopment: A Case Study at Mercer University.” Their article appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of CUR Quarterly, a journal published by the Council on Undergraduate Research.

The university reverses course

In 1997 the university began to do an about-face, forming the Mercer Center for Community Development. Brown, a philosophy teacher, was appointed the center’s director, and in 2001 he became one of the initial group of the University of Miami’s Knight Fellows in Community Building. The Knights and others, including Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of architecture at Miami, conducted a charrette in the fall of 2001 that aimed to revive the adjacent, mostly low-income Beall’s Hill neighborhood and to improve the university’s physical connections to the city.

Although College Hill development was recommended in the Knight charrette, for a while the idea failed to get off the ground, Brown told New Urban News. Later, the idea attracted renewed interest when Washington, DC, architect Dhiru Thadani — a key member of the 2001 charrette — returned to Macon and highlighted commercial possibilities during a review of the progress being made around Mercer.

Next, in 2006, Brown, who was teaching a senior “capstone” class on “The Fate of the City,” interested a group of students in studying the work of Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. “The students decided to consult with Richard Florida himself, and he invited them to come up to Washington, DC, to meet with him and his research team at the Greater Washington Initiative,”

Brown and Morrison recount in their CUR Quarterly article. The Knight Foundation paid their way.
Out of this came a growing realization that amenities needed to be developed to encourage students to walk or bike off campus. “These amenities would also give the area a ‘college town’ vibe that would attract young professionals and their families to the area,” Brown and Morrison observe.

The students enlisted an organization called New Town Macon as a champion for their ideas. Eventually they met with the mayor, C. Jack Ellis, who proved receptive. The Knight Foundation continued to help, providing $5 million in grants — $2 million to establish a College Hill Alliance and $3 million to the Community Foundation of Central Georgia for projects to improve the two-square-mile corridor, including Beall’s Hill.

Applicants compete for challenge grants to carry out their own ideas, both large and small, on College Hill. Among the results so far have been installation of an agility course; creation of furniture and sculptures for a newly established dog park; restoration of historic homes inhabited by the elderly and disabled; and the launch of a down-payment assistance program that helps Mercer faculty and staff buy eligible houses in the corridor. Many of the participants now walk to work.

The College Hill Alliance uses its funds to implement a master plan that was drawn up in 2008-2009 with support from another Knight grant. The plan improves and beautifies public spaces, makes a business case for private investment in College Hill, and upgrades the area’s transportation choices — building bike routes to provide better connections to downtown, for example.

Gradually, retailers in food, coffee, and other specialties increased their presence near Mercer. Macon-based Sierra Development, working with the university, decided to construct the Lofts project, the first phase of which is now filled. Its apartments house 117 students.

“The master plan is what spurred me to be part of this project,” says Sierra Development president Jim Daws. “It certainly provided inspiration. The first phase mirrors almost exactly what they had” in the plan. No financial incentives were provided to the developer. “It’s all private investment,” Daws says.

Construction began this September on a second phase, containing housing for up to 87 students and space for three retailers. As part of the project, three houses that served as rental properties or university offices are being moved a few blocks to the Beall’s Hill neighborhood, where they will be restored by the Historic Macon Foundation and sold as single-family homes.

Brown expresses optimism about the direction in which events are going. In addition to Mercer Village, he says, “money is finally coming into Tatnall Square Park” — a public space that was the subject of redesign in the charrette a decade ago. The park is seen as “the hinge for the entire area, connecting Mercer to Beall’s Hill, and to downtown,” he emphasizes.

Of Beall’s Hill, Daws says, “It’s doing great.” He points out that a house soon to be built in Beall’s Hill recently was sold — from plans — for more than $100 a square foot. “The neighborhood is probably doing better than anything else in Macon,” he says. Brown agrees, observing: “The Beall’s Hill comps are now setting the bar for the whole city.”
Persistence pays.