James July-August 2024 web - Flipbook - Page 9
I
t’s hard to know where to start
in telling the story of today’s
Macon— the looming National
Park designation, the rebirth
of Capricorn Records, the world’s
largest pickleball facility or the amazing renewal of downtown. There is a
lot happening. And it’s due to some
unprecedented collaboration between
economic development organizations
and municipal government. Macon (actually Macon-Bibb after consolidation
a decade ago) is firing on all cylinders.
The New York Times publishes an
annual “52 Places to Go” list and last
year— nestled in between Vilnius, Lithuania and Madrid, Spain— No. 43 was
the city of Macon. Highlighting the
designation of the Ocmulgee Mounds
as a National Historical Park, the Times
piece noted the area around Macon
has been inhabited for at least 12,000
years and the park includes the Bond
Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. It is a
mix of hardwood/pine ridges, bottomland hardwoods, swamp forests and
oxbow lakes— literally 10 minutes from
downtown Macon. The Times also emphasizes the music history of the city,
being the home of Little Richard, the
Allman Brothers and Otis Redding, as
well as the famed Capricorn Records,
inventor of the Southern Rock genre.
Downtown Revitalization
Josh Rogers is the president and
CEO of NewTown Macon, leading the
nonprofit downtown revitalization
group for a decade. NewTown was
started by the Peyton Anderson Foundation. (Anderson owned the Macon
Telegraph and Macon News in the
1950s and 60s, a time when owning a
mid-size city newspaper meant wealth
that would be boosting a community
development nonprofit 60 years later.)
Since Rogers started, storefront occupancy in downtown Macon has grown
from 56 percent to 82 percent, it has
added 360 loft housing units and property values have doubled. More than
$350 million of public and private funding has been invested, and NewTown’s
assets have grown 170 percent.
“Almost nowhere in the country
has engineered such a turnaround,
which was recently awarded the Great
American Main Street Award,” said
Rogers. “There are three big things
that made all the difference for us:
1. Residential Downtowns that have
focused on lofts and residents are
more lively, resilient and active than
those focused on office workers, tourism, or industry alone. We’ve attracted
over 1,000 residents to downtown
Macon and they are the lifeblood of
our success.
2. Local When we realized no one else
was going to come save us, we shifted
strategies from recruiting outsiders to
training our own folks. We launched
classes to start businesses and rehabilitate buildings, and Maconites came out
of the woodwork desperate to help. The
second part of this success was investing in their good ideas. We’ve invested
over $35 million in 92 different projects
and never lost a penny. Macon wins
when we bet on ourselves.
3. Equity We’ve worked hard to make
sure no one was left behind, intentionally creating opportunities
for young people, women, people
of color and low-income Maconites to benefit from downtown’s
success. That’s helped keep all
160,000 of us here focused on
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