The crowd at the recent public input session for Dr. Jack Crowley’s downtown master plan study voted strongly for developing the river district between Foundry Street and the North Oconee. That will be very difficult to accomplish, because that edge of town has, for the last 50 years, been developed as if there already existed some secret master plan entitled “Cut the River District Off from Downtown.â€
Urban renewal in the 1950s destroyed the northern end of the downtown grid, demolishing the intown neighborhoods, white and black, while truncating and diverting streets, so that never again would that part of town be a walkable commercial and residential district that flowed toward the river.
Look at the 1930 map of downtown. Six streets—Broad, Clayton, Washington, Hancock, Dougherty and Strong—ambled through downtown from Pulaski to Foundry. With all of downtown feeding it, Foundry Street was the nexus, the “jumping off point†for future development toward the river in a natural, organic pattern that would have proceeded when the economy was ready. Now, such growth will be extremely difficult, no matter what the economy can support.
Clayton, Washington and now Hancock are cut off at Thomas Street. Dougherty was diverted to the north, leaving only the stump between Foundry and Thomas, going nowhere. The same with Strong: cut to a one-block fragment running in front of Athens Hardware (soon to be student apartments). Below Strong, student apartments block the descent. The truncated Dougherty is the only street left that could still go on down the steep hill, but it is cut off from the rest of downtown by its dead-end into five lanes of traffic on Thomas Street.
So, there’s no “there†there. There’s nowhere to attach the river district to downtown. Foundry, once the transition point, is now cut off, a no-man’s-land, a back alley. The Classic Center could have been the gateway between downtown and the river, but instead that facility turned its back on the river and severed the last connection to downtown. Thus has Thomas Street become the eastern barrier between downtown and the North Oconee River.
If the master plan can find a way around this blockade, it should be called the “miracle plan.†We can’t undo the consequences of bad and no planning in the past, but we can come up with a new vision for how we want to grow in the future. It’s exciting to know that we, as a community, are at least looking at where we are and where we want to go downtown. Crowley’s team is involving everybody who has an interest in helping to shape future growth. They’ve got their work cut out for them and for us. What they come up with and what we do with it has the potential for a new, positive renewal of our urban area, whether or not we can connect with the river.
If nothing else, our recent history is ample evidence of how much we need a plan to follow instead of randomly destroying the infrastructure of our city and diverting its potential for growth.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
