The company that built the Mall of Georgia in Gwinnett County and the upscale St. John’s Town Center in Jacksonville, Fla., is planning a 560,000-square-foot luxury outlet mall in Pooler.
The Outlet Mall of Georgia is projected to open in the summer of 2014 in the southwest quadrant of I-95 and Pooler Parkway with four anchor stores, a food court, restaurants and a wide variety of shops.
The proposed $200-million project is set to break ground next spring and would create as many as 2,000 construction jobs, according to Ben Carter of Ben Carter Enterprises. When fully open, the mall would create between 1,700 and 2,000 retail jobs, Carter said Tuesday.
The 170-acre site will accommodate another half-million square feet for peripheral retail and hotel construction.
Location: Savannah, Ga.
Price: $5,250,000
The Skinny: Situated right at the head of Savannah’s famed Forsyth Park, this urban mansion is one of the best examples of historic restoration available in America today. Built in 1857 for lawyer and Confederate general William F. Brantley—who, by the way, was later murdered in a family feud—the 9,700-square-foot manse was renovated over two years, starting in 2007. Tastefully updated and immaculately presented, the five-bedroom, seven-bath home is nearly perfect, save for the overwrought kitchen and the over-the-top master bath. Still, the brilliant parlor and the broad park-view porches make up for those small missteps and help to justify the $5.25M price tag, a $3.325M price hike since the last time the place sold, prior to the renovation, back in 2005.
(via Magnificent Savannah Mansion Suffers From a Few Missteps - House of the Day - Curbed National)
Everything that people come to Savannah from all over the world to see and experience stems from two key leadership decisions made long ago:
1) Oglethorpe’s original plan, studied the world over as a near–perfect urban design that’s as brilliant now as it was in 1733;
2) The stalwart preservation of his original plan by forward–thinking community leaders like Emma Adler in the 1950s and ‘60s.
That’s it. Everything about Savannah that we might consider noteworthy — SCAD, Gulfstream, even Paula Deen and Pinkie Masters’ — in some way owes its success to just those two sterling examples of foresight.
Don’t believe me? Consider the sad case of Brunswick, Georgia.
Brunswick has never been what you’d call exciting. But with the devastation of the economic downturn, it’s now half boarded up — just a smelly beat-down place you drive through on the way to St. Simons Island.
But here’s the thing: Oglethorpe also founded Brunswick, and also laid it out according to his original Savannah plan.
What happened? At some point, Brunswick’s “leaders” decided they didn’t need those pesky squares slowing down traffic. So they let the streets run right through the middle of them. Only one Brunswick square remains intact, and it’s a pale comparison to even the least impressive Savannah square.
We see that Brunswick is not only paying for that example of poor leadership decades after the fact, it will continue paying dearly for that poor leadership far into the indefinite future.
The company is so good at the real-estate game that it has spawned a catchphrase, the Whole Foods Effect, a phenomenon Detroit is clearly banking on, having offered the retailer $4.2 million to come there. That figure suggests city leaders believe that Whole Foods is a force unto itself that can give a neighborhood the escape velocity it needs to break free of its doldrums. Are they right?
It is the latest of several revitalization efforts that have stretched over decades, and it is part of a new wave of efforts developing from residents and business owners who say they must have a louder voice and a greater stake in decisions that are made.
The interesting phrase here, particularly given that this is a local news story that otherwise takes the expected rah rah tone, is: “revitalization efforts that have stretched over decades.” That strikes me as a dog whistle to the experienced/knowledgeable local reader.
Crime in the area patrolled by Savannah-Chatham police is at its lowest point in recorded history, according to a news release from the department Wednesday.
The closure of the Savannah distribution center will … largely eliminate the Savannah postmark, as mail posted from homes and businesses would route through a distribution center. Only mail taken into local post offices would get the Savannah postmark.
Johnson has begun a rough outline of his memoirs, which he says will document as accurately as he can research Savannah’s history and the life he lived here.
He plans to call it “The Journey: From N——- to Mr. Mayor.”
Some have advised he needs to change the title. It’s too inflammatory, they have told him.
He’s not planning a revision.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve been called ‘N——-’ a lot in my life,” he said. “Now I’m called Mr. Mayor, but I know when I make a decision people disagree with, I’m ‘N——-.’ I have no illusions about the world I live in.”
Interesting.
