Residences moving from rural areas to downtown
Rome projects there will be more than 200 residential units along the Broad Street corridor within two years.
Rome projects there will be more than 200 units along the Broad Street corridor within 2 years.
“A look deeper into the numbers released by the Census Bureau late last month has raised questions about the resurgence of the urban lifestyle that started to vanish after World War II,” said Rome City Manager Sammy Rich. “What our American Dream is versus their American Dream are two different things,” Rich added. “The house on an acre with a large yard, all of those things are not the same anymore.”
Thereasa Hulgan, president of the Cherokee County, Alabama, Chamber of Commerce, said she has seen that reflected in Centre. The population of Cherokee County dropped by more than 270 residents from the 2010 Census to the 2016 estimate.
“Even as small of an area as we are, we’ve seen over the last few years that some of our older buildings downtown, they’re remodeling them and putting living upstairs with the retail downstairs,” Hulgan said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, that’s just the day and time in their lives, their careers, their families. They want that walk-able atmosphere.”
Chattooga County registered the largest population decline in the immediate Rome area, falling by almost 1,200 residents from 2010-2016. The Rome News-Tribune was not able to reach sole Commissioner Jason Winters for comment on this story.
“The millennials are going to be the majority of our workforce a lot sooner than we’d like to realize,” Rich said. “Two cars in the driveway and a garage, those things have gone away. The love affair with the car is fading, maintenance of lawns, that’s fading.”
In Rome, it’s more than just a millennial generation issue. “You’re getting the (Baby) Boomers returning back as much as anything else,” said Jimmy Byars, CEO at Hardy Realty. Many in the Baby Boom generation are downsizing, giving up the big homes with large lawns that take a lot of time, and or money, to keep manicured.
“We are keeping all of the stuff we manage from a residential standpoint, on Broad Street, 100 percent occupied,” Byars said. “We’ve got Dr. Miniyar’s space (114 Broad St.) that is coming on line in the next 30 days, and we’ve been showing the doors off of it. We’ve got commitments; we’re just working on the occupancy date to get in there.”
Becky Smyth in the Downtown Development office said the downtown Rome district now has 179 residential units in place with 40 others, including the eight being built by Dr. Miniyar and Ira Levy’s 26 condo units, bringing the total up to 219.
Miniyar’s development may epitomize the shift in interest from the old home on a nice lot to urban center living.
He is developing eight apartments on the second floor of the building with an international food court on the ground floor.
The apartments and first four tenants in the food court are expected to be ready for occupancy around July 1.
Byars said those food court tenants include shops with an Asian theme, a Mexican theme, seafood and wings, and finally a Philly cheesesteak shop.
The food court is being developed to accommodate up to four additional tenants in the future.
Residential growth is seen as the driver to future commercial changes downtown. “Generally speaking, rooftops are what drive the commercial retail experience,” Rich said. “The more residents we see, the more I think you’re going to see from retailers chasing that business.”
Byars said the biggest difference between a vibrant downtown Rome today and the downtown Rome he knew as a child was the residential factor. “You didn’t have anybody living on the second floor of these buildings back then. They were mercantile shops from the first floor all the way up to the third floor,” Byars said.
Bruce Jones, a professor of economics at Georgia Highlands College, said there are other factors that are fueling the return to urban core living. “Only 8-12 percent of the working population is working in factories now,” Jones said. He cited a report from the Organization for Economic Development which indicated that the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States had dipped from a relatively steady 17 million since the mid-1960s to 12.3 million in 2016.
“As a result people can move where they want to live, and where they want to live is a place where they have things they want to enjoy,” said Jones.
“Probably of lot of this now is still part of the devastation of 2008-09 when we had such a bad economy,” Hulgan said. She said she was aware of a lot of foreclosure activity around Weiss Lake, pointing out many of those homes were second homes, or homes where some in the Boomer generation had retired.
Byars said what they enjoy in Rome are qualityof-life amenities like walking or biking on the trails, kayaking or paddleboarding on the rivers, the theater, the symphony, everything that is happening in the vibrant urban core.
Jones said so many service-related jobs in a changing economy offer people a chance to work from home. “And that’s not unique to the millennials,” Jones said.
With downtown Rome enjoying a building occupancy rate well over 90 percent, it’s a shift that Rich and other leaders in Rome are taking a hard look at in terms of growth on the fringe of the traditional Broad Street corridor.
What’s going to happen along the West Third Street corridor — the so-called River District — could be shaped by the needs and wants generated by the return to urban living.
Rich said he could envision mixed-income residential development in the River District and lower Avenue A corridor. “Something for everyone,” Rich said. “If I’m working on Broad Street and living a couple of blocks away, maybe I could ride my bike or walk to work,” Rich said. “Not everyone can afford a higher-end upper-story loft.”
Byars said he has been surprised at the rent downtown loft apartments are commanding. Some are as low as $650 to $800 a month, but most are $1,000 a month and above.
He said more units in the $650 to $800 range would be attractive for some of the younger people who are not doctors and lawyers.
The latest addition to the mix downtown is Ira Levy’s condominium project, The Lofts at Third and Broad.
Formal groundbreaking ceremonies were held late in May, and Levy said he expects the development, which includes 26 residential units and six retail establishments, to take 18 months to complete.
Levy, who has been working on the development for over a decade, could not break ground until he had pledges for more than 50 percent of the units in hand. The condos are selling for a range from $204,000 to $395,000, and just over half of them have been reserved.
Downtown Development Authority members have been working for the last couple of years with an increase in the number of residential units one of their top priorities. Byars and Rich each said there is no question the demand is there, but they can’t say specifically where, from a geographic perspective, the demand is coming from. Jones said one look at the latest Census data certainly offers some clues.
“The fact that Catoosa County had the highest percentage increase in Northwest Georgia (3.8 percent) is evidence that people are wanting to come back closer to the urban environment,” Jones said. “In that case greater Chattanooga is the big winner.”