Social Circle officials look at more downtown revitalization

Three problematic downtown buildings purchased recently by the city of Social Circle will be retooled with an eye toward attracting new restaurants as part of ongoing downtown revitalization efforts.

That strategy for reclaiming the buildings at 120 S. Cherokee Rd., 124 S. Cherokee Rd., and 136 S. Cherokee Rd., was agreed to informally by the city council and the Social Circle Downtown Development Authority during a nearly two-hour Monday work session. 

The only one of the buildings currently in use, 120 S. Cherokee, houses a single-employee insurance office. One of the other buildings has been vacant since 2012, with the other having sat empty since 2009. 

The agreement on a strategy for redeveloping the buildings came after Mayor David Keener, the council and the authority heard from George Banks, founder of Revel, a retail real estate development firm with offices in Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles.

Banks was brought in front of the council and the authority by CPL, an architectural, engineering and planning firm retained by the city.

Banks told the group that, given their size — two comprise 3,700 square feet, with the third covering 2,200 square feet — the three buildings would work well as restaurant space. 

Banks steered the council and authority members away from considering the redevelopment of the structures as retail space or breweries.

Retail operations, Banks explained, typically work best in spaces of less than 1,000 square feet. He also told the council and authority members that online shopping has made retail space a less popular redevelopment option. And, he added, retail establishments don’t add to the character of a downtown area as much as restaurants. 

Banks went on to say Monday that breweries have proliferated across Georgia to the point that some of them now are closing down.

The city purchased the buildings for a total of $850,000, using reserve dollars from the government’s general fund.

Going forward, the council and the authority learned Monday, the city could find itself spending as much as $200 per square foot to set the buildings up as potential restaurant space.

The city is beginning mold remediation, lead paint removal and other hazard mitigation efforts at the three buildings, and will also be dealing with leaking roofs and other issues to rehabilitate the buildings. Some interior demolition work already is underway.

It’s not yet abundantly clear where the city will get the money for the extensive work that will be required to set the buildings up as shells for restaurants. One option could be special-purpose local option local sales tax dollars, Social Circle City Manager Eric Taylor said Monday. 

Banks was encouraging when talking about the potential for establishing restaurants in the three buildings.

“This is a thing that works in metropolitan Atlanta,” Banks said Monday, pointing to rehabilitation and building reuse efforts in Roswell, Canton and elsewhere as examples. Closer to home, council and authority members on Monday noted similar successful downtown redevelopment efforts in Covington and Monroe.

Banks offered only general advice regarding what types of restaurants the city should consider attracting, although he did steer the group away from considering franchise operations. A locally owned and operated barbecue restaurant, or a burger place, or a restaurant offering American cuisine were options suggested by Banks. In addition, Banks suggested that the smallest of the three buildings be operated as a counter service business.

But Banks went on to suggest that a good strategy for deciding on restaurant options would be to “let the market tell us what it wants.”

In other advice offered Monday, Banks suggested that the city consider loosening parking requirements in connection with downtown revitalization efforts. “I don’t think you need more parking,” he said. “If you have a fun place, people will figure out the parking.”

As a next step in retooling the three downtown buildings, CPL will be providing the city with some renderings of potential reconfigurations of the spaces for use as restaurants.

Keener on Monday expressed an eagerness for the redevelopment of the three buildings.

“We’d like to get started tomorrow,” he said, even as he recognized the considerable work ahead.

“We’ve been trying to get this going for several months now,” Taylor said. “I think it’s exactly what this downtown needs.”