Downtown Convention Center

[augga706]

Convention officials say the best location is on Reynolds Street between Ninth and Tenth Streets, where it could be tied into the existing Marriott hotel.

http://www.wjbf.com/midatlantic/jbf/news_i...07-07-0001.html

"If we build it in this location, combining with the hotel rooms, and the city-owned conference center will have the best facility in the state of Georgia, outside metro Atlanta," said CVB Director Barry White.

Its nice but when will augusta have something that is not 2nd but 1st in GA over atlanta besides hospitals & golf. Some city officials think to small you have to out of the box to become a premier city. We need ferrys or cruise boats from augusta to savannah back & forth no other cities will ever be able to top that with the savannah river. The little boats we have now that give tours are not big enough i know alot of ppl would love to travel on the savannah river. Then get off sightsee & shop especially when metro augusta is building alot of lifestyle centers plus will have 2 malls & 1 in aiken. I wonder what city or area will get the next mall out of south augusta, hephzibah, evans, grovetown, or north augusta.

[socaguy]

well to tell you the truth....even Augusta's hospitals are second rate to Atlantas, so Golf is the only thing it would be first in.

Nice trade center though!

[augga706]

i would disagree the burn center is second in none to GA it probably gets more patients from GA & SC than any other city. Somebody on the news a while back got taken from columbia, & statesboro to augusta's burn center.

[socaguy]

True, people are all the time getting flown into Augusta for the burn Center from the Greenville/Spartanburg area. However, having a great Burn Center at Doctors Hospital and a Medical College doesnt mean the Hospital System is the best in the state. Yes...Augusta has great medical facilities but Atlanta has hospitals that have specialists that Augusta doesnt have too.

[augga706]

yeah i agree atlanta might have us right now, i do think in 3 to 5 yrs augusta will be know as the medical center not just in the south east but the whole united states. Since doctors, university, & mcg will be bigger with more buildings beside them in the future.

[krazeeboi]

Concerning the proposed convention center, Atlanta is just much more of a tourist destination now than Augusta, so there's no way that a convention center in Augusta could top the Georgia World Congress Center or any of the other major meeting facilities in metro Atlanta. City leaders are only speaking realistically here. Augusta needs to strive for something that fits the city and meets its needs. Trying to compete with Atlanta in this regard would result in a financial travesty.

[augga706]

If you build it they would come, i wasn't neccesarily saying the convention center has to be bigger than atlanta's. The exterior could be like nothing in ga or the southeast. It could have something like the lights in las vegas all around it or a mall or shopping center next to or a starbucks & resturant on top of the convention center looking down on a waterfall & pond that has lights in the street that shows diffrent colors, just anything that augusta can be recognize for. As for comparing to atlanta i wish ppl down here didnt do that, but it happens every day all day. On the news, in the street, in the mall, at work. In augusta ppl only mention atlanta no other city in ga not even columbia, or charlotte, which are big cites in their own right only atlanta when ppl are talking about augusta's quality of life or how big it is.

[krazeeboi]

If you build it they would come

[Topher1]

^ Amen on the mall. Augusta already tried a downtown mall with the Port Royal (is that what they were called?) condos. It was of course a failure. The only good that came out of that was its eventual replacement with Fort Discovery, which I think is a great asset for downtown.

My only concern with the convention center would be street interaction. Reynolds St. could (and should) be a fabulous strip. It's downtown's only riverfront address, and should not be the hideous mess it is today. There's almost no major structures (the abandoned depot being the only exception I can think of) that are built with any street presence... Due to the design demands of a convention center, more often than not they create huge dead spots in the street. They're rarely designed with a significant street retail presence, simply because the interior space is so valuable. Another blank wall is just what Reynolds doesn't need...

The ballpark plans, as well as filling in the rest of the empty lots with residential/hotel/retail would be a better fit for Reynolds. Perhaps if the convention center were built on the other side of Reynolds (not prime riverfront space), I'd feel a little more comfortable.

[socaguy]

Isnt there some some street front presence around some of the entrances to Riverwalk. If they would do that all the way down Reynolds with say, a parking garage tucked in between somewhere it would be fantastic. The area around the Marriott Hotel IS a mess though. That whole lot with the office building and hotel looks like an upscale suburban office park.....yuck!