Macon Magazine

12 NEWTOWN CELEBRATES DECADES OF REVITALIZING DOWNTOWN MACON FOR 25 YEARS, NewTown Macon has been cultivating its vision to revitalize downtown Macon and create a vibrant and authentic city experience unparalleled in the South. Former Mercer University President Kirby Godsey has been part of NewTown's story since the beginning. "When I came to Mercer, I discovered that the university was isolated from the community, particularly downtown. So, I took the view that what's good for Macon is good for Mercer, and what's good for Mercer is good for Macon," Godsey said. In 1996, Juanita Jordan, leader of the Peyton Anderson Foundation, gathered a group of community visionaries and business leaders to address downtown's decline. Godsey was among them. "The creation of NewTown was because of the initiative of Juanita Jordan. She looked out her window and saw that downtown was in a steady state of decline. She called together a half-dozen people to talk about it, and through those conversations NewTown was created," Godsey said. A $16 million investment campaign led to the creation of lofts and other strategies to revitalize downtown. "My belief is that the health of the inner city is central to the health of the entire community. The community cannot flourish if its urban core is not vibrant and alive and vigorous," said Godsey, who served as chair of NewTown's board for 11 years until he retired as president of Mercer. Picking up the mantel in 2007 was current Mercer President William Underwood, now chair of the board for NewTown. "When I arrived in Macon I was struck by what I thought was the tremendous potential for downtown. NewTown had been laying the ground work for 10 years by then," Underwood said. "The potential just overwhelmed you, but NewTown was still in its infancy." He said a critical turning point came with the realization that business development would follow residential development. Of NewTown's three key strategies, increasing residents remains the top priority. "We realized that if we could focus on attracting people to lofts downtown, that could be a winning strategy for rebuilding retail downtown," Underwood said. Calling that strategy an "incredible victory," Underwood noted that downtown lofts now are at 95 percent occupancy, and storefronts at 70 percent. Once that happened, NewTown's other two strategies of growing jobs and creating a sense of place became natural progressions of downtown's growth.

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