Macon Magazine

August/September 2024 | maconmagazine.com 53 W hen a large contingent of Maconites stepped onto the Alabama Theatre stage in Birmingham during the 2024 Main Street Now Conference in May to accept the Great American Main Street Award, it was a testament to decades of hard work, dedication, and ups and downs. While Macon's downtown is unique, the circumstances that created its downtown ghost town were not. The prestigous award was a signal that Downtown Macon has become an expert in integrating the expert "Main Street approach" (see page 54) into the fabric of the city. But it wasn't always that way. In her opening remarks at the conference, Erin Barnes, president and CEO of Main Street America, pointed to the causes of downtown decay: "Malls… against the backdrop of a slow-rolling disaster of disinvestment, white flight, and urban renewal." D O W N T O W N M A C O N ' S S P I R A L I N G D E C AY When the Macon Mall opened its doors in 1975, it sucked the life out of downtown Macon. The 1.4 million-square-foot retail hub was one of the largest in Georgia with anchor stores such as JC Penny, Davison's, and Belk. In the words of the Mary Hopkin song, "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end." In 1983, the mall was renovated. In Downtown Macon won a Great American Main Street Award. How did we go from blight to bright? BY CHARLES E. RICHARDSON | PHOTOS BY MIKE YOUNG 1986, a food court was added, and in 1997 Dillard's and Parisian were constructed along with two parking decks and for a time, it became the largest mall in the state. In the meantime, downtown Macon wasn't just dying, it was dead. The application for the 2024 Main Street award said, "In 1996 ... Our streets were empty, storefronts boarded up, and the upper floors of our buildings were vacant. Iconic buildings like the Capricorn Recording Studios and the Douglass Theatre were under threat of demolition. Storefront occupancy was 30 percent and a dozen apartments existed downtown." Trish Whitley, Director of Destination Development for Visit Macon and Main Street Macon board chair recalls downtown's heyday and decline. "As a little girl I remember when the Krystal was still downtown, Jos. N. Neel, and lots of places to shop. I have very vivid memories of that, and I also have memories of the early nineties when my Central High School art class was recruited to paint music related images on the plywood on the boarded-up windows on Poplar Street just to make the aesthetic a little better." A L O N G C O M E S N E W T O W N Peyton Anderson, the late owner of the Macon Telegraph, the daily newspaper, upon his death in 1988, directed $35 million of his fortune to the Peyton Anderson Foundation to be used to benefit Macon. The foundation's director, Juanita Jordan,

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