5 posts tagged “development”
Sooooooo, Savannah River Landing, what’s up with that?
As they promised Ant Hill Estates launched their new website and it is very pretty… but… well I hesitate to say anything, but … the site seems to be suffering some kind of delusional disorder.
“Finally! Enjoy historic Savannah from a newly-contstructed apartment home! There's no better spot than the famous waterfront where you're never more than a few steps from your favorite downtown attractions. We offer 1, 2, and 3-bedroom options. Each beautiful unit comes with competitive lease rates that include parking.”
Are they pitching tents out there? 1, 2, and 3-bedroom tents? I know they have the parking, that’s pretty much all they have is parking.
“Metropolitan convenience with all the comforts of a hand-crafted home. Open floor plans include two-story lofts, chic city flats, and rooftop garden penthouses. The well-appointed building features a grilling patio, media room and a terrace pool deck. Each residence comes with its own parking, laundry, storage, balcony and stunning view!”
Ummm and we’re looking, we’re looking and no I can’t find it. What “well-appointed building” would that be?
“Come and sidewalk shop in breezy coastal splendor. Finally a kid-friendly downtown where finding a parking spot is nothing short of simple. Once here you'll choose from classic brands or Savannah's variety of chic boutiques. Grab a cappuccino and a park bench for the complete European experience.”
Again, no trouble finding parking but I don’t know where they are hiding those “chic boutiques”. Maybe they’re under the sand?
The City of Savannah seems to be going along with the delusion that there is something out there other than dirt. Leaders are being asked to issue $20 million dollars in bonds backed by the taxes generated by Savannah River Landing. Officially it will be backed by all development in the President Street Corridor Tax Allocation District.
Of course you don’t get much tax revenue off an ant hill so if nothing gets built there we the taxpayers will be on the hook for the bonds. That being said, the improvements the money will pay for will be nice, President Street will be wider, General McIntosh will drain better and the whole area will be prettier so it’s not for naught.
Question: Should folks that are asking the City Council for a liquor license insult the city on their myspace page?
This caught my eye for several reasons, mostly because of the name of the company:
“Seaborne Tompkins for Saule Goode, LLC d/b/a The Iguana Room "Live Entertainment Hall", requesting a liquor, beer, and wine (drink) license at 103-105 N. Fahm Street, which is located between River and Indian Streets in District 1.”
Get it? “Saule Goode LLC” or “It’s All Good LLC”. Yeah we gots ourselves a brain trust here folks.
The other thing that grabbed me is that this appears to be the Tompkins Dynasty attempting to start another enterprise.
The family that brought you Malones, Deja Groove and Sorry
Charlies seems to be attempting to resurrect the Iguana Room.
The Lizard Lounge, as I used to call it, was above Malone’s in City Market now they want to set up shop at Jarrells Gym on Fahm St.
A quick google search turned up Mr. Tomkins’ myspace page on which he posted the following:
“city sucks
you know i really think we just need to take over this state. just do it an be done with it. i can really say with out a doubt that this place sucks the city will take everything they can from u an when u say anything about it the blacklist u from every doing anything again. ive live here for forty years an i have never seen it this bad”
All I can say is good luck with that.
A couple of updates based on information that some readers have been searching for on the site over the past few weeks.
It seems last week’s “What up Savannah River Landing?” piece just happened to coincide with plans for the company to completely revamp their website.
No really it was a total coincidence.
Seriously it had nothing at all to do with the fact that I pointed out all the outdated information and unfulfilled promises still present on their current site.
According to Ms Conn:
“Savannah River Landing continues to operate from trailers on the site. On Monday, the project plans to unveil a new Web site, said Kate Freeman, the company's marketing and community relations manager.
Sales efforts continue on the residential, commercial and retail front, but she said she could not disclose any information about whether any new commercial or retail clients had been signed up.”
As to why they haven’t built anything, according to someone I respect a great deal, Asst. City Manager Chris Morrill:
"Savannah River Landing cannot really have any economic development until we deal with President Street,"
Funny, I don’t think I remember hearing a single thing about
that being a Quid Pro Quo or an “if you build it
they will come” thing.
In fact the SRL folks specifically quoted “construction start” dates in 2007, 2008, 2009 and most recently “next year, as company officials have stated.” Is that next year or when we get to next year will it still be starting “next year”?
None of Savannah River Landings published materials said anything about the road needing to come first.
I think Mr. Morrill misspoke. Let me put it this way, I hope he misspoke because if this is a Quid PQ deal that is ethically questionable.
Anywho they say they still plan to build it… someday.
We’ve had a number of folks searching for Horncastle on the site.
Horncastle is the lovely little historic village in the UK where Savannah College of Art and Design owned a lovely little historic house that was reportedly falling apart due to a lovely little bit of neglect. It made headlines there but was completely ignored by the media in SCAD’s hometown which only seems to report the positive side of SCAD’s endeavors overseas.
It was first brought to my attention in Spring of ’08.
It was hit by a car in June and then failed to sell at auction in Fall of ‘08
UPDATE: While it has not made the news there or here, Queen Paula managed to sell the house early this year. Meanwhile the Good Folk of Horncastle have apparently moved on and are now making a fuss over other endangered buildings.
Speaking of the Queen’s colonization efforts, we’ve heard precious little about SCAD KONG since the American Consulate got involved to silence critics of our little Crayon Academy in China.
The official SCAD site for this little venture doesn’t seem to have been updated since it was announced back in February. Little has shown up in the Chinese media since the government shut down the roar of complaints over giving an historic building to an American outfit over the Chinese Artists Assoc. But this popped up this month in the South China Morning Post.
“The renovation of the
former North Kowloon Magistracy building is expected to begin in the autumn and
will make as few changes as possible to the structure, says an expert with the
American arts college that was awarded tenancy of the historic building.
Savannah College of Art and Design's preservation specialist Bob Dickensheets,
who moved to Hong Kong two months ago, said the heritage impact assessment of
the building had begun and he expected it to be completed soon. The college
will open next year.”
The SCMP is a subscription based site so I’ve linked you to
another site that repeats much of the article.
The article sounds a bit like a press release but again, SCAD seems to have made it onto the “thou shalt not print dissent” list or whatever the Chinese Communists call the stuff they don’t allow.
People who own crap houses shouldn’t throw crap.
I kinda missed the whole property maintenance teapot tempest that blew up this week. I was more concerned with how embarrassing the whole STALK MILEY thing was becoming for those of us who really thought Savannah was cooler than that.
Anywho, I apparently missed a fine article by Ms. Conn on Sunday exposing Michael Brown’s ridiculous excuses for letting his properties simply fall apart.
BTW there are two Michael Brown’s of note in Savannah, our City Manager and someone generously described as a “developer”. Ms. Conn’s article was about the latter.
She had already left council chambers today when Mayor Otis Johnson and others on council praised her work. I too would like to applaud her thoroughness and tenacity in taking on a subject that everyone is aware of but no one has the babymakers to tackle.
For his part, NOT-city-manager Mr. Brown fired back with an editorial that was published on Thursday in which he voiced his shock at the size of the article about his transgressions:
“I am amazed that a front page article is seven and a half times the coverage of the critical election in Iran and seven times the coverage of North Korea's nuclear threat.”
Mr. Brown I say to you that our LOCAL media needs to concern itself with LOCAL threats and you certainly qualify as a local threat.
Then he tries to negate Ms. Conn’s piece by suggesting it exaggerated the situation:
“The three properties on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Anderson Street and others mentioned represent less than 10 percent (of property holdings), not "nearly half" as stated. The other 90 percent are restored and provide for successful businesses and residences.”
And here is where Ms. Conn did leave a breach in her defenses. She should have published all of the properties in which Mr. Brown is involved. She should have also included pictures over time to show just what he means by “restored”.
Hey! I’ve got an idea! Why don’t I do that right now?
Here are all the properties listed on SAGIS for the two companies Ms. Conn mentioned in her piece:
1. 0 W 32ND ST – Vacant Lot
2. 628 MARTIN LUTHER KING - Vacant Lot
3. 8 W VICTORY DR – Run Down Beauty Salon
4. 418 W ANDERSON ST – Shell of House
5. 414 W ANDERSON ST – Shell of House
6. 2705 BULL ST – Vacant Store
7. 2013 W BAY ST – Vacant Lot
8. 1907 W BAY ST Vacant Lot
9. 1316 MARTIN LUTHER KING – Shell of Business - pics in paper
10. 1312 MARTIN LUTHER KING – Restored
11. 112 W BROUGHTON ST – Clothing Store
12. 110 BARNARD ST 501 – Weird inaccessible top portion of high price condo building
13. 803 WHITAKER ST – As pretty as the Mansion if it was restored which it is not.
14. 109 MARTIN LUTHER KING – Former location of Café Metropol/CRAP condition for YEARS
15. 2017 W BAY ST – Vacant Lot
16. 17 W BROUGHTON ST – Restored Retail
17. 0 MARTIN LUTHER KING – Vacant Lot
18. 116 W CONGRESS ST – former location of Sorry Charlie’s/Structurally Unsafe
Now you can decide for yourself if Mr. Brown is truly in the business of restoration or simply sits on properties and allows them to decay.
Come to think of it, this type of article maybe once a month would be an excellent way for the city to inform the residents of just exactly who is responsible for the blight among us.
Okay.
We are now onto our second City Reporter since Mr. Larson left the SMN.
I will now say some nice things about the new one.
Her priorities seem to be in the right place. She alerted folks to some important stuff, new development in Carver Heights and tonight’s Project Derenne meeting, even though by modern media standards it’s just not that sexy.
There now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about accuracy.
The meeting in Carver Heights was well attended thanks in large part to the newspaper’s advance notice on Saturday, but today’s coverage contradicts itself so anyone who wasn’t in the crowd might have trouble following.
For example:
“Adam Ragsdale, an engineer and chief operating officer of Kennedy Ragsdale & Associates, repeatedly tried to assure residents that because of flood-plain mitigation and green building techniques, the neighborhood would have far fewer flooding issues once development is finished.”
Uhhhh… No he didn’t
Of course if you read on in the article, we find out what he really said.
“The development, he said, would have a "net-zero effect" on the surrounding area.”
So it will improve and have no effect?
No, what he actually said was they are sticking to the very letter of the law which requires no impact on surrounding runoff and drainage.
Mr. Ragsdale claims that the site has poor runoff capacity now and that will be improved by the project. Basically, since they are raising the land up several feet, it will absorb more water even though they are covering it in buildings and stuff.
You can believe him or not, we won’t have any independent hydrology studies to show us anything other than what they want us to see so we kinda have to take their word for it.
BTW – They can build pretty much whatever they want there without asking for a zoning change so if they are determined as they seem, something is coming. So I guess it’s better we get the development devil we know a little bit about than that big scary unknown.
One thing was clear from the meeting; there is a great deal of misinformation about this project and the potential impacts on the neighborhood and instead of clearing that up, we get contradictory information from our main media outlet.
United States of Generica, SAV GA style
If you are one of the thousands of people expected to move here in the next few years, I am asking you please, say no to living in one of those god awful new paisley neighborhoods.
You know what I’m talking about, those oddly shaped suburban developments that are taking over Chatham County.
Like the cells of some cancerous tumor they have metastasized throughout the countryside turning the view from above into a dishwater dull tie-dye.
.
These are just a few of the examples I found ringing Savannah on Google. These images may be a year old, so you know there are five to ten more of these blighting the area by now.
If this trend of sprawly badness continues here is a look at our future.
I ask you, what is the future of these poorly constructed, poorly planned random groupings of houses and pavement?
Please, don’t live in these fractal abortions. There are real houses, built solid and built to last in neighborhoods that are part of a real community instead of a disconnected amoeba floating in a sea of homogenous crap.
