The Commission held its May meeting at Ingleside Village Pizza at Mercer Village. Lynn Cass, Kaylie Damen (intern), Josh Rogers, Chris Howard, Kevin Dubose, Tommy Barnes, Sarah Gerwig-Moore, Bill Causey, Jim Thomas, Tom Glennon and Dan Fischer attended. Below is a summary of the meeting and some questions for those of you who weren’t able to make it. If you have any comments or questions, just submit them as replies to this post. I look forward to seeing you all next month.
Commission Turnover
Commission members leaving their posts and moving away from Macon will bring along another representative from their organization and start transitioning them to serve on the Commission. We will also invite a representative from the 11th Hour to join our Commission.
Annual Report
Unbelievably, the Commission is a year old. We all decided it would be a good idea to write an annual report and present it to City Council and County Commission to provide an update and a preview of the next six months. We want to make sure that our elected representatives participate in the design charrettes for the master plan.
Mercer Village Traffic Calming
The city’s new traffic engineer has proposed a plan to help slow traffic on Montpelier. A sub-committee consisting of Kevin, Bill and Jim will review this plan, edit it and take it to Mercer to get their ideas. Hopefully, we could have an attractive and economical solution in place before school starts back.
Washington Park Gospel Brunch
The Commission is planning to launch a Gospel Brunch in Washington Park with live entertainment on Sunday, June 15 running for at least six consecutive weeks. Costs should be around $5,000. The Commission has agreed to put in $2,500 pending a grant and we will seek a co-sponsorship from the remainder. Does anyone have any ideas for a co-sponsor?
Service Learning with Mercer University
Dr. Tom Glennon was able to join us to make a very exciting proposal. Mercer is creating a course to draw students from across the University’s academic programs and match these students to needs in the community. Dr. Glennon would like to match these students to needs and opportunities in the Corridor, including downtown, our intown neighborhoods and local businesses. The Commission enthusiastically endorsed Dr. Glennon’s proposal and we look forward to working with the students in the Fall.
RFQ
Thank you all for your comments and edits. I’ve amended the RFQ for master planning services and it is ready to be released as soon as we get approval for our master planning grant.
Realtor Conference
College Hill Corridor in cooperation with the City and Historic Macon is planning a residential Realtors conference in July. We’ll walk a group of local Realtors through houses intown (new and historic) and provide case studies from rehabilitations, contacts for repair work and review common faults that turn up in inspections of older houses. We hope to have a good group of Realtors who will be well-educated and excited about the downtown/intown market.
Cultural Trails
Randy Harshbarger’s honor class has agreed to help the Commission use its grant funds to create three cultural trails: a civil rights trail, an architecture trail and a ghost trail. They will research, designate the sites, write a narrative and develop multimedia trail guides for print and for the web. They will start this work in the Fall.
Residential Database
During Living It Up Downtown Week we learned that many more people would choose to live downtown if they only knew what was available. In cooperation with NewTown Macon, we’ve been able to hire an intern to compile a database of downtown residences for sale and rent. We will launch this database as a website (similar to www.livedowntowndenver.com) by the end of the summer.
Again, please reply with questions or concerns to this post or to josh@collegehillcorridor.com
Living 