It looks like public money will be spent to improve drainage along President Street and offer access to the site. But what will be there? That’s really not our decision.

Over the last couple of years, SRL has been floated as the site for a cruise ship terminal (not happening), a new stadium for the Sand Gnats (not likely anytime soon), and a possible site for a new civic arena (very unlikely, I’d say).

Since the site is not publicly owned, any civic use would likely come at a very high cost.

The likeliest outcome probably is the incremental development of the site for a variety of private uses.

But it’s worth remembering and emphasizing that the original ambitions for the site included an extension of General Oglethorpe’s grid system. The Oglethorpe Plan has served Savannah well for 280 years.

There have been various signals over the last couple of years that the current owners have all but scrapped the idea of expanding the grid.

Consider this from Eric Curl’s Cost to finish, repair Savannah River Landing site: $2.3M:

Court documents indicate the new owner may not be planning to develop the property as it was originally envisioned.

In response to a request for a $2.3 million payment in January, attorney David Lotz, who represented ALR, said the company is not responsible for sewer work that may not be needed due to the potential modification of the propertyâ€s proposed use.

“It is our understanding that, in prior conversations between ALR and Purchaser, Purchaser representatives indicated that the site would not be utilized in the current configuration,” Lotz said.

The “current configuration” is one that attracted worldwide praise before the financial crisis and housing bust.

Consider this New York Times article from 2007: Savannah Adds to the Master Plan of 1733. From that piece:

More than four years ago, the cityâ€s economic development agency hired Christian Sottile, a Savannah-based urban planner, to update the Oglethorpe plan, which is now guiding the development of Amblingâ€s 54-acre site. Mr. Sottile will be continuing a pattern of development that last had a major addition in 1856.

“Whatâ€s so unique about Savannah River Landing, we were able to reach back 150 years and continue a history of urbanism native to this place,” said Mr. Sottile, who teaches urban planning and design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

“With a conventional master plan, which often foresees all of the buildings from Day 1,” he said, “you freeze in time the mix of uses. This is the opposite. Itâ€s town-building. The streets come first, public spaces come first, and the blocks become spaces for building, which are not prescribed. Itâ€s highly unusual for American cities.”

The developer is planning to build more than two million square feet of new space, including 2 hotels; 150,000 square feet of prime office space; 200,000 square feet of retail space; 4 condo buildings; 17 riverfront estates; and 110 town homes. The city is also extending the historic river walk by 2,000 feet.

The public spaces — the new streets and squares — were to have been deeded back to the city.

As recently as 2010, the owners indicated in a Savannah Morning News article that they were committed to the Sottile’s extension of the Oglethorpe Plan, but there were reasons to doubt that commitment even at the time. Further doubts prompted my spring 2012 post Savannah River Landing: will Oglethorpe plan be part of its future?

A reminder of what that would have looked like (General McIntosh Boulevard is on the far left of this small map, with President Street Extension at the bottom):

The original developers envisioned an absurdly quick timeline for this development. The ambition, which seems absurd in retrospect, and the utter collapse of the plans were both results of the nuttiness of the bubble years.

But the failure doesn’t mean that the basic configuration isn’t a good one — one that could serve the city well for decades, maybe even centuries.

Perhaps a few elements could be tweaked to allow a couple of larger buildings on the fringes of the site, but the core idea — the extension of the squares and of mixed use development — is sound.

A new vision of incremental city-building is unlikely to satisfy the profit motive of the current owners, however.

Nor will it address public concerns about wasted tax money. It seems at times that public officials and taxpayers would settle for any development on the site, as long as property tax revenue increased to help pay for costly improvements that have already been made or are about to be made.

I don’t know if it would be worth the time and effort, but I hope that city officials, the Downtown Neighborhood Association, Historic Savannah Foundation, local preservationists, and others will exert whatever pressure they can to make sure that some semblance of the Oglethorpe plan, as extended in the original vision for SRL, survives.

Savannahâ€s surging downtown defies downturn

The article opens:

SAVANNAH — A city center that Atlanta and plenty of other cities dream about is the reality here.

Downtown Savannah teems with tourists and college students stroll past coffeehouses and restaurants in an eminently walkable urban environment. Chocolate shops sit side-by-side with art galleries, bawdy bars and boutique stores, creating the type of seamless mixed-use environment that developers dream of manufacturing.

Though long been known for walkability, downtown Savannah wasnâ€t always this way. Sections were plagued with empty storefronts and lagging foot traffic just a decade ago. A fresh influx of tourists, a renewed focus on the “creative class” and Savannah College of Art & Designâ€s unorthodox growth strategy have led to a downtown renassaince.

Atlanta certainly doesnâ€t have the waterfront lure or historic charm of its older cousin. But the importance of a pedestrian-friendly downtown and Savannahâ€s careful cultivation of a vibe that appeals to a wide swath of residents and tourists may hold lessons.

Residents turned out in droves for Fashion’s Night Out on Broughton Street

“The economy has changed, but the plan doesnâ€t need to,” said Sottile, referencing the city squares that Gen. James Oglethorpe laid out almost 300 years ago. “It survived the American Revolution, the Civil War and the 20th Century. And now itâ€s defining sustainability in the 21st Century.”

For an upbeat insider’s view of how Savannah has weathered the downturn, take a look at Tommy Linstroth’s recent post on The Creative Coast blog: Here for the Long Haul.

In a recent column, I noted that by year’s end we could be close to full occupancy on Broughton Street again, despite the long hangover from the recession.

Sure, Savannah has lots of problems, but those who don’t dwell on the problems and who forge ahead trying to get stuff done are making dramatic positive changes to the city.

It begins:

Savannah, Ga., known as one of Americaâ€s oldest and best-designed cities, finds itself straddling technological innovation and old-world elegance with the thoughtful redesign of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art. The fluid space includes a new 65,000-square-foot expansion off of the original 1856 Greek Revival museum building, and the resulting institution exalts both historicity and new technology.

Christian Sottile, AIA, of local firm Sottile & Sottile, the lead designer of the expanded museum, worked with a core team—including SCAD co-founder and president Paula Wallace—and used charrettes to help guide the early design process. From the outset, the redesign, which won a CNU Charter Award this year, envisioned increasing Savannahâ€s architectural significance as Americaâ€s largest registered urban Historic Landmark District, with a mélange of historical preservation and contemporary innovation.

From the Congress for the New Urbanism in March:

Once a center of freight commerce, the district was populated with railroad buildings and freight warehouses – some have been adaptively rehabilitated, others lost. Today, the site is surrounded by open urban land and aging, auto-oriented commercial development from the mid-20th century.

The area is primed for urban expansion. Yet due to its utilitarian past, it lacks the fine-grained urbanism and pedestrian scale of Savannahâ€s core.

The project thus strove not only to introduce a civic structure into the neighborhood, but also to establish a high quality public realm, setting the precedent for humane urbanism as the district evolves and adapts to the 21st century.

There are some nice images at both sites, but I’ll append photos that I took at the press event just before its opening last year. What a great addition to the city.

First, let’s recall the excellent New York Times piece from 2007 about the Savannah River Landing site (that big tract of land east of the Marriott along the riverfront): Savannah Adds to the Master Plan of 1733 Many of us already had doubts about the project when that piece was published in spring 2007, but I and some other doubters were too quiet in raising them (not that it would have made much difference one way or the other).

From that NYT piece, which was published about 7 months before the country entered the deepest recession since the Great Depression:

As one of the oldest planned cities in the country, Savannah is known for compact, walkable streets and beautifully landscaped historic squares. Designed by the cityâ€s founder, James Oglethorpe, in 1733, it has remained largely intact even as electricity and cars were introduced, though buildings have changed uses over time.

It is precisely this longevity that the Ambling Companies hopes to build on with the largest expansion of the historic downtown since Oglethorpe first envisioned it. Savannah River Landing, an $800 million mixed-use development currently under way, will extend the city east along the Savannah River on land that Oglethorpe platted but never made use of.

More than four years ago, the cityâ€s economic development agency hired Christian Sottile, a Savannah-based urban planner, to update the Oglethorpe plan, which is now guiding the development of Amblingâ€s 54-acre site. Mr. Sottile will be continuing a pattern of development that last had a major addition in 1856.

“Whatâ€s so unique about Savannah River Landing, we were able to reach back 150 years and continue a history of urbanism native to this place,” said Mr. Sottile, who teaches urban planning and design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Savannah River Landing would have created six new squares, and — as noted in the piece — would have been connected to downtown through likely changes to the current street pattern at the northeast end of downtown. That over time probably would have meant the elimination of the diagonal General McIntosh Boulevard and the recreation of gridded north-south and east-west blocks. (I guarantee if would have worked on many levels better than what we have now.)

Savannah River Landing as an extension of the Oglethorpe plan and street grid

PSP Investments has hired a local consultant to work with those partners and others to plan the development’s future.

City of Savannah officials said they look forward to those talks. The city government never feared the project would collapse, said Assistant City Manager Chris Morrill.

“We always knew this was a unique development on the East Coast,” Morrill said. “We’re in this for the long term.”

The city’s concern going forward is in the project remaining true to its master plan. Designed to be an extension of Savannah’s historic district, the Savannah River Landing was to incorporate parks, squares and tree-lined streets. Of the site’s 54 acres, 25 were to be public space.

The city wants the “new players” to keep “the public realm connected,” Morrill said.

“And we don’t see that changing,” he said.

I never shared Morrill’s optimism from two years ago that the plan would be or even could be preserved. (Morrill is of course now city manager in Roanoke.)

From this week’s New stadium could spur development on Savannah River Landing, property manager says:

The Savannah River Landing project, which broke ground in 2008, stalled when the economy did. The original concept, developed by Ambling Companies, called for an $800 million investment that would bring a mix of two hotels, 600 condominiums, 110 town homes, 17 million-dollar waterfront homes and about 50 shops and retail stores.

That plan, and the design meant to mimic the Oglethorpe grid pattern of historic downtown, may be revised in the current economy.

“The vision looked beautiful on paper, but Iâ€ve never seen any feasibility study that supported the amount of retail and residential on it,” Burgstiner said.

Given that, the look of the project could change, too.

“Probably a lot of the plan that is there will stay, but a lot of it will change,” he said.

These are interesting discussions.

I’m particularly interested to know from that piece quoted directly above that the Savannah River Landing owners seem willing to be flexible about land use and even land acquisition. Since an open air stadium would need only about 20% of the site, there’s reason to think a deal could be worked out despite the fact that the owners likely have tens of millions of dollars tied up in the site.

And it’s always been tantalizing to consider various uses that would be suitable for a site in such close proximity to downtown — a movie theater, for example.

But there will definitely be something lost if all or even part of the existing plan to extend the Oglethorpe grid is altered.

At the end of the day, as I keep noting, Savannah River Landing is privately owned, but we can certainly help guide its use and future development — something will happen there sometime — through close attention and informed discussion. And perhaps through direct investment.

I like it.

I especially like the way that Jordan includes so many small business owners including but not limited to Zia Sachedina of Zia (my cover photo on the homepage), Joni Saxon-Giusti of The Book Lady, Esther Shaver of E. Shaver’s, Gary Hall of Wright Square Cafe, Ruel Joyner of 24e, Jamie Deen of The Lady and Sons, Stratton Leopold of Leopold’s, Ted Dennard of Savannah Bee, Andy and Aileen Trice of Angel’s BBQ, Mike Volen of The Distillery, and on and on — sorry not to mention all of you!

He also puts the focus on public spaces, with apt presenters: John Duncan, Hugh Golson, and Christian Sottile, among others.

The Savannah Music Festival's Rob Gibson with the statue of Johnny Mercer in Michael Jordan's winning video

As one might expect from a video that comes out of a corporate contest, it feels really polished, which could work against it on a platform like YouTube, and there was clearly an amazing amount of work put into this project.

What’s not here that could be?

Well, there’s basically nothing about the beach or waterways — and the recreation they offer. Now, this isn’t a Visit the Lowcountry contest, or a Visit Tybee contest, so there’s a logical argument for the omission.

And, hey, one video can’t do everything.

Also, in its intense focus on Historic District sites and businesses, there’s not nearly as much racial diversity in this video as the city actually has.

Anyway, here it is:

This contest got rolling after Visit Savannah commissioned this widely panned “conga” video, which has now been viewed over 21,000 times on YouTube:

White sheets for ghosts? Really?

As I said above, I love Michael Jordan’s work, and I hired him a couple of years ago to film Pat Conroy presenting the finalists for the National Book Awards in a short ceremony at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home on Charlton Street:

On a side note, there might be some other interesting developments involving the Visit Savannah contest. The group of finalists was whittled down to five, but there seem to be a number of questions about why some of the other entries didn’t make the final list.