Called a potential game changer for its ability to attract private development to a long-blighted area, Augusta’s Laney-Walker and Bethlehem redevelopment project hasn’t attracted anything close to its promise of a 10-to-1 ratio of private and public dollars in its few first years.
Conceived as a compromise to win support for completion of the Augusta Convention Center, redevelopment of the historically black districts was guaranteed about $750,000 annually from a transportation and tourism fee charged on hotel room rentals for 50 years.
With an Urban Redevelopment Plan in place, city officials borrowed $8 million against the future fees in 2010 and began spending the money while continuing to tout the project’s ability to leverage public dollars for private investment.
Three years later, the first bond issue has been spent – along with $2.5 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funds – but private investment remains an “aspirational goal,” according to city documents from Housing and Community Development Director Chester Wheeler.
“We are trying to turn around almost a half-century of blight and disinvestment in our urban core,” said the document, a response to Commissioner Alvin Mason’s request for information about the identities of private developers and amounts of their investments.
via Augusta Commission: Revitalization not attracting private investment | The Augusta Chronicle.
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