There’s already been significant positive change and growth in Macon’s downtown, a historic street grid full of 19th and early 20th century architecture, multiple parks, and a network of riverfront trails.
To help guide and better coordinate this growth, the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority formed the Macon Action Plan (MAP) in 2015, informed by a deep well of public input. The MAP is a comprehensive, community-driven placemaking plan that envisions the future of Macon’s historic downtown and intown neighborhoods. Implementers of the plan have focused on supporting the city’s anchors of economic development through connectivity projects and residential development, like improving walking or biking connections to the city’s impressive trail network that largely follows the Ocmulgee River.
“MAP thoroughly recommended ways that we could connect that trail system to the businesses and job sector of downtown and we’re actively working to make that happen,” says Morrison.
One of their inspirations for this place-based approach has been the ongoing work to better connect downtown Macon with an area known as College Hill southwest of downtown, where Mercer University is located. But that connection goes two ways, and the Action Plan is also about building a surrounding community that’s more attractive to local college graduates in order to encourage them to stay in Macon after they graduate. These efforts — including creating and redeveloping parks, increasing the supply of loft apartments, investing in restaurants and new bars, supporting the local music scene, and committing to bike and pedestrian infrastructure — have led to notable increases in young professionals choosing to start their careers in Macon.
Macon is laying the groundwork for increased returns on investments while hoping to preserve the qualities that have always made the city great, like the historic geometric downtown grid full of buildings predating the civil war, its colleges and universities, the artistic legacies of Otis Redding, Little Richard, and the Allman Brothers, the history of the Ocmulgee Indian Mounds, and it’s engaged citizenry.
“What we’ve been trying to figure out is, how do we unlock the best version of Macon that we can be and turn that into a place that really does stand out… how do you make a place communicate all of those things that we know as Maconites to the rest of the world? If we do that, then we are going to unlock the great economic potential that we know we have.”
Photo credits: NewTown Macon via Flickr