Augusta vs Macon vs Savannah? (Columbus, Wilmington Island: sales, crime rates, hotels)

[Atlanta-Kid]

I can put it like this
Savannah needs a water park and to build on the islands more
Augusta needs the master plan and(inters tae connection)
more company buildings downtown to expand the central business district
Macon has interstate connection
all macon needs is more attractions and (fix the mall)
Columbus has a river rafting course
They need interstate connection downtown and need to make downtown look like a downtown
(business minus AFLAC)

[convextech]

Originally Posted by Atlanta-Kid

all macon needs is more attractions and (fix the mall)

Actually, Macon has a brand-new mall (well, about 5 years old now) on the North side of town:

The Shoppes at River Crossing - Premier Shopping, Dining, Entertainment in Macon, Georgia

And someone bought out the old Colonial mall and is doing renovations on it now.

[Atlanta-Kid]

Originally Posted by convextech

Actually, Macon has a brand-new mall (well, about 5 years old now) on the North side of town:

The Shoppes at River Crossing - Premier Shopping, Dining, Entertainment in Macon, Georgia

And someone bought out the old Colonial mall and is doing renovations on it now.

Oh yeah,
I remember that place
Well they
can now have 2 malls in the city
plus Warner Robins
Which has One mall and a mini shopping plaza

[convextech]

LOL have you been to "Warner Vegas" lately? The Galleria mall area has expanded to include most, if not all, of the same major department stores that are on Macon's Presidential Parkway, and there are hundreds of mini shopping centers. Warner Robins has grown exponentially in the last ten years, and has doubled in size. It's incredible.

[GRS86]

I have to say Savannah by a wide margin, then Augusta. I'd say that over the next 10-20 years, Savannah and Augusta will put some distance between themselves and Macon and Columbus.

[Columbuskidd92]

I don't see it happening.

[River_Dawg]

^ What do you see happening? Let me guess, Savannah and Columbus will put distance between themselves and Macon and Augusta. Right?

[masonbauknight]

@GRS. Yep, Savannah by a wide margin. That wasn't the case between the late 1950s through the mid-1980s. The 4 second-tier cities were all about the same (with Savannah the least dynamic among the four). Macon was booming in the 1960s and 1970s, but has pretty much come to a standstill. I have no idea why; it's smack in the middle of the state and more or less equidistant to GA's 6 metros, with 2 interstates and Robins AFB nearby. Its slump is a mystery. But GA's prestige second-tier city is Savannah. Augusta is larger, but it comes in second.

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by masonbauknight

@GRS. Yep, Savannah by a wide margin. That wasn't the case between the late 1950s through the mid-1980s. The 4 second-tier cities were all about the same (with Savannah the least dynamic among the four). Macon was booming in the 1960s and 1970s, but has pretty much come to a standstill. I have no idea why; it's smack in the middle of the state and more or less equidistant to GA's 6 metros, with 2 interstates and Robins AFB nearby. Its slump is a mystery. But GA's prestige second-tier city is Savannah. Augusta is larger, but it comes in second.

MASON, think about what happened across Georgia and the South in the late 1960s / early 1970s and you'll understand why Macon's boom times abruptly ended. Macon, moreso than any of Georgia's other second-tier cities, was profoundly affected by court-ordered desegregation. Overnight, the Bibb County school system's long tradition of separating students by both race AND sex (they had different high schools for boys and girls) was dismantled. At the same time, historic Macon high schools that were among the best IN THE NATION were closed and merged into large urban schools, with kids being bused across town. Whites fled to private schools, crime skyrocketed, ineffective political leadership took hold. And the rest is history.

If you want to know more about this period of Macon's history, check out the amazingly honest (and confusing) history chapter for Macon's Central High School on Wikipedia.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centr...Macon,_Georgia)

Savannah, Augusta and Columbus all had their own problems with desegregation, but nothing to the degree of Macon-Bibb. And sadly, the effects of that era are still being felt to this day.

[masonbauknight]

@Newsboy. Savannah had one of the most extensive busing plans in the South in the 1970s (except perhaps for Charlotte). The distances were huge (kids who walked to Windsor Forest HS were bussed to Beach HS in midtown for 20 years). Savannah-Chatham also didn't allow seniors to return to their old high school to graduate, a "senior exception" that was universal across the country (only recently adopted in Savannah during a shift in school boundaries). I just don't agree with you. Savannah's two-decade-long busing plan was very radical.

You do remind me just how strange Macon was: virtually the only U.S. city that segregated boys and girls in separate PUBLIC schools! That is weird even by Georgia's benighted standards of those days, but Macon has been far more conservative than other GA metros. It might be the only metro (as opposed to small town) today where people will come up to you and ask where you go to church. A Calif. woman on another board reported this--her husband was offered a nice job in Macon, so she came to scope the city out for a few days. She already thought Macon was hopeless--dull, more small town than city--and, sure enough, while eating at a nice restaurant a man comes over to ask her if she'd accepted Jesus. You can't make this stuff up.