Comment on Garden City adopts Urban Redevelopment Plan

As home to the Port of Savannah, Garden City has seen its share of change and development over the years. The city today is a commercial and industrial hub, traveled heavily by tractor trailers and through traffic, but it didn’t start that way. In fact, as the introduction to a draft Urban Redevelopment Plan developed by city staff reports, Garden City began as “a bedroom community to the city of Savannah” — a place for families to return at the end of the day. But over time, the plan says, “The changing dynamic in development has led to disinvestment in some of the older neighborhoods in the city, encroachment of industrial uses, declining pockets of commercial and deteriorating buildings.” City officials hope to do something about that. In a unanimous vote Monday, Garden City council members adopted the Urban Redevelopment Plan — a document they hope will open new avenues for funding redevelopment and improvements in the areas of the city most prone to blight. Garden City Mayor Don Bethune said the most immediate benefit of the new plan is that it will make his town more competitive for grants offered by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for economic development and housing improvements. The city should then be able to use those grant funds to address the areas pegged by the plans as those most in need of redevelopment and revitalization: • The West Highway 21 residential area, an older section of town with a number of properties in poor condition; • The Highway 21 gateway, populated by a number of older commercial businesses on either side of the highway; and • Garden City South, a commercial area that includes Ogeechee Road from Chatham Parkway to Dean Forest Road and Dean Forest from Ogeechee to Interstate 16. Bethune said Garden City is applying for a $500,000 Community HOME Investment Program grant for the housing piece.