Great news for downtown Macon - from macon.com and the Macon Telegraph:Jenna Findlan/The Telegraph
A $29 million downtown project involving the reuse of the old Capricorn Recording Studios and Macon Rescue Mission will be the largest single private investment ever in downtown Macon, a NewTown Macon official said Monday. "The project, located on 4.2-acres between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fifth Street between Poplar and Pine streets, will include a 30-unit town home, a five-story residential, retail and commercial building and an 85-room boutique hotel, as well as a new recording studio.
"Our original development concept was basically to create what we would call a centrally located, kind of cool, urban area," said Ronald Conners, the managing member of Capricorn Centre LLC.
The Capricorn Centre project is hoped to be a tipping point for downtown development, said Ford of NewTown.
"It's beginning to accelerate," he said. "The renovation downtown is really going to be stronger each year as we go forward."
Some downtown projects are just gaining steam while others are nearing completion. NewTown is negotiating the sale of three buildings adjacent to the Market City Cafe on Cherry Street, Ford said. A new recording studio, which is not owned by NewTown, on Second Street across from the Cox Capitol Theatre is nearly complete, he said.
Other development projects taking form include the historic Park Hotel and Dannenburg Building on Poplar Street.
Demolition has been completed on both buildings, and developers are working on the plans, said Tony Long, a downtown developer involved in the projects.
He said he hopes Quantum Dynamics, a company that manages government contracts, will be able to move in to the Park Hotel around January or February.
Fifty-six lofts, apartments and luxury condos are planned for the Dannenburg Building, which is expected to rent its first apartment about a year from now, he said.
OK, so they left out NCCd, still great things going on that we get to be a part of.
The full story.
A separate story on adding 1,000 downtown residents over the next 5 years.
