Augusta’s mayor wants the city to get rolling on the river.
Standing in front of the city’s shabby Boathouse Community Center on Riverfront Drive on Friday, Garnett Johnson announced a proposed redevelopment of Riverwalk Augusta into a Savannah River showpiece to help stoke tourism and economic development.
The money is there, he said – an estimated $22 million through a renewed 1-cent special-purpose local option sales tax and re-allocation of funds from another development project that went bust. But the proposal also needs voters’ approval when the penny tax appears on the ballot later this year.
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“With your support and momentum of SPLOST 9 we will build a new riverfront that is accessible, that is beautiful and alive with possibility for all of Augusta to enjoy,” Johnson said.
Specifically, the proposal calls for a restoration and beautification of Riverwalk, which has shown its age since the 1980s despite routine maintenance.
Riverwalk also would be extended from the Fifth Street Marina, the proposed future site of an outdoor adventure center featuring a zipline. The landscaped stretch of greenspace would create a nature walk that ends at the upgraded boathouse, which Johnson said would be stripped to the studs to use the building’s foundation footprint in the rebuild.
Before its use as a community gathering place, it was built in 1987 as the Palmer’s Seafood House restaurant. As an events venue, the facility grew increasingly harder for the city to maintain, including flooding and a mold infestation that for a time drove out the Augusta Rowing Club from its home on the boathouse’s ground floor.
Augusta’s SPLOST 9 funding requests includes $5 million to restore and enhance the current Riverwalk and $3 million to extend it, Johnson said.
The new boathouse, he said, could be funded through $14 million taken from a $93 million mixed-use development that commissioners authorized in 2017 to refurbish the old depot on Reynolds Street. The development, which included a parking deck for global tech company Unisys, never materialized, and the Augusta Downtown Development Authority voted in 2020 to terminate its agreement with Alabama developer BLOC Global.
“The funding is already earmarked and can be reappropriated to support this visionary, community-focused project,” Johnson said.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Augusta mayor proposes riverfront revamp with $22 million in funding