Staff Writer
Visiting Augusta from El Paso, Texas, Belinda Miller and Keith Erickson speak highly of the Southern hospitality, forested landscape and small-town feel they've experienced since their arrival Monday.
Zach Boyden-Holmes/Staff
Among the signs that city officials would like removed from gateways is that of the X-Mart Adult Supercenter.
Zach Boyden-Holmes/Staff
The new signs also serve market purposes, according to Barry White of CVB.
Part of an Automated Data Processing team in Augusta for two weeks of training, they received rental car and hotel room upgrades after deplaning at Augusta Regional Airport and have been pleased ever since.
At the east Augusta airport, they plugged their hotel address into a GPS device and cruised Bobby Jones Expressway around the city to their lodgings at Candlewood Suites in west Augusta.
Erickson's first impression, taken from the airport, was of a community with strong military ties.
"I knew there was a big base nearby," he said.
Erickson said he picked up brochures at the airport about things he wanted to do -- such as explore history museums -- although he hadn't ventured downtown yet.
At Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau in downtown Augusta, officials fretted about why the travelers hadn't ventured from the western part of the city.
A new set of signs and banners, recently installed at every "gateway" entrance into the city, at expressway off-ramps, within downtown and around Augusta National Golf Course, "has as much of a marketing benefit as they have a directional benefit," said Barry White, CVB executive director.
Miller and Erickson are precisely the kind of tourists the CVB strives to bring to Augusta's downtown attractions, White said.
It isn't the first time the CVB has heard of tourists relatively unaware of Augusta's offerings, said Jennifer Bowen, CVB vice president of product development.
Fort Gordon visitors have said they've traveled to Augusta for years before realizing that, at the end of Gordon Highway, Augusta has a downtown, she said.
The signage plan, designed by Merje, is not complete, and right now includes only "welcome to Augusta" and gateway signs at each of the county line entrances, and some directionals.
To come are new directionals at the new St. Sebastian Way exit off River Watch Parkway, which brings most commuters and travelers to Augusta's medical district and attractions downtown, Bowen said.
Also in the works are improvements at the Doug Barnard Parkway boundary of Augusta's Messerly Wastewater Treatment Plant, which Miller took for the source of the odor she smelled at the airport.
The familiar scent, weaker than it has been in years past, actually wafts from International Paper.
A $50,000 grant will help create a visual barrier between Messerly and Doug Barnard Parkway, the road most visitors take from the airport to their destination.
The GPS directions that took Miller and Erickson around Bobby Jones to their hotel also bypassed an attraction Augusta recently spent nearly $700,000 fighting, unsuccessfully.
Visitors using a map to take the most direct route from Augusta Regional to downtown, and anyone traveling Gordon Highway into downtown will pass by the newly reopened X-Mart, located at Gordon Highway's intersection with Doug Barnard.
Well-kept and marked city gateways are a critical part of Augusta's new master plan for development, said John Shields of ICON Architecture, the plan's author.
"In terms of Augusta's identity and sense of self and the image it projects to the rest of the world, it's extremely important."
Many of its gateways send out a less welcoming image, he said.
"It's hard to drive along Gordon Highway or Deans Bridge Road and feel good."
On the other hand, there are beautiful ways into Augusta, such as Riverwatch, Shields said.
"Most cities would kill to have that sort of gateway entrance into the city," he said.
Once completed, an Interstate 20-Bobby Jones Expressway interchange on the southeast side of Augusta will create a beautiful access route downtown, he said.
Augusta's new signage initiative -- not the first it's undertaken since 2000 -- "is a nice looking set of signs" but hampered by issues of coordinating the new signs with existing state and local signage, he said.
"They can't just be put between another sign and a utility pole," he said. "You have to have enough room, and do a beauty spot treatment."
ICON brings the city's new master plan, which cost $500,000, to Augusta next week seeking final feedback from the public.
Slated for demolition in the new master plan is the Augusta gateway Shields most dislikes -- the John C. Calhoun overpass, which whisks Washington Road motorists over historic Harrisburg and drops them off at 12th Street downtown.
"It's wrong in so many ways," Shields said. "It really mucked up a very historic area, and minimizes and diminishes the redevelopment possibilities."
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