James and I were talking the other night about Augusta. James, whose last name is Folker, used to be metro editor here, but now he's on the copy desk, and sometimes before I go home I go over and worry him when he's trying to get the paper laid out.

Anyway, James said he wondered what it would take to make Augusta the first-rate city everybody wants it to be.

When it opened in 1990 with fireworks and a concert by The Lettermen, the amphitheater on Riverwalk was the great hope. Then it was Port Royal and later the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame.

"What's it going to take?" he asked. "A downtown baseball stadium? A canal running down Ellis Street?"

I said I didn't know, but I'd ask around to see what other people said.

The first one I asked was a city employee in the lobby of the Marble Palace the next day. He said, "Get rid of those guys upstairs."

Then I asked two of the guys upstairs who've been there the longest - Commissioners Andy Cheek and Marion Williams - what they thought. Strangely enough, they both talked like outsiders. I also asked the mayor to weigh in, and finally I called retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, the president of Visionary Leadership, to see what he had to say.

INSTITUTIONAL MEDIOCRITY AND TOO MANY FIEFDOMS: Mr. Cheek said Augusta was once quite the metropolitan area but has rested on its laurels and allowed many of its natural and man-made attributes, such as the canal, to deteriorate.

While surrounding counties build bike trails and greenways, Augusta builds jails and courthouses, he said.

What would bring Augusta back would be his Ellis Street Option, "one of the most economically viable options ever" that has brought "tremendous financial gain" to Oklahoma City and San Antonio and every other city that has capitalized on the use of their canal systems, he said.

Currently, Augusta is a "non-compete city" because its economic development engines don't work together, he said.

"We've been in the top of unemployment in the state for years and years and years," he said. "And our economy has been one of the slowest growing in the state. And yet we seem to be content with the fact that at least it's steady. It's just baloney."

Too many petty fiefdoms, boards and authorities, such as the Coliseum Authority, that are too caught up in control instead of in making their entities competitive have held Augusta back, he said.

And just look at the Augusta Canal.

"The diversion dam has areas that need to be repaired, and they've been working on it for over two years," he said. "The tow path has collapsed four times in the last two years. And do you see any maintenance activity in spite of the plans being passed? No. It's like the elevators here (in the Marble Palace). We've been waiting for a year and a half to get those repaired. It's institutional mediocrity."

He said the people want something more, but those who can make the decisions to get things done - the bureaucracies, boards and authorities - keep spinning their wheels because there are a lot of people here who like it that way.

MORE CIRCUS, MORE BREAD: Mr. Williams is likewise critical of boards and authorities and consultants who he says are "loading up their pockets."

He said Augusta ought to have an amusement park; a zoo; a drag strip; an aquarium, possibly beneath the floor of the trade and exhibition center; a bird sanctuary in Pendleton King Park; and an open-topped bus on Broad Street.

"An open-topped bus is going to really generate some money because it's different," he said. "Other cities are doing it. But we want to do the same thing and say it ought to be growing. But we want to design the growth the way certain people in Augusta want it to grow. Just certain people."

While Mr. Cheek may have his Ellis Street Option, Mr. Williams has his Pendleton King Park bird sanctuary.

"We've got Pendleton King Park over there. All that land. All that property. We could be doing something with it. I said, 'Let's do a bird sanctuary.' Enclose the whole thing in so you could go 24 hours a day if you wanted to."

He asked what would make people come to Augusta and patronize the trade and exhibit center.

"Maybe an aquarium on the floor where you walk on some fish or something really different," he said. "But you can't build the same thing that Savannah or Atlanta does."

Another reason things don't get done in Augusta, he said, is that commissioners don't hold the employees accountable.

"The judicial center ain't built," he said. "It ain't necessarily the elected officials. It's the people outside who want it to go this way. You've got all these authorities that got the power not to do what we get blamed for."

THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: Mayor Deke Copenhaver said Augusta is already on the way up and that people need to know it. The tax digest grew by 6 percent in the past year, and new industries, such as T-Mobile and Automated Data Processing, have made a difference.

"You see it in the amount of investment coming into the community," he said. "The people in the Department of Economic Development in Atlanta say they've never seen anything like it in Augusta. The state's realizing that. The nation's realizing that, but I don't think local people see it yet. I mean we've got $386 million in DOT projects going on right now. So the wave has hit.

"I talked to a developer out of Atlanta awhile back who said, 'If you got the TEE Center and the White's building and the Watermark, you would be far and away above where other downtowns are going now. If you got the baseball stadium, that would just be icing on the cake.'"

Three out of four of those projects are under way, and when they start coming up out of the ground it will dawn on people there's been a wave of progress, he said.

"You look at the work that's being done on I-20," he said. "You look at the Augusta Mall project. You go out to the airport and you look at the progress being made. If you look around, you can see it."

A MAJOR CONCLUSION: Mr. Smith said what Augusta needs is a 20-year strategic plan and the support to implement it, although that would be "tough in a city so closely divided between the races.

"If they hired me as their strategic planner, I'm not sure I could do it," he said.

IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A JOKE ... Someone told me the other day that some people think I'm against the Ellis Street canal idea, which is laughable. Why should I care? If the people want to pass a bond referendum or sales tax to pay for it, I think it would be great. But it won't be cheap.

Relocating the water and sewer lines on Ellis Street would cost $30 million, according to Utilities Director Max Hicks, and that might be on the low side. At a recent meeting of utility officials, Georgia Power and AT&T officials wouldn't even hazard a guess at how they would relocate their lines or how much it might cost. Georgia Power has transformers underground on Ellis Street with feeder lines going into the buildings fronting Broad and Greene streets. New systems would have to be built while the current systems were still operating. Otherwise, they'd have to shut down most of downtown. In addition, they possibly would have to install the systems in front of the buildings, which could be costly to the owners.

WHERE ELSE? Brian Mulherin called last week to report that the free prostate screenings at Lowe's are held directly under the big yellow plumbing signs.

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylvia.cooper@augustachronicle.com.