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What’s happening to F’ville’s Courthouse Square?

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@thecitizennews.com

With two recent vacancies on the square in downtown Fayetteville, one might wonder if the district can survive competition from larger retailers in the city.

But some say the vacancies are more of a statement on the pricing of leases for those storefronts.

Salon Plush and Fayette Music Merchants recently moved out of their respective storefronts on the west side of the square. The city does not have a program to recruit businesses to the downtown area, but a recent movement has been to make the area more pleasing aesthetically.

Developer Mike Faulkner said last week that Famous Fish Company will be opening a restaurant-bar location on his partially-renovated property on the west side of the square.

He said the former Salon Plush location, just two doors down, needs interior improvements to justify the rent being sought and that the lease price asked for at the former Fayette Music Merchants site might be a little too high.

Bringing a “vitality” for downtown Fayetteville is important, Main Street Director Nancy Price said, noting that the new restaurant will bring more after-hours activity.

“We’d like to attract more goods and services who would attract people to the square,” said Price.

Price said the city hasn’t had an opportunity to recruit businesses because of the other projects it has downtown, including the Villages Amphitheater and the recent “backstreet” renovation that provided new parking and brick sidewalks for the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House and businesses on Glynn Street.

An economic recruitment program is on the future wish list, Price noted.

“It’s something we’ve been talking about,” Price said.

Much of the city’s recent work focused on the downtown area has been on improving appearances and, in the case of the amphitheater, creating a destination to attract people downtown.

Al Hovey-King, chairman of the Downtown Development Authority and a member of the city council, said the group’s main goal is to “renovate the downtown area and bring in businesses, and the 24-hour people who might live and choose to work downtown.”

The new restaurant announced for the downtown square last week, The Famous Fish Company, will compliment the other offerings nearby including the established City Cafe, Hovey-King said.

Just on the other side of the City Cafe, a historically significant house is getting a big makeover, also thanks in part to help from the DDA, which secured low-interest financing, Hovey-King said. The developer, who got $500,000 in low-interest loans, will use the house for office space.

“That really made a difference in those folks being able to make that renovation happen at the level and quality it is,” Hovey-King said of the low-interest loans.

The city is also planning an extra-wide, tree-lined sidewalk to link downtown to the nearby Villages at LaFayette subdivision and that too will be a crucial piece of the downtown puzzle, Hovey-King noted. The plan needs approval of the Georgia Department of Transportation to close off a little-used lane of traffic, however.

But making the sacrifice of a little convenience for auto traffic in favor of pedestrian and bike traffic will be worth it, city officials say.

“We’re trying to build that critical mass downtown,” Hovey-King said.

The DDA also offers a matching grant of up to $5,000 for facade improvements for businesses on the west side of the square, but only one owner has taken advantage of that deal, Price noted. Of course, it comes with strings attached, as the DDA has to approve the designs for the facade renovation.

Price said the program is likely one of the most lucrative facade grant offers in the state.

Faulkner, who has secured a restaurant for his partially-renovated building on the square, used the facade grant to help give the building a feel of an older era. But he has been the only business owner, so far, to take advantage of it.

Likewise, the city met with resistance when it presented its original backstreet plans to property owners on the west side of the square, city officials said.

The first plan called for paving the privately-owned alleyway in addition to the rest of the adjacent city-owned parking lot. Also on the drawing board was the burying of utility lines to give the area a cleaner look.

But some property owners declined to cooperate with the utility work, and so the plan was downscaled, officials confirmed.

“We did everything on our own property basically,” Hovey-King said. But as the project started, some property owners asked about paying to have their part of the alleyway repaved, and more interest was shown in the project, Hovey-King added.

He hopes that kind of interest builds up over time for the downtown area.

“I think as people start to see and understand what our thrust is, we’ll get more support,” Hovey-King said.