Athens Impressions Pt. 2 L
Trying to Understand the Dynamics of Downtown
ast week, I described at length my return to town and so very handy.” Dekle agrees that “a grocery store would really services students enjoy on campus. Newspapers are free on my fresh impressions of Athens; almost all were framed campus; the Zell B. Miller Learning Center has more space, validate downtown living.” as questions, the broadest of which referred to the heart “There are plenty of models of supermarkets that can go improved amenities, and its own Jittery Joe’s; and the Ramsey of the Classic City—not football, but downtown—and to into an urban setting,” Clark says, but Athens Downtown Center, which provides fitness facilities for students and facits evolution in recent years. This question was manifold, and ulty, “just went through significant renovation and expansion.” Development Authority Executive Director Kathryn Lookofsky I feared, as I awaited publication, that it risked heresy. To the explains that state liquor laws, which restrict sales near contrary, conversations with various community members have churches and day-cares, threaten supermarkets. suggested that downtown is venerated but not sanctified, that Everyone, it seems, grieves Barnett’s News Stand, which concerns for its future lie prominent in the discourse of public closed last year—“a devastating loss,” Clark calls it. planning, and that proposals for its advancement are wide“It’s weird to watch it as a creature—the university—pull “I feel this has left us in an unfortunate position,” Janet spread and disparate, if not irreconcilable. in,” Chris Wyrick says. The story of Mercury Art Works, in many Geddis says. “A town this well-read and artsy can’t stand to I may have underestimated our unanimous appreciation ways, epitomizes a frustratingly familiar pattern. In Athens, lose such downtown shops.” Referring back to the closing of for this hilly haven, but it seems I sense rightly that the curall too often, the pieces do not quite come together. But the locally owned book store The Old Black Dog in Five Points rent moment is a pivotal one for downtown—a moment that Mercury’s trajectory is uncommon, if telling. Wyrick opened in 1996, she says, “Until a couple of years ago, I’d assumed begs big questions. If we have grown complacent, seduced by Mercury with Val Paluck in 2001. “There was never a dedicated the literary scene in Athens was dying… More careful scanning a perception of downtown based on memory or gallery here, and we’d always talked about that,” mythology more so than reality, this may be the he says. They renovated a space (now Toula’s, on precise moment to look to the horizon, to turn Clayton Street) and arranged a “big group show” off autopilot and to notice the quiet rumblings for all the artists they knew in town. “The first of change already at work in the ground beneath time we met all the artists at the space just was us. Of two things I feel confident: downtown is this amazing moment,” he remembers. “We got on the move, and we must move with it or get Weaver D’s barbecue, and we had this big party. out of the way. It ended up being September 15. It was right Here’s how Athens works: I meet contractor after the bombing, and it was just really emoDrew Dekle through his impossibly chic daughtional and raw, but it was just really inspiring ter. On a nippy evening, I am sharing a glass of that this gallery was about to open, and so we champagne with my mother at The National. We had all this energy.” The gallery was “really well are reminiscing about our own cozy restaurant, received,” he says. But downtown could not, or long gone, and rehearsing our “when we open would not, support its only gallery. another” routine, when we are distracted by the “There’s plenty of art being made here,” entrance of a father and daughter. After my own Wyrick says, but “it’s tricky. It’s really weird… parent date, I fall in with theirs; joining me It’s like more of a kind of symbiotic, get along, at the bar, the lovely blonde, dressed in black, barter type existence, where there’s not a lot of informs me that her mother will be performing at money, necessarily.” Hotel Indigo that evening; she then orders wine Drew Dekle puts it this way: “This is a town for her father and a cheese plate for herself. She to make art, but not a town to sell it. People is two-and-half. who really like and appreciate art in Athens for After the Dekles head off, their seats are the most part can’t afford it, and/or they know This June, 1992 photograph shows Barnett’s News Stand on College Square, going strong as the epicenter filled by a lovely couple with whom I chat about the artist” (whom they contact directly). of downtown Athens. publishing and independent bookstores. They “Downtown is definitely one of the best happen to be Chris Wyrick’s parents, in town things about Athens, obviously, because of the from Charleston for the same event at Indigo: the opening of architecture of it,” Wyrick says. But he says downtown’s proxof the Flagpole, as well as keeping my ears peeled over the last Chris’ gallery in its new space. An hour later, at the unveilimity to the university can be problematic. “I’ve watched so many months, has taught me that we have far more literary ing of Mercury Art Works’ debut exhibit, a buzzing crowd fills goings-on than I’d ever suspected… there’s a niche that needs many businesses come and go, and if you don’t appeal to stuIndigo’s equally impressive lobby. A swinging trapeze perfordents, if you’re downtown, you’re in a tough spot.” He is quick to be filled, as it doesn’t make sense that a creative town like mance by the Canopy Studio Repertory Company (including Athens doesn’t have its own neighborhood bookstore.” Geddis to place greater blame on “the subdivision and the big-box Rabun Dekle) adds to a slight sense of the surreal. is planning to open her own independent Avid Bookshop down- and the sprawl development,” but he adds, “Part of the reason town next year. we moved out of downtown, I will definitely say, was a lot of our older clientele were struggling to feel comfortable coming downtown. It was always seniors who would want to come to our events; they would want to park close by and then circle Drew Dekle’s great-grandfather ran a tailoring shop on and then leave and say, ’I wanted to come by, but, you know, College Avenue. The tailor’s first son, Bud Minder, born in “We’re always going to be insulated, to a large extent, as there were kids, and it was crazy.’” 1902, ran a food machinery company that, as Dekle says, a university town,” Clark says. “It’s the driving force of this The Mercury tried to schedule events for quieter nights. invented the technology to “put peanut butter and other community. It’s our raison d’être.” Dekle puts it another way: Wyrick says they also tried to arrange “art walks, like First things between two crackers” and operated in what was “Athens is flying on their coattails, and if you don’t admit Friday type of things,” but they “never worked, because no one then the Leathers Building, on west Washington Street. The that, then you’re sort of kidding yourself. Even though I don’t was close enough to anything else… We’d try to juggle it to Leathers business long since moved to Pulaski Street, where work for the university and my wife doesn’t work for the unimake it fit, but ultimately, downtown was not the ideal situathe building is now divided into shops and studios, and Dekle’s versity, our clients, or at least our clients’ clients, ultimately tion for us as a gallery.” family has continued to manage the Quality Foods Machinery are university people. And if it’s not our clients’ clients, it’s Mercury moved to the Chase Street Park Warehouse district Building. In the 1970s, they rented the space to a large-scale their clients.” in 2006. “There are definitely people who really do care about screen-printing company whose clients included the Atlanta With the flocking of middle-class shoppers to the malls, preserving a downtown that is healthy for downtown—for peoBraves and Duckhead. “Then they moved to some factory some- downtown has become especially reliant on its university cliple who live here, not just for students,” Wyrick says, mentionwhere,” Dekle says. entele. “If you’re downtown, your target market is going to be ing Lookofsky and Clark, “but when I was operating a business So, too, did the other manufacturers. Meanwhile, the the university,” asserts Teri Evans, Program Coordinator in the downtown, I was so busy, I didn’t really have time to engage development of Georgia Square Mall in 1981 drew westward UGA Small Business Development Center. Lookofsky, too, sees with them very much. I don’t know what else could be done.” downtown’s department stores—Davison’s, J. C. Penney, Belk’s, downtown and UGA as “inextricably connected.” Downtown “We love this downtown,” Wyrick says, and Mercury, which and Sears (which had already jumped to Beechwood Shopping is a “great recruiting tool for UGA,” she says, adding that the Wyrick now owns with his wife, Sandi Turner, has moved back Center)—and then later came the mega-stores. Almost all local university contributes “youth and vitality here, and a great to the edge of downtown, to a new and vibrant space in the businesses resisted the migration, but as sprawl began to satappreciation for creative thought.” Hotel Indigo. “I lived downtown for three years, right on isfy everyday shopping needs, downtown catered increasingly Now, though, the university is pulling away from downtown, Broad, so it’s very important to me. It’s the main reason I to niche markets: college students, gift buyers and tourists, rather than to it. For instance, moving the art school to East stay in this town, honestly: downtown is really key to me. But among them. Campus Road from Jackson Street removed a large chunk of again, it’s just, like [retired UGA art professor] Jim Herbert “You can get almost everything that you need in downfaculty and students from the downtown environs. said, ’Architecture is destiny,’ and there are great things about town,” says Amy Clark, Leisure Travel Marketing Director for the UGA demographer Douglas Bachtel has seen an “increasing the way the downtown architecture of Athens works, and then Athens Convention and Visitors Bureau, but “there are a few trend towards campus-centric types of activities that would there are limitations.” things that you really, literally cannot get in downtown.” Clark try to keep the students on campus,” and UGA’s Director of would welcome a florist and a supermarket, which “would be Administrative Services, Doug Ross, talks about the sweeping Elaine Ely
One Gallery’s Odyssey
Bill Pitcher
Manufacturing to Retail
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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ NOVEMBER 4, 2009
UGA Giveth and Taketh Away