You may or may not have experienced it yet but, it’s happening. There is a new buzz around town as we watch the rebirth of Downtown Albany as the cultural hub of Southwest Georgia.
Reflecting its role as Southwest Georgia’s capital city, Downtown Albany is the cultural core of the region. A new art and culture movement will pave the way for an even more vibrant “capital city” and continue to build momentum for art-based economic growth. I support a downtown art and culture movement as an economic development tool for the entire region, and as the most effective way to build a culturally engaged population.
Cultural Attractions Can Drive Urban Growth
There are plenty of examples of the globe where arts and culture have played a pivotal role in neighborhood revitalization as artists transform derelict neighborhoods into vibrant cultural districts, and performing arts centers become anchors for commercial and residential developments. These new neighborhood attractions become lures to bring suburban residents in for an evening of entertainment. Downtown Albany can and will be another success story of this type of effort.
Across the United States most Cities are experiencing that most "Downtown growth is from young professionals and older 'empty nesters' who want to be near entertainment, restaurants and cultural amenities," reports an article in the May 7 edition of USA Today. “This trend is not simply a turn of the millennium phenomena. As the nation's 79 million baby boomers reach retirement age, experts predict that more will be trading in suburban homes for downtown condos near restaurants and theaters.” This is something we will capitalize on in Downtown Albany.
As we continue to grow Downtown Albany I believe it will be seen that art and cultural attractions spur new business development. It has been long recognized that corporations base their decisions on where to relocate on the local quality-of-life, including the availability of cultural resources. The rebirth of Downtown will show that the arts play an important role in fostering emerging businesses. We are looking to develop the quality-of-life amenities, and cultural art attractions that appeal to young professionals, families, and the older 'empty nesters'.
Building Cultural Organizations into Economic Assets
We have a couple basic strategies that we are using to build local cultural organizations into cultural art assets. First, we are looking into every area of Downtown and how we can support or create new homes for local organizations. For example, we are transforming the old NAPA building on Pine Ave into a vibrant outdoor Art Park. This one project could be one of the most important projects that the region has seen in sometime. Second, we will be reaching out to all regional cultural art institutions to see how they can partner with us and each other, to further the cultural arts experience Downtown. Again, the creation of the Art Park has already began to jump start those partnerships in our community. Finally, we continue to create signature events that promote our identity and give visitors a reason to come. The perfect example of this is the monthly Downtown event Nights@dtown “Deck of Arts”. For those of you have frequented this event you can testify that this a diverse cultural arts experience like no other in the region.
Final Thoughts
For the entire region, more focus on Downtown Albany will result in more things to do and a greater quality of life for all citizens. As our region grows, our Downtown becomes more important and future citizens expect more out of it. In the end, our creative engines at the central core of our region has the ability to attract industry, maintain property values, and retain the most creative and intelligent of its citizenry. This effort will continue to make the area economically viable and relevant over the coming decade.
