The biggest thing that people have to realize, West Broad Street was
West Broad Street. I was over to the Hilton the other day about the
Jewish veterans, and a lot of people did their training here before they
went on to the Eleventh Airborne, did their training here out at Fort
Stewart and Hunter, and they said this city has really changed. But from
an African-American perspective, people have to realize that West Broad
Street will never be what it used to be and accept that fact, and we
need to move forward with developing new approaches to dealing with West
Broad Street.
The major thing that people are saying you've got two separate
developments because of the overpass going across. Well, they go to
Chicago, they got to New York, they've got EL trains running down in the
middle of the street and those things, and that doesn't impede
development. It's a mindset. So you've got to get rid of that mindset
like I told people, if you come down, the traffic on West Broad Street
Page 18could not handle the traffic coming off of
I-16. That was put there by design so that the traffic could come in and
go down Montgomery Street and come on downtown. You have an exit there
only for MLK. So you can develop on the right or the left, and it's
still West Broad or MLK. So don't get any concept of either north or
south. It's still West Broad Street and deal with it and move forward
what we should've had. And that's why I said with the historic district,
we should've had a sign ordinance similar to Hilton Head or something
that will take the Burger King signs or the Wendy's signs or the Popeye
signs down to make them more conforming to the street than anything else
so businesses could blend in. But you can't build a condominium and open
up your window and look out and all you see is a Burger King sign or
cars coming down the highway. So that would impede, it depends on the
mindset of people. If you're coming from New York or Washington, you're
going to listen to sirens going all night, and you're going to adjust to
that fact. Or walk out and you look down to another building or
whatever, you're not going to be able to look out and see the river or
look out and see a beach or something. You're going to look at a Burger
King or a Wendy's. So that is the concept that people have to realize
for the future of the development of West Broad Street.
Now further down, as I say, had people had the vision to keep the row of
businesses intact or the churches intact and build behind, then we would
be in good shape. But they didn't have that insight. You're not going to
be able to rebuild that. So you're just going to have to deal with it
and adjust and future development has to be conforming to what's there
and enhance it and go forward. But it's a mindset of change.
But Savannah's a beautiful place. I love it dearly. I'm going to do
everything in my power to make certain that matters continues in that
vein and deal with it. But reeducating the people to that and you also
have to realize too that people may take this a little difficult, but
people in my generation are dying off. People in my father's generation
are already died off. So the younger generations don't know anything
more than what they can see now other than if they go into a history
book and look at it. So it's all going to be the perception within
everybody's mind of how it should look at what it's going to be. That's
going to be, historians like this stuff going to have to keep the dream
alive or the image alive in people's mind that this is how our
forefather's lived. They didn't have the modern conveniences so they
built homes to make it convenient for them with a big window so the
breeze could come from the north, east, west and whatever
Page 19so you would get a little bit of a cool. The modern day
concept of building a house is not conforming because of the air
conditioning or whatever. There's a rationale behind all this stuff.
They need to understand that.
One of the things I had the opportunity right when I was elected mayor to
go to Europe. Riding from the airport in London from the airport to
downtown London on the train you look out you can see a duplicate of
Savannah, Georgia almost, a duplicate with the row houses and everything
else. I said well, hell even those big architects stole the idea from
over here and brought it over there. So you have to look at it from that
perspective. Those who don't have the ability to travel and see little
things, it's a difference. It all depends on the perception. Give you a
classic example. We bought the building on Abercorn and Broughton Street
with the old bank. We wanted to change the façade to make it more
blendable to the others that were there. But our historic review board
turned us down because the architect that drew it said that was a
pre-1960 avant garde architecture.
So the historic review board upheld that because it's avant-garde
architecture, but other people say it's horrible, take it down. So we
left it the way it was. Save us some money, but we left it the way, we
did some internal stuff and the same thing on Drayton Street, Drayton
and Liberty. The Drake Towers, all that glass. Some people would love
for a hurricane to knock it down. But then it's a classic example of the
architecture of that day. Any building in Chatham County, well any
building within the city limits of Savannah, fifty years or older is
considered historic. So you've got so much avant-garde stuff emerging
that was built in the '60s getting close that fifty year and will be
considered historical soon. So you're in a Catch-22 situation. So it's
all the conception of people's mind and how they deal with it.