New Town Macon Inc

Creating a sense of place: a desirable neighborhood is both livable and walkable, so newtown macon is promoting the downtown lifestyle and providing recreational activities. Newtown promotes a sense of place by managing first friday events, beautifying the streets, promoting downtown events, and promoting the development of the ocmulgee heritage trail. Newtown macon also promotes downtown living through marketing and branding, and by helping people find a place to live through the loft finder online service at newtownmacon.com/loft-finder. Through these strategies, downtown macon is attracting new residents. We ended the year at our goal of 92% occupancy within downtown macon's loft rental units.

The ocmulgee heritage trail (oht) oht continues to be one of our main focuses as a public/private partnership. Newtown macon runs an advisory committee to plan and manage expansion and improvement of the trail system and raise private funds to enable these improvements through the oht construction fund. Once improvements are complete, newtown turns the improvements over to local government to run as public park space in perpetuity. The committee finalized a new master plan to guide the next twenty-five years of trail development.

Growing jobs and increasing residents: one of the most transformative ways newtown macon is changing downtown is by turning vacant, dilapidated buildings into beautiful, useful spaces. Newtown is growing jobs and increasing residents by protecting endangered buildings through the transitional property fund (tpf). This fund allows a building owner to donate or partially donate a building to newtown, and newtown matches the building to capable developers. The tpf held one property during the fiscal year for future development, which is a developable riverfront lot at 167 riverside dr. One property previously held by the tpf remained in the development process during the fiscal year: 442 second street, which is under construction for lofts and a retail tenant. The tpf completed the rehabilitation of one previously abandoned building and returned this building to service during the year: 536 third st., which now contains 28 rental lofts and three storefronts. The tpf continued to independently own and rehabilitate 455 third st., a historic theatre. Two previously-rehabilitated tpf projects remained under shared ownership including a boutique hotel at 350 second st. And a mixed-use building at 596 cherry st. Previous tpf projects include: 518-530 cherry st. (travis jean), 552-580 cherry st. (lamar lofts), 566 poplar st., 546 poplar st., 382 second st. (capitol theatre), 555 poplar st., 454 terminal ave., 360 sixth st., riverside dr. Assemblage, 300 cherry st. (sports hall),745 poplar st. (shrine temple), 461 third st., and 540 martin luther king, jr. Blvd. (mercer music at capricorn).