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Celebrating downtown
NewTown reunion connects the past and future
By Skippy Davis
R eturn, remember and reconnect. That’s what NewTown Macon has invited 600 former residents and friends of the city to do at Macon Reunion 2010, Oct. 1-3.
“Ten years have passed since our first Macon reunion in 2000, and we thought this was the right time to renew our relationships with former Maconites,” said C. Michael Ford, NewTown Macon’s CEO. “The reunion also seemed a fitting opportunity to honor NewTown’s founders and to celebrate the significant progress that has been made in downtown and throughout our community.”
In the mid-1990s, downtown Macon was “a ghost town,” said Juanita Jordan, president of The Peyton Anderson Foundation and founding secretary of the NewTown Macon board of directors. “Stores had closed or moved (to the Macon Mall), buildings were vacant, and there was just one restaurant,” Jordan said. “The Tubman (Museum) was asking for money to relocate, I didn’t know where, and then we got word that we were getting the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.”
Jordan said she knew downtown Macon, at that time, could not support the hall of fame. She called a friend, the late Charles H. Jones, and invited him to have lunch and discuss downtown’s woes.
“He told me, ‘I need to take you to Columbus and show you what is going on there,’ ” Jordan said. And they went, with a small cluster of local leaders including then-Mayor Jim Marshall, banker Robert F. Hatcher, then-Mercer President R. Kirby Godsey and the late William S. Hutchings of the family-operated Hutchings Funeral Home.
To read more about NewTown's Macon Reunion 2010, subscribe to Macon Magazine for home delivery or purchase the August/September issue at a local store.
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