By Beth Hatcher
beth.hatcher@onlineathens.com

Royston, located in Franklin County, has made an expansive effort to renew its downtown area in hopes of luring tourism and creating a better area for business, as well as bringing back a feeling of times past. One of the areas being renovated, the business district, is shown here recently. Jeff Blake/Staff

   As strip malls and subdivisions snake their way through the Northeast Georgia countryside, many local towns are working to revitalize dying downtowns in an effort to capture tourist dollars, better business and a little bit of the past.
   One such community is Royston. The Franklin County city recently began a expansive cityscape project as part of its downtown revitalization.
   Funded by a federal transportation grant, the project will encompass shaving the height of the roadbed in the central business district, building new curbs and sidewalks, and installing brick accents, period street lamps and new traffic signals.
   The project, which has the federal government dishing out 80 percent of the approximately $1 million cost and the city making up the rest, will also replace much of the central business district's phone and power transmission lines.
   City Manager Brian McDougal said he hopes the project will mean increased economic activity for the 2,500-person town.
   ''Every city's gone through what the city of Royston is going through,'' McDougal said.
   The ''age of the automobile'' depleted many downtowns like Royston, he said, as business and residential areas began to locate farther out from a town's center.
   But according to McDougal, downtowns can still find a niche by housing unique specialty shops that will attract interested shoppers. Towns like Madison and Monticello have done a good job of diversifying downtown businesses, he said.
   

As part of the revitalization of downtown Royston, the town and a neighboring community, Franklin Springs, held a grand opening in November for the welcome center the two share. Jeff Blake/Staff

But revitalization doesn't come cheap. With the federal government shelling out about $589,000 for the project, the remaining $369,000 will be pulled from the town's general fund.
   But it's a price that can pay off in the long run, at least according to Bob Sosebee.
   Sosebee, a Commerce city councilman, once estimated that his city had saved millions of dollars through its downtown renovations.
   The Jackson County city's downtown development authority got busy in the mid-1980s when leaders saw the central business district declining. Along with the city council, the Commerce DDA bought and remodeled several vacant downtown buildings for civic use.
   ''We didn't want to dry out and die,'' DDA Director Jan Nelson has said of the town's revitalization projects. ''This (downtown) is a city's heart.''
   Nelson's office was once of the first buildings bought and remodeled by the town. The 1928 structure originally served as a gas station and later a cab stand.
   Among other projects, Commerce leaders convinced the Wrangler Co. to donate its soon-to-be-vacated 60,000-square-foot downtown factory to the town as a tax write-off, and then turned that building into the Commerce Civic Center.
   The city also turned an old 1930s-era U.S. Post Office into a new City Hall and a Presbyterian Church built in 1904 into the Commerce Cultural Center, which now features a 196-seat theater and supports two local theater groups.
   Maysville Mayor Richard Presley hopes his town can work a little Commerce magic one day.
   ''Your little small towns are dwindling away,'' Presley said.
   And that dwindle has sparked Maysville's downtown development authority to began initial stages of revitalization.
   According to Presley, town officials have already drawn plans for landscaping a popular downtown park, called Veterans Park, and are currently considering how to go about providing much-needed ''face-lifts'' for various downtown buildings.
   McDougal said Royston's streetscape project will most likely be finished by the end of May. After it's done, McDougal hopes to begin applying for other grants to continue improving Royston's downtown area.
   In November, Royston and a neighboring community, Franklin Springs, held a grand opening for the Royston/Franklin Springs Welcome Center.
   Royston had formed an alliance with Franklin Springs to secure a $20,000 local development fund grant, matched by in-kind labor and cash funds, to build the welcome center.
   The center operates from a renovated building which was built in 1924 as a Standard Oil station and now houses the offices of Royston's Downtown Development Authority and the Royston/Franklin Springs Chamber of Commerce.
   

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Monday, December 29, 2003.