Savannah's Street Fight
Who will pay to repair River Street's historic cobblestones?
By Jolee Edmondson | Online Only | June 13, 2003
Savannah's River Street
Credit: Georgia Department of Industry, Trade & Tourism
The heart of Savannah, Ga., has always been an area "down by the wahta" known as River Street.
Abutting the murky, cargo-ship-filled Savannah River, the waterfront was just a scrub-covered bluff in 1733, when Gen. James Oglethorpe dropped anchor there, hoping to establish England's 13th colony. By the end of that century, Savannah had evolved into a bustling wharf, ultimately becoming the East Coast's most powerful cotton port. In the mid-19th century, a dirt road was cut; it was later paved with granite blocks.
Today, River Street is Savannah's premier tourist attraction, where trendy shops and restaurants occupy brick warehouses that once held mammoth bales of cotton.
River Street
Credit: Georgia Department of Industry, Trade & Tourism
Yet Savannah's heart is in pieces. While River Street itself is still intact—its granite blocks were renewed in 1978—the adjoining network of ancient cobblestone ramps and English-fieldstone retaining walls is in sorry condition. Countless cobbles, which served as ballast on early ships conveying goods to the New World, have been dislodged by the constant traffic of supply trucks, and many of the fieldstone ballast slabs are severely eroded.
The disrepair has sparked complaints among River Street merchants, who want swift action. "The walls are falling down, and tourists can't walk up the ramps because of all the missing and loose cobbles," fumes Rudy Gasdik, owner of several stores and condominiums on River Street.
Shopkeepers were outraged when Mayor Floyd Adams recently suggested that repairs could be expedited if an additional property tax was levied on the area. They insist that municipal taxes should cover the cost, since River Street's ramps and walls are part of the urban streetscape.
"There is no way that merchants should be penalized for something that we already pay for—infrastructure," Gasdik says. "It's absurd."
Who will get stuck with the final tab? "We're just going to pass it on to our customers," says Bill Dickinson, proprietor of a popular River Street bar called Wet Willie's. "The mayor is going to raise our rent, and we'll have to raise the prices."
Argues Mayor Adams, "I don't think all the other taxpayers of Savannah should have to shoulder the burden of those repairs because River Street merchants are the ones who will benefit from them."
Savannah's street fight is sure to escalate when—and if—the mayor's tax proposal is put before city council. Assistant City Manager Christopher Morrill doubts that it will go that far, citing a likely solution. "In 1998, when many of Savannah's historic monuments were showing signs of extreme deterioration," he says, "the city implemented a preservation fee whereby all tour companies were charged $1 per ticket sold."
That tourism-generated preservation fee generates about $450,000 each year, Morrill says, and it covers maintenance and repairs of all city landmarks, including River Street.
"The question is: Is it enough for the major work currently needed on River Street?" Morrill says. The city is getting estimates for the repairs now. "We should know in a few months."
River Street in Savannah, Georgia
Credit: Georgia Department of Industry, Trade & Tourism
Meanwhile, Billy Jones, the city's bureau chief of facilities maintenance, has been gradually recobbling, one ramp at a time. He's completed one ramp, and four others wait for rehabilitation. "At the rate things are going, we can only do one ramp every year or so. We're hoping increased funds will accelerate the project," Jones says.
The same slow pace applies to the area's crumbling brick walls, which Jones is reinforcing with concrete.
Each cobble is removed from the ramp's original dirt base and re-set in a freshly poured soil-and-cement bed. Workers replace missing cobbles with authentic ballast from a dwindling stockpile. The stabilization of cobbles will not only guard against truck traffic but souvenir hunters: Many tourists have purloined Savannah's precious stones.
To preserve the cobbled ramps, the city is conferring with merchants and truckers about alternative routes for vehicles—heavy beer trucks being the worst offenders. Last year a new ordinance prohibited drivers from using the ramps, but enforcement has been lax.
Like most cities, Savannah is struggling with the country's economic lull. In 1978, a generous federal grant paid for the vintage River Street complex's first facelift. Much of the work revolved around the construction of a brick plaza and the renovation of two cobbled bridges called factors' walks," where long-ago factors (or brokers) evaluated the yields of farmers in horse-drawn buggies heaped with cotton.
"The existing cobbles were in such terrible shape," recalls Eric Meyerhoff, the architect who oversaw the renovation, "that we decided to replace them with a very durable material called bomanite." The bomanite was cut and formed into ersatz cobbles and set in cement. "The purists were a bit concerned, but after 25 years, those walkways are still in prime condition."
Savannah's broken heart can indeed be mended, albeit at a price this time.
For now, River Street merchants are focused on one thing: the quick resurrection of the area's resources, at no extra cost to them. "The city keeps saying that tourism is so important, but they are not putting that tourism money back into tourism," Gasdik says.
Jolee Edmondson is a freelance writer living in Savannah, Ga.
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