Morrow Old Town
Morrow, Georgia
Mike directed the master plan and design of a new downtown for
the City of Morrow, Georgia while with Pond & Co. As the prosperous and sprawling home of
Clayton State University, Spivey Hall (an internationally acclaimed
small concert hall) and the new Georgia Archives, Morrow did not,
until recently, have a traditional downtown area. Many local people
felt that they had to go 'somewhere else' for hometown amenities.
Old Town was envisioned as a place for entertainment and shopping
close to home.
With a very interesting concept, authenticity was imported to this
site in two approaches; the first approach was to use first quality
site development of an historic context and the second, uniquely, to
create a repository for endangered historic structures from around
the South. To that extent the downtown area has numerous homes, some
quite large, that are over 100 years old and would have been lost to
development in their original sites. These include a high-Victorian
house, a Greek revival antebellum mansion from Napier Street in
Macon, a 6000 square foot plantation / farm house, the home place of
an early Georgia governor, and a replica of Tara from Gone With the
Wind.
In addition, Old Town proper does not allow automobiles, keeping the
streets for pedestrians, while the area surrounding the historic
district is dedicated to mixed uses including ground level retail and
office with residential above.
The town green is surrounded by historic structures imported from endangered sites around the South.
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