SAVANNAH ― Ansley Williams first experienced Savannah’s waterfront on New Year’s Eve, 1974. He remembers pleasant temperatures, a mesmerizing mist rising from the water’s surface and a hippie celebration at River Street‘s then-centerpiece watering hole, O’Leary’s Tavern.
“The street was dirt, and the decor was broken-down docks,” said Williams, who would go on to become River Street‘s most prominent restaurateur. “It went from there to being, for 50 years, the economic driver of this city.”
Some may quibble with Williams’ assessment. Tourism alone hasn’t made Savannah a coastal boomtown. The city’s port, universities, a cluster of large-scale manufacturers and two military installations deserve credit, too. Visitors are also drawn to the colonial-era squares, striking architecture and thriving culinary scene.
Yet the waterfront‘s renaissance in the years immediately after Williams moved to town and River Street‘s ever-evolving mix of luxury, kitsch and outright bawdy offerings are a reflection of how Savannah has gone from sleepy secret to bucket-list destination.
Now, 48 years after the Savannah city government leveraged federal grants into a $7.33 million makeover ($38.6 million in 2025 dollars), the waterfront is poised for the next face-lift. The city will spend $60 million to improve the streetscape, remake parks and green spaces and add amenities to public spaces over the next half decade.
Credit: Rosana Lucia
Credit: Rosana Lucia
Property owners along the waterfront of the Savannah River also have joined forces to fund beautification projects and public safety improvements through a special taxing mechanism called a Community Improvement District, similar to the one that has sparked a rebirth in Midtown Atlanta.
The CID spearheaded a city-backed waterfront “vision plan” that includes 48 major improvements and will serve as a blueprint for River Street‘s transformation over the next decade.
“The aim is to further enhance the beauty of River Street,” said Christian Sottile, a world-renowned architect and urban planner based in Savannah and the man behind the “visioning” design. “It needs to be cleaned up, straightened up, made more scenic. And it‘s all doable.”
‘Leveling up’ the waterfront experience
The waterfront vision is more than a scrub-and-paint job. Calling it a restoration — making it like it once was — is not an accurate depiction, either.
The makeover is meant in many ways to build on the 1970s effort, known as the Riverfront Urban Renewal Project. Largely a streetscape initiative, it turned a derelict working waterfront into a pedestrian-friendly locale with nods to the surrounding historic district, complete with cobblestone streets, a river walk, a central plaza and a grassy park.
Those improvements encouraged the revitalization of the centuries-old cotton and cargo warehouses that front River Street. Those buildings quickly became home to bars, restaurants, hotels and souvenir, T-shirt and candy shops. Tourists also could gawk at the massive cargo ships as they sailed upriver to the port.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Yet the waterfront measures a mile, and the urban renewal project had to use its dollars for highest and best uses. That resulted in subtle shortcomings: The river walk is not continuous, ending abruptly in spots. Surface parking lots sit where public gathering spaces might be on prime real estate between River Street and the Savannah River. The riverfront green space, Morrell Park, lacks public amenities, such as restrooms or a stage or bandshell.
The 1970s initiative also largely ignored a hidden gem — Factor’s Walk, the space between the warehouses and the bluff that led Georgia’s founder, Gen. James Oglethorpe, to select Savannah as the site of the colony’s first settlement in 1733. The alleys, historic catwalks and stone staircases are popular places to explore, but Factor’s Walk is also a hiding space for maintenance items, such as air conditioning units, trash receptacles and employee parking.
The 2025 vision details a more sweeping revitalization that would make the waterfront better resemble the downtowns of European river capitals, such as Copenhagen, while also better connecting the area to the rest of Savannah’s historic district.
Savannah’s Waterfront even has an on-site case study: the Plant Riverside District, a half-billion dollar hotel, dining, retail and concert hall complex by hospitality mogul Richard Kessler that opened five years ago at River Street‘s west end.
The redevelopment, centered on a long-abandoned power plant and surrounding property, showed the potential for “leveling up” expectations for the Savannah waterfront experience, said Kessler, who chairs the CID. The Plant Riverside District doubles as an unofficial museum featuring geodes, fossils and remnants of the old power station. A 135-foot-long chrome-plated dinosaur skeleton hangs from the ceiling.
Plant Riverside is a must-see for visitors and locals alike, and the luxury hotel, a 400-room J.W. Marriott, is among the busiest in the historic district.
“With Plant Riverside, we did something I’ve always wanted to do: create a city within a city,” said Kessler, who operates a string of luxury hotels that includes the Casa Monica in St. Augustine, Florida, Beaver Creek Lodge in Colorado and the Grand Bohemian brand. “We can do the same with all of River Street.”
Credit: The Kessler Collection
Credit: The Kessler Collection
Public-private partnership can ‘make it special’
The riverfront refresh is now in its earliest stages. Savannah’s Waterfront is collaborating with city services officials on the “low-hanging fruit” of beautification, such as replacing and upgrading lighting, adding security cameras, coordinating street and facade cleanings as well as landscaping upkeep, and developing design standards for structures meant to house commercial dumpsters.
Meanwhile, city leaders are in the process of selecting a transportation study analyst. They must identify how waterfront visitors will access and traverse the area — the streets are currently open to traffic — before committing to larger improvements, particularly those involving parking lots and the river walk.
The study will take a “multimodal look,” said Chief of Planning and Development Faye DiMassimo, given the waterfront‘s accessibility via boat, bicycle, vehicle and on foot. All options are on the table, including closing parts or all of River Street to cars now that there are three parking garages on the waterfront.
The study should be completed in late 2025 or early 2026.
“The vision plan and the private-public partnership is a unique opportunity for us to get something done and to make it special,” DiMassimo said. “This is more than a streetscape project.”
In 2019, a nonprofit coalition of property and business owners looked to the Midtown Atlanta CID and the Midtown Alliance, the CID’s private partnership organization.
The Midtown Alliance is widely credited with the transformation of the 120-square-block district into Atlanta’s foremost economic and cultural epicenter. The CID has generated more than $100 million, a combination of taxes, private funds and matching grants, since 2000.
Credit: Rosana Lucia
Credit: Rosana Lucia
The Savannah’s Waterfront CID, which covers 39 square blocks, produced about $400,000 in special taxes in 2024 and will do so again in 2025. The district‘s board has the option to increase their millage rate in the future. Savannah’s current rate is 2 mills; by comparison, the Midtown Atlanta rate is 5 mills.
Sottile, the urban planner, incorporated findings from a series of city-sponsored riverfront improvement studies conducted over the last quarter-century. Much of the project‘s funding will come from hotel-motel taxes paid in part by waterfront hoteliers.
Those business owners, including Plant Riverside’s Kessler, backed increasing the tax from 6% to 8% two years ago with the understanding that a waterfront overhaul would follow.
Williams, the River Street restaurateur best known for chicken finger hot spot Spanky’s, can visualize the next iteration of the waterfront in his mind’s eye as clearly as he does that memory from his first visit a half-century ago.
“I saw the potential back then,” he said. “I see a different level of potential now.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
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