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For Kennesaw State students, listening is the first step in revitalizing Macon’s Greenwood Bottom
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LISTEN: Being left out of your town's downtown revitalization boom time doesn't feel great. A collaboration between Kennesaw State University's architecture program and leaders in Macon is focused on listening to residents and spreading the growing wealth. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
In a downtown Macon office conference room with a huge picture window, architecture students put the finishing touches on small models of big ideas.
Tiny trees were glued down to give their paperboard models of mixed apartment and retail blocks a sense of the scale and space of the wooded lot the buildings may one day occupy. Fairy lights strung through tiny windows were checked to make sure they would glow when it mattered most: during the presentations about to be made down the hall.
And students like Justin Monzon, in their fifth year in Kennesaw State University’s bachelor of architecture program, ran through pitches for concepts behind the buildings.
“We really wanted ‘The Hive’ to be designed as a place where people could truly thrive, blending thoughtful architecture with spaces that nurture well being,” Monzon rattled off.
Fellow student Mayowa Odunjo said yes, she and her colleagues were excited to present this work today.
“Excited — and relieved, once it's over,” Odunjo said. “You know, we've been waiting for this highly anticipated moment for a very long time.”
Many Georgia cities have experienced some kind of downtown revival in recent years. And while life in the middle of a city on the rebound can be really good, sometimes there are people left out of the boom — people whose neighborhoods get swept up in change without their voices being heard.
In Macon’s Greenwood Bottom, the aim of the 15-week class that Odunjo, Monzon and others have been working on is to listen to residents before the downtown wave makes it this far.
By allowing graduates to begin working in the field without also going to graduate school, Kennesaw State’s five year architecture degree is the only program of its kind in the state. In Year 5, students must participate in what’s called a focus studio, aimed at zeroing in on a single critical aspect of professional practice.
Architect and Kennesaw State professor Robin Puttock designed and pitched this studio building off the core skill in her 20 years in what she calls sustainable civic architecture: listening.
“From my perspective, I feel that community engagement is critical,” Puttock said. “I listen to the communities and it's not about what I need or want. It's about what they need or want.”
Mayowa Odunjo said when the studio began, she and her classmates were given a design brief. It included designing a net-zero apartment block.
“Meaning the energy that we are consuming is being produced by the building,” Odunjo said.
That’s good for the environment but could also help tenants from a high-poverty neighborhood skip a utility bill.
“And we are making this workforce housing apartment complex, you know, a mixed-use complex in Greenwood Bottom,” Odunjo said. “Trying to make a better connection to downtown Macon.”
The big unknown in the brief was just what, where and who Greenwood Bottom was.
The what and where: Greenwood Bottom on Macon’s Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard is in Bibb County Commissioner Paul Bronson’s district.
“You see a lot of MLK and Malcolm X boulevards; they look rough,” Bronson said. “And my goal was to have Macon be the leading start to say, ‘Hey, we want to identify the MLK boulevards and build them up.’”
For Puttock, the Macon and Greenwood Bottom were ideal locations to hone her students’ listening skills.
“I don't pick a pretend site and do a pretend projects and do pretend community engagement,” Puttock said “I think it's really important to pick a real site, a real project.”
That complemented Bronson’s aims for the Greenwood Bottom, so he and others invited the KSU students to reimagine the neighborhood in a way that supports people who call it home, like Brandon Harris.
“So actually I'm a third-generation barber, and we have a family barbershop that's been there 50 years,” Harris said.
He has a barbecue restaurant, too. But Harris said making a living here, a mile away from downtown, has not been easy.
“It has definitely been a struggle,” he said. “We feel isolated. We feel isolated, for sure.”
Puttock said her students spent three full days in Macon to learn more.
“I thought it was critical that students spent time there — not just a 9-to-5, right?" Puttock said. "Overnight, having dinner there, having food and fellowship with these folks,”
Halfway through the project, students brought their models back to Macon for review at NewTown Macon, a nonprofit downtown redevelopment incubator. There, they got notes from other architects and officials responsible for downtown redevelopment.
Their final presentations combined it all. Even then, there were new notes from people like community organizer Tonj Khabir.
“I kind of wanted to hear from the other two groups, how you might have incorporated some of the conversations you heard about the culture of the space,” Khabir said after a presentation by one group of their design, called Cadence in honor of the musical heritage of Greenwood Bottom. A nightclub there called the Roxy was where a teenaged Otis Redding once dominated the talent show.
Architect Gene Dunwody praised the students for how they incorporated the more technical design notes.
“It looks like you took in a lot of what people said and integrated it into your design, and I'd like to actually know more about that because I do see a lot of changes,” Dunwody said. “I mean, some people have, I wouldn't say redrew it, but there's a lot of change in this.”
Student Ethan Joel said this feedback and the grounding of the project in Greenwood Bottom took what at first felt like a dry exercise and gave it real meaning.
“It kind of hits home when you see the people that you're building for and you kind of want to put something there that they would be proud of,” Joel said.
Even after final grades, the project may not be over.
County Commissioner Paul Bronson said he hopes ground will break on some version of the student’s mixed use development ideas for Greenwood Bottom in 2025.
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