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City looking at historic preservation
Ford Bakery 1
The former Ford Bakery, located on Ford Avenue across from Sawmill Plaza, is an example of the historic preservation being undertaken by the city of Richmond Hill. The top photo shows the original building, while the bottom photo shows the building today. The city has purchased the structure and it will become the new home of the Richmond Hill Convention and Visitors Bureau. - photo by Photo provided.

With all of the attention being paid to growth and the future of Bryan County, some may be inclined to forget about or ignore its past. The Richmond Hill City Council is taking steps to ensure that does not happen.

The council recently heard a presentation from Rebecca Fenwick, a historic preservation specialist with the Savannah-based architectural firm of Lominack Kollman Smith, about how the city can protect its historic assets and gain an advantage from them.

“Richmond Hill has a unique story of national significance,” Fenwick said. “And with heritage tourism on the rise, the city is in a great location right off of I-95 to take advantage of that.”

Fenwick said the key to historic preservation is realizing what a community has and taking steps to protect it.

“Once they are gone, they are lost forever,” she said of historic structures that fall by the wayside.

Fenwick has been working with representatives from the Richmond Hill Downtown Development Authority, Arts on the Coast, the Richmond Hill Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Historical Society of Richmond Hill to identify culturally and historically significant buildings for preservation.

She pointed to four specific areas of town that would benefit the most from the efforts.

The first is being called the Ford Commercial Area, which consists of about a dozen buildings of significance along Ford Avenue between the railroad tracks. The second is Blueberry Village, located north of Highway 144 and east of I-95 consisting of Laurel, Oleander, Spruce and Edgewood.

Next is The Bottoms, with 72 parcels along Pinecrest, Mimosa, Magnolia, Wildwood and Cherokee. Finally is Educator’s Row, an extension of The Bottom, bound by Maple, Ivy, Linwood and Dogwood.

Fenwick said the first step for the city to take is to establish a historic preservation ordinance and a commission to oversee it. That would lead to the ability to designate historic landmarks, which means landowners could be eligible for historic preservation grants, as well as tax freezes and tax cuts.

“Property values also come in to play,” she said. “The historic districts in Savannah see values grow at a higher rate than other parcels, and when there is a decline they experience it at a slower rate and recover faster.”

The historic preservation, of course, is tied closely to the legacy of Henry Ford in Richmond Hill. The auto magnate and his wife Clara were heavily involved in the community during their years here, building many of the structures for residents to live in, worship in and shop in.

Examples include the Martha-Mary Chapel, now owned by St. Anne’s Catholic Church, the nearby Community House (currently Carter Funeral Home), and the Ford Bakery, which the city has purchased and plans to refurbish as the new home of the CVB.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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