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City OKs 3-2 funds for work at Ways Station
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Crissie Elric
Bryan County News
Updated: Sep 26, 2011, 12:00 PM
Published: Sep 23, 2011, 9:32 PM

Editor's clarification: The article below reports the Richmond Hill City Council agreed to “share” the cost of a landscaping and improvement project at Ellis Drive near the Ways Station shopping center. Though the finished product may look like a single project, the city is funding work to city-owned property, and shopping center owner Gene Brogdon is funding work to Ways Station. Both projects will be bid separately.


The Richmond Hill City Council will spend $10,000 to help fund a landscaping and street improvement project at the Ways Station Shopping Center on Ford Avenue following a split vote Tuesday at City Hall.
During its regular meeting Tuesday, the council voted 3-2 to share the cost of landscaping and improving the area adjacent to Ellis Drive with local developer and Ways Station owner Gene Brogdon.
Council members Russ Carpenter and Van Hunter voted in favor of the matter, while Marilyn Hodges and Jimmy Hires voted against. Mayor Harold Fowler’s vote broke the tie.
Brogdon said since he was making improvements, he thought the city would like to make some as well.
“I’m doing upgrades to my (shopping) center and to the parking lot that parallels the city street, and I was hoping the city would want to landscape and beautify one of their city streets,” he said.
Planning and Zoning Director Steve Scholar said some of the improvements were in city right of way.
Brogdon said sharing the cost with the city would allow for beautification of the street while also being responsible for city standards.
He asked the city to donate $10,300 for the projects and accept responsibility for removing existing pavement, gutters and sidewalks. Brogdon will be responsible for the grading, hauling and disposing of material, stripping and the landscaping.
He said he has bids out for his part of the project but does not yet have an estimated cost.
Read more in the Sept. 24 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

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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