A Century-Old Macon Building Has Sat Empty for Years. A 161-Room Hotel Could Finally Bring It Back to Life.
The Newman Building at 690 Poplar Street has been waiting on redevelopment for years. Developers now say a 161-room Hilton-branded hotel could break ground next year.
MACON, Ga. One of downtown Macon's most visible dormant buildings may finally be moving toward a new use.
Developers are advancing plans to transform the historic Newman Building at 690 Poplar Street into a 161-room Hilton-branded hotel, with groundbreaking targeted for next year.
The three-story building dates to 1920 and contains roughly 15,780 square feet, according to commercial property records.
For years, the property has remained part of a larger downtown redevelopment vision that repeatedly ran into financing and timing problems.
The project has been on the drawing board for years
The Newman Building was previously included in the Central City Commons redevelopment concept.
Macon-Bibb approved the broader project years ago, but financing stalled during the difficult lending environment surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, TMGOC Ventures has partnered with building owners MMI Capital and Thornton Realty and Development to move the hotel plan forward.
The developers have secured state historic rehabilitation tax credits and are working to finalize project financing.
Public-private financing is part of the plan
The Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority has played a role in the larger redevelopment structure.
According to reporting by The Telegraph, the authority sold land between First and Second streets to the development team and plans to buy back a newly constructed parking garage after the project is completed.
The hotel project is also expected to use a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, arrangement.
Under a PILOT, a developer makes negotiated payments to the local government instead of paying traditional property taxes in the usual way.
The city is betting that hotel capacity creates more downtown activity
Macon officials have said downtown needs additional hotel capacity.
A 161-room property would bring a new stream of overnight visitors within walking distance of restaurants, entertainment venues, cultural attractions and other downtown businesses.
That does not guarantee every nearby business benefits equally. But hotel rooms can extend the amount of time visitors spend in a district and increase the number of people looking for food, entertainment and local services outside the hotel itself.
The Newman Building has already waited through multiple versions of downtown Macon's comeback
While the Newman Building remained largely dormant, other projects moved forward nearby.
Hotel Forty-Five and The Woodward Hotel opened in 2022. New housing and mixed-use projects have also added activity downtown.
That makes the Newman Building increasingly conspicuous not because nothing is happening around it, but because so much has happened around it while it stayed still.
The Georgia inside the story
Historic buildings can be assets, but only if preservation and economics can meet in the same project.
That often takes tax credits, financing, public-private agreements and years of patience.
The Georgia inside this story is that downtown growth does not always require erasing what came before. Macon is trying to make a century-old building useful enough to participate in the next version of downtown.