AUGUSTA, Ga. — Visitors to the Masters Tournament who haven’t seen Augusta since 2019 might notice several changes on Washington Road. Perhaps the biggest change will be almost impossible to spot.
“The first thing that they’ll notice is the new buildings that the National has done, where the old San Souci Apartments were,” said Jordan Collier, director of commercial development at Augusta’s Meybohm Real Estate. “The thing that they won’t notice, but what’s there, is the tunnel.”
Those new buildings, difficult to see from the road, likely comprise the “Global Broadcast Village” whose construction Augusta National Golf Club announced in 2019. Apartment complexes Savannah West and The Greens on Washington also formerly stood on the property and were demolished.
The tunnel, near the club’s Gate 1, connects Augusta National to the broadcast complex. It’s 26 feet wide, 16 feet high and about 10 feet beneath Washington Road.
The National, using an array of limited-liability companies, has been quietly acquiring property on and around its 2604 Washington Road address for decades. Year to year, the landscape on the city’s busiest road rarely looks the same.
To borrow an old saying, the only constant on Washington Road is change.
For example, Top Dawg Tavern, at 2821 Washington Road, opened in July 2019 after the last pre-pandemic Masters. It replaces Tin Lizzy’s Taqueria Cantina (2015-2019), which replaced Road Runner Café (opened 2012), Flyin’ Cowboy (2009), Famous Dave’s Barbecue (2000), Rio Bravo Cantina (1996), The Dugout sports bar (1995), Infinity nightclub (1994), Valentino’s Restaurant (1993), Georgia Diner (1992) and, from 1977 to 1991, a Western Sizzlin steakhouse.
Nearby, the Venus & Adonis beauty salon at 2735 Washington Road served as an odd local landmark for visitors because of its kitschy Greek statues standing outside the business. The salon and statues are gone. Now it’s the address for Summer House Realty in a building completed in late 2020 and designed to resemble an Art Deco beach house.
The 3,000-square-foot office and its 1,800-square-foot second-floor deck operates as a real estate business during the week and as a rentable event venue on the weekends.
“This year it’s going to be a hospitality house,” said Courtney Quivell, Summer House’s flagship director. “So there’s probably going to be people hanging out outside, making their way across the street to go to the Masters.”
Pre-COVID pandemic visitors might remember a sports bar called Somewhere in Augusta. They will now find it nowhere in Augusta. A Metro Diner now operates at the club’s former 2820 Washington Road location.
PDQ, a fast-casual chicken restaurant at 2999 Washington Road, near the Interstate 20 on-ramp, is now a delivery center for online auto dealer EchoPark Automotive. What used to be a Wachovia National Bank drive-through at 3131 Washington Road is now a Take 5 Oil Change drive-through.
The former Wild Wing Café at 3035 Washington Road has reopened as local-concept eatery Doc’s Porchside.
Developers hunting for property
In the past three years or so, Washington Road properties reaching from the National to the interstate have become both highly desirable and difficult to acquire, according to Jonathan Aceves, a commercial Realtor with Meybohm.
“We routinely have needs that we know have to be filled, so we’re hunting for sites, to the point of calling owners and turning over stones to see what can be bought and what can be combined with an adjoining piece to get enough acreage to do an acre-and-a-half, two-acre deal,” he said.
Motivated buyers have been ready to pounce. A 1.7-acre parcel in front of the shuttered Clarion Suites, 3038 Washington Road, was snapped up almost immediately by an Atlanta developer after being placed on the market in February.
“We didn’t even have enough time to get a sign on it,” Aceves said. “It was a matter of days that we were under contract, full price, for solid terms, and with a developer with a franchisee already signed up. There are a bunch of developers who wanted to speculate on it or who had a franchisee and are looking.”
Other businesses are seeking to expand. The franchise owner of the Chick-fil-A restaurant at 3066 Washington Road bought the closed Mi Rancho Mexican restaurant next door, with plans to build a bigger Chick-fil-A.
Owners of the Jim Hudson Infiniti dealership at 3315 Washington Road also own its neighbor at 3333 – the site of a former BP gas station/convenience store whose 0.8-acre lot lies half in Richmond County and half in Columbia County.
Washington Road – then and now
For much of its existence, Washington Road was a country thoroughfare. Its entire length in Richmond County wasn’t even completely paved until 1927.
Originally the road was a path used by indigenous members of the Cherokee tribe, connecting where they traded in Augusta to their homes in the hills, said Lee Ann Caldwell, director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History at Augusta University.
“For a long time throughout the 1800s that was indeed a very rural area, and even the 1900s, but in the World War II era, people began moving beyond,” she said.
Miami hotelier and real estate developer J. Perry Stoltz actually spurred the first major interest in developing Washington Road. In 1925 he announced plans to build a 15-story hotel and golf resort on the site of the former Fruitlands Nursery, but a hurricane the following year wiped out much of his Florida fortune and his project was abandoned.
In 1931, golfing legend Bobby Jones and stockbroker Clifford Roberts bought the abandoned property to establish Augusta National Golf Club, then inaugurated what would become the Masters – the Augusta National Invitation Tournament – in 1934.
When suburban neighborhoods developed west and south of Augusta in the 1930s and after World War II, businesses expanded on Washington Road to create the city’s first shopping centers.
“By that time the National’s neighborhood had already been established,” Caldwell said. “Shopping was responding to the demand of people not wanting to go all the way into town. You see it expanding beyond there.”
The result is the churning commerce seen on Washington Road today that keeps its real estate in high demand.
An advertisement in a 1924 Augusta Chronicle offered property for sale on Washington Road more than two miles outside the old city limits, which would place the land just short of the interstate. The ad described a five-room cottage, tenant house and two barns on more than 37 acres of land.
The asking price: $5,000 – the equivalent of about $80,000, according to online inflation calculators.
Estimating the property’s compounded annualized return, Collier said it could be worth $30 million today.
How much property could $5,000 buy on Washington Road today?
“Not even a billboard,” Collier said.
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