PJA

CarMax, the usa's largest used car dealership is coming to Augusta. This will be the first location outside of the Atlanta area. It will be located on Mason McKnight Jr. Parkway close to the Wheeler Rd and I-20 interchange. CarMax - Augusta Chronicle

Those are some very nice 4th of July pics.

Rumor mill is that Outback and Carrabas will be opening second locations somewhere in Richmond County. Also Bonefish will be moving to a stand alone location also in Richmond County.

Another project I'm excited about for downtown is the new tour boat called The Patriot. I think it will start running next week and will go from downtown to Lock and Dam. We haven't had a tour boat on the river since the Princess Augusta stopped running.

The Watermark may have broken ground but I'm not sure. I know they were clearing the land last year and they had to move some contaminated soil. I don't imagine the TEE center breaking ground until later this year.

I don't think the ground has been broken yet has it? It just got approved yesterday plus I think they still have to come up with the site plans and get those approved first. This shouldn't be too hard as downtown is going to need more hotels when the TEE center is built.

Yes Fort Gordon is located In Richmond County. I know there were deployments but as Topher said Ft. Gordon employs less people to begin with. So the loss was probably a lot less than Ft. Benning. Also troops are constantly being stationed here so that probably balances the losses out.

A new hotel, condo and retail development could come downtown. A national developer wants to build a hotel at the intersection of Ninth and Reynolds street that would extend the the corner of Broad Street. It would include condos and street level retail as well as a parking garage. It would be aproximately 6 to 7 stories high. Currently and old police station and some warehouses are sitting there. A public hearing will be held next week to discuss demolishing the old buildings.

Thanks for putting this together Topher.

The last time I was in Evans, just the Home Depot was open. As far as that apartment complex, yes they shot it down..however part of land is zoned for aparments anyway, so they may sitll get built. However the devolpers said they won't be able to make them as upscale so it looks like the residents shot themselves in the foot.

There is supposed to be a 762 area code for the 706 areas as well. That's why we had to go to 10 digit dialing for local calls when we used to only have to dial seven digits.

The plans were approved by the North Augusta Planning Comission. This brings the total of developments on the river for North Augusta to 4. article

I'm glad to see River North expanding. It seems so seperate from the rest of the city though and hidden too. Maybe this will bring a little visability to the area.

The proof is in the numbers that was posted further up. Atlanta was first, Augusta second and Savannah third.

Savannah's CSA includes Hinesville and Fort stewart. Hilton Head is not included in their CSA and their population is only 394,036.

The Crime rate in Georgia by MSA . This information was taken from the FBI website and represents 2005 the latest year for their results. Violent Crime 1. Augusta 392.3 (safest) 2. Columbus 422.1 3. Atlanta 492 4. Macon 501.6 5. Savannah 582.9 (most unsafe) Property Crimes 1. Atlanta 4115.2 (safest) 2. Augusta 4518.5 3. Savannah 4737.7 4. Columbus 5468.6 5. Macon 6180.7 (most unsafe) Again I couldn't find the stats for the CSAs, just the MSAs.

I understand what you're saying. But you asked what was meant by metro. I think to most people they mean the MSA and if not then they should specify CSA in order to avoid confusion. There has to be some sort of standard. I know that Atlanta's CSA extends all the way into Alabama and I have never thought of their metro as extending into Alabama or being large enough to do so. I'm sure most people would agree that metro Atlanta doesn not extend into Alabama yet their CSA does. I know when I travel to Albama, you can tell you have left metro Atlanta before you get to Alabama..that doesn't mean that it doesn't have any ties with the any of the cities between itself and Alabama. I know week or so ago when you asked the question about CSA's and MSA's, I did say that you probably could compare them, but after the research I have done on these statistics the past few days, I have to retract that statement. One reason being that if you compare a CSA to an MSA, you are basically compaing two MSA's to one MSA. When I did find some information on CSA's in the census site, there were no MSA's listed. When looking under Georgia, you had the Atlanta CSA, the Macon Warner Robbins CSA, the Savannah CSA and the Columbus AO CSA. Augusta was nowhere to be found which was very telling to me. That lets me know that the US census themselves don't compare the two. For the Georgia area, I think if you did compare the CSA's to the MSA's it really wouldn't change that much in regards to the ranking. Columbus's MSA may be larger than Savannah's..I'm not sure, but that would be the only difference, so you probably could get away with comparing MSA's to CSA's in Georgia, but in other states you may have a harder time doing that. To be honest, even in Georgia you would have a hard time. Really the only way you can compare MSA's to CSA's is population becasue other statitstics like payroll, crime rate (as I will post later) are not listed in CSA terms. So you would be comparing the MSA's and CSA's in some things, but comparing just the MSA's in other things which would be uneven.

Okay let's say North Augusta didn't exist and the area between Aiken And Augusta was mostly undeveloped and Aiken became it's own MSA. Then no I wouldn't include their statistics when talking about Augusta' metro economy because even though they would be in the same MSA, it would seem like two totally different places with two very distinct identities and their relationship would have to be much different than it is now. I do find it odd that people use Aiken breaking away from Augusta as an example. That would be like Stone Mountain breaking away from Atlanta. It would actually be easier for Thomson GA or Waynesboro GA to break away from the metro since they are not part of the urbanized area. But everyone picks Aiken because it's in another state. Aiken is just another town in the metro, just like Stone Mountain in Atlanta, or Pooler in Savannah. I think what is happening is that some may be trying to compare Aiken and Augusta's relationship to lets say Macon and Warner Robins or Columbus and A-O's relationship. But there is a huge difference and that is that Aiken and Augusta, have another nice sized city (North Augusta) between them and North Augusta lies in Aiken County and is only a few miles from Aiken. North Augusta fills most of the gap between Aiken and Augusta. The reason why North Augusta exists is because Augusta borders South Carolina so when Augusta expands, to the north, some of that was going to go in Aiken County. Let's just imagine that the Georgia and South Carolina border didn't exist and North Augusta was in fact part of Augusta's city limits. Then Augusta would be even closer to Aiken than it already is. If the relationship between Macon and Warner Robbins or Columbus and AO starts to become stronger and there are some towns in between them, then those towns would experience growth much like North Augusta has, and it would be easier for them to become a single metro. If there are no towns between them then both metros would have to sprawl a little more and then they would become one metro, as the resdients living in the sprawl area would travel between both Macon and Warner Robins, or Columbus and AO. In any event, the closer interaction between two towns, the more development happens between them. In closing this might all be a moot point anyway, because there may be enough interaction and development between the two metros that in 2010 they may in fact become one metro.

I don't think metro means CSA...just MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) since the word is short for metropolitan. Here's a link that discusses metropolitan areas (and they also subsitute the word metro). Census definition of Metropolitan and Mircopolitan Areas I think the purpose of a CSA was just to establish that a relationship does exist between two or more metros or micros, but other than that when looking statistics for most anything else, MSA statistics are only used and when talking about metros or micros most are talking about MSA's. One thing that I noticed is that the census website doesn't really compare CSA's to MSA's either. It's like to them they are two different animals. They also don't have a lot of information on CSA's outside of population and and a few other things.

I can say off the top, that WR AF base is not included as it is its own metro. I doubt that the other posts are included in the payroll as well becasue when looking at the categories of businesses I didn't see any place where military personnel would fit. In fact I don't believe that any government jobs are included in the payroll numbers...I will have to look at this a little more closely.

North Augusta is in Aiken county and it is closer to Augusta than Warner Robins is to Macon. And being in a different state has nothing to do with how each city interacts. The fact of the matter is Aiken is a also apart of the urbanized area of Augusta and Warner Robins has it's own urbanized area separate from Macon which means they don't interact nearly as much as Augusta and Aiken. Since you haven't studied the interactions between both you have no basis on which to form your statements. BTW even if all of the CSA stats were included, I bet that Macon would still be in last place, because Savannah and Columbus are part of CSA's as well.

I have some more information from the census site which will tell more about the economy for each metro. Now They only had information based on MSA not CSA because I did try to find both but apparently the folks at the us census felt that the economy for each MSA was the only important factor. These numbers are from 2002 because the economic census is only done every five years. The next one will be for 2007. This first chart is the total revenue done by all business establishments in each metro. 1. Augusta...................30,590,591,000 2. Savannah................21,028,456,000 3. Columbus................16,209,643,000 4. Macon.....................13,869,467,000 I further showed a break down of some of the main categories of business in each metro. This next chart is the total revenue done by just the retail establishments in each metro. 1. Augusta...................5,653,874,000 2. Savannah................3,360,695,000 3. Columbus................2.784,723,000 4. Macon....................2,450,858,000 This next chart is the total revenue by just the food and hospitality establishments in each metro. 1. Savannah................643,155,000 2. Augusta...................565,364,000 3. Columbus................400,661,000 4. Macon.....................300,860,000 This final chart shows the total amount of payroll paid out by all the businesses with at least one employee in each metro. These payroll stats are from 2005. 1. Augusta................6,077,760,000 2. Savannah.............4,081,539,000 3. Columbus.............2,803,093,000 4. Macon..................2,699,887,000 I could do the CSA if requested but it would require me to manually add up each MSA in a CSA.

I will have those for you tonight or tomorrow.

Forget the next Atlanta! When Columbus, Augsuta and Savannah become suburbs of Macon, it will be bigger than Atlanta. Having more interstate access will not make Richmond county more urban. An urban area is not defined by how much interstate access it has. I totally 100 percent agree. I like to read Wikipedia...but you must always check the sources before you take anything that you find on that site at face value. And that shouldn't be your main source. The people at the Census Bureau get paid to do this and I would rather take their word than the word of someone who is just out to make their metro look good.