West Chatham Growing Faster Than Ever
Pooler Reaping Most of the Benefits

By Bill Saunders
TBR Senior Reporter

Savannah Business Report

"It's growing like crazy," summed up Pooler Mayor Mike Lamb over the growth in his city and west Chatham County in general. "It's amazing to me."

West Chatham continues to be the hot spot for commercial and residential development, and the pace continues to increase, and, as Lamb stated, "We are in the targeted area, and we stand out as the bulls-eye as the geographic leader."

At present, there are 13 large subdivisions being constructed in west Chatham, 12 of them within Pooler city limits. That has swelled the city's ranks and made the number of housing permits skyrocket over the past 10 years.?

In 1997, Pooler handled permits for 86 single-family residences, for a total?value of $4.7 million. In 2006, 457 permits for single-family residences were filed at a value of $67 million. So far this year, there have been 198 singl- family residence permits filed. "We've seen the addition of almost 2,000 single family residences since the year 2000," Lamb said, "That's at least 5,000 people in just those places, not including the apartment complexes. At that rate, we could grow to be a city of 30,000-plus people with all the businesses we need right here."

Steve Petro of Konter Realty said the growth in west Chatham is really no surprise. "Savannah has developed to the east, to the south, and there's nowhere to go to the north, so the last frontier is the west," he said. "The growth tends to go where it can develop." Konter's addition to west Chatham is Morgan Pines, a combination of townhouses and single-family homes along Pine Barren Road.

"Really, it's the most convenient area around Savannah," added Corde Wilson III, president of the Savannah Home Builders Association and also president of Beacon Builders, which is working on three projects in the West Chatham area. One of Beacon's projects is 630 home sites within New Hampstead, located near the Bloomingdale exit from Interstate 16. That particular community is expected to see more than 10,000 new residences over the span of 10 years.

All agree that one of the selling points of west Chatham is the easy access to interstates 16 and 95. "What we've got is the most ideal location for people to come eat and sleep and shop," Lamb said.

Plus, there's a lot of space in which to work, they agree. "There's still a lot of good land out in west Chatham, so we should see a lot of growth out there," Wilson said.

Commercial Growth

With all of the subdivisions being built and the people who come to fill those homes, commercial development is booming in west Chatham as well. Restaurants, shopping centers, banks and big-box stores are all on the board. Plans for a Lowe's Home Improvement center along Pooler Parkway have been finalized, and the city is in discussions with Wal-Mart for another supercenter next to it. Plans for a large movie theater and shopping complex near the I-16 and Pooler Parkway interchange outside the gates to Savannah Quarters may very well be coming back to life.

"It's not necessarily on hold," Lamb said of the theater project. The project, announced in 2005, was to be the first major high-end "lifestyle" shopping center in west Chatham as part of the Savannah Quarters and Pooler master plan. It was announced as a 1.4 million-square-foot center that would feature a 16-screen movie theater to be developed by Cobb Theaters of Birmingham, Ala., and feature a "downtown" atmosphere. "The company has shown an interest in taking it on themselves to build that theater with a restaurant on top of that," Lamb said. He added other developers have been batting around the idea of building something similar.

Smaller shopping centers have sprung up across the area, with plans for another major complex called Towne Center, to be built behind Home Depot and Wal-Mart along Benton Boulevard. Plus there are restaurants from Papa John's and an Outback Steakhouse in the works. Lamb said there are still plans being passed about involving a bowling alley and a skating rink.

Within Pooler, commercial development has grown almost as fast as residential development. From 2002 to 2006, the city approved 262 commercial permits. In the 11 years prior to that, the city had a total of only 126. "The number of commercial permits so far this year stands at 31," Lamb said. "For all of last year, we had 87. You can see we'll probably exceed that. The value of what we have this year already greatly exceeds last year." That's no mean feat, considering the stated value of last year's commercial permits was $30.5 million.

Wilson said part of the reason the attraction in west Chatham is growing is because of all the new things happening. "You've got shops and restaurants going in out there, and everything's fairly clean and new," he said.

The Future

Otis Brock, COO of Savannah-Chatham Public Schools, told the school board recently that getting the new schools built in west Chatham is of a high priority. "It's really due to the amount of growth we've experienced in west Chatham, and it's also due to the fact that this land can be built on right away, we don't have to move any children, we don't have to close any sites to do it. It really makes more sense for us to do those two first," he said. He added, with projects like New Hampstead bringing in close to 10,000 new people, having those schools in place is in their best interest.

"We're talking to new developers all the time," Lamb said. "We've become the best place in the westside."

He said there's plenty of room to grow inside the city but doubts that Pooler is going to try and expand its borders to take more in. "I think we've expanded it as far as we're going to," he said. "Besides, I'm not sure there's that much more to annex."

Most developers agree west Chatham is open territory and will be that way for some time. "We're looking to have business in the west Chatham area for as far ahead as we care to forecast," Wilson said.

"Will land run out? Yes, at some point," Petro said. "I don't know if I'll live to see it, though. I think there's plenty to go. There's still plenty of stuff going on and plenty of stuff to develop."