Georgia Trend magazine recently asked the Georgia Municipal Association to help them identify some of Georgia’s “most successful downtown revitalizations”.

From the initial list provided, Georgia Trend chose to highlight eight downtown areas in their February issue: Blue Ridge, Columbus, Dahlonega, Decatur, Hinesville, Roswell, Savannah and Statesboro.

Here’s a snippet of the Decatur write up from the article…

The city of Decatur could give a clinic on downtown revitalization. Since the early 1980s, the city’s leaders, business owners and citizens have worked diligently to create Decatur’s small-town atmosphere with a big-city buzz. “We did a town center plan around 1982,” says Bill Floyd a longtime mayor and city commissioner. “That’s when the vision of this community started. If you go back and look at that plan, you’ll see that what’s happened in Decatur is basically what’s in the plan.”