Great cities find ways of reinventing themselves when faced with adversity.
And so do great buildings.
Many of us feared the deteriorating former Greyhound bus station at 109 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. would eventually have to be torn down. The last occupant, Café Metropole, closed in 2002 after the ceiling began collapsing.
The once-vibrant spot languished for more than a decade.
Now, as many of you probably know already, a new restaurant — The Grey — is moving in. I was fortunate to tour the space recently with new owner John Morisano, the co-founder of SLAAM Ventures who has spent most of his professional life working with startups.
As we walked in hard hats amidst the active renovation, Morisano told me he wasn’t initially looking to open a restaurant. He was first drawn to the building itself.
And what a building.
A 2001 newsletter from the Metropolitan Planning Commission detailed the local, state and national significance of the depot and its Streamline Moderne design. A national architecture survey even identified the terminal “as Georgia’s major example of high style Deco/Moderne design.”
Many of the original architectural details remain, and Morisano and his team are restoring the original footprint of the interior as much as possible.
Speaking of footprints, they’re even keeping a worn spot in the terrazzo where travelers stood as they purchased tickets.
The Grey will obviously have seating for patrons in the original restaurant facing old West Broad Street, but the main dining room will be in the large waiting room in the center of the building.
If you are lucky enough to remember the layout of Café Metropole, you already have a sense of the dimensions and possibilities, with the high-ceilinged dining area opening onto the covered outdoor seating along the north side of the building.
The Grey also will have a couple of small private dining rooms and will be utilizing just about every inch of the property in some creative way.
Chef Mashama Bailey, who has Savannah roots but has spent most of her career in New York City, will be running The Grey’s kitchen.
Bailey most recently worked on the Lower East Side at Prune with Gabrielle Harrington, a James Beard award winner and author of “Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef.”
I’ll have more to say — a lot more — about The Grey’s menu and design when the restaurant is up and running in the fall.
It’s certainly exciting to see such a beautiful building come back to life like this.
Cautionary notes in latest employment numbers
Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7.8 percent in July was the second highest in the nation. Only Mississippi was worse.
In a press release, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler once again blamed the weak trends on seasonal factors, but the data have already been adjusted for seasonality.
Without the statistical adjustment for expected seasonal changes in employment, Georgia’s unemployment rate in July was 8.3 percent, down only modestly from 8.7 percent in July 2013.
The unemployment estimates for local areas are not subject to seasonal adjustment, so it was no surprise to see the rate for the Savannah metro area (Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties) increase from June.
But we should be able to expect better year-over-year improvement than we’re seeing. The metro area unemployment rate was 7.9 percent in July, just a little lower than the 8.1 percent rate in July 2013.
The latest estimates show the local labor force is smaller than it was a year ago and the number of Savannah metro area residents reporting themselves as employed in July was down about 600 from July 2013.
A separate survey used to estimate the number of payroll jobs paints a brighter picture of the local job market.
The Savannah metro area has gained 2,300 nonfarm payroll jobs over the past year, a fairly solid increase of 1.4 percent. Leisure and hospitality added 1,000 jobs over that period, and another 900 were added in transportation, warehousing and utilities.
We are still not seeing any significant change in a couple of sectors that I’ve been following closely: construction and manufacturing.
There were 1,071 initial claims for unemployment insurance in the Savannah metro area in July 2014, down significantly from 1,418 in July 2013.
So there are still some bright spots in the Savannah metro area jobs data, but the recent softness in some of the key numbers is cause for concern.
More broadly, one has to be worried about the statewide picture. In July, 57 Georgia counties —mostly in less populous areas of middle and south Georgia— had unadjusted unemployment rates of 10 percent or higher.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdaewrs@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.