"'A Wonderful World?': C&S’s Georgia Plan, Urban Renewal, and Historic Preservation in Savannah, Augusta, and Macon"

This article examines the Savannah Plan, a community-development program conceived by C&S Bank president (and native Savannahian) Mills B. Lane Jr. in 1968 as a private-sector alternative to federal urban renewal programs. I argue that Lane’s blend of liberal and conservative ideas, disdain for federal intervention in cities, and fear of Black militancy and civil disorder infused the Savannah Plan (soon extended statewide as the Georgia Plan), which emphasized a bank-led biracial grassroots campaign to clean up slum areas on the fringes of the historic district, rehabilitate substandard housing, and support business startups by low-income residents. I argue further that the Savannah Plan and its counterparts in Augusta and Macon dovetailed with the interests of historic preservationists like Lane, creating “buffers” on the edges of the historic districts in all three cities. My research concludes that the short-lived Georgia Plan, for all its rhetoric about being able to revitalize cities, did more to support gentrification than to lift lower-income people out of poverty. The article makes an important contribution by examining a little-studied program and providing insight into how Savannah was influential in the state and region not only for its embrace of historic preservation as an urban revitalization.