City of Port Wentworth

CID Exploration

Located in the fast-growing Savannah region, the City of Port Wentworth, GA, is taking a proactive approach to planning its future. With strategic advantages such as a favorable location, developable land, and planned mixed-use and entertainment options, the City is poised for an exciting future.

Yet, amidst these strengths, Port Wentworth stakeholders acknowledged certain challenges, including infrastructure, traffic congestion, and the community’s visual appeal along the city’s main corridor.

To address these needs, the city engaged us to explore a public-private partnership with commercial property owners via a Community Improvement District (CID). 

We developed a data-driven strategy, determining that although only 6% of the city’s properties would be eligible to participate in a CID, it amounted to 28% of the city’s land. We dug into projected revenues, ranging between $20,000 to $538,000 per year, depending on the subarea.

We armed city stakeholders with the potential CID’s value proposition to take to local commercial property owners. This included capital improvements to address growing traffic congestion, beautification to improve the city’s image, and representation of collective business interests in the city’s continued growth.