by Jess Kean, Staff Writer

Standing in the top five cities for tourism, Savannah continues to offer a piece of history along with an immense urban population that continues to encourage expansion within the town.

Two years ago, Ben Carter Enterprises began a project focused on redeveloping Savannah’s well-known Broughton Street by adding five buildings to improve the  downtown strip.

Today the number of buildings has grown well above 30 including retail, restaurant, residential and offices.

“Here in Savannah we were lucky enough to come to a city that had a great set of tourism, a great set of buildings, a great set of people, and infrastructure. We were able to capitalize on that and make it what we believe to be even better and revitalize the street that had kind of fallen down in its appearance,” said Quito Anderson, CEO of Ben Carter Enterprises.

The real estate firm is known for several other successful projects including Savannah’s Tanger Outlets and Mall of Georgia located in Buford. The current project, the Broughton Street Collection, has recently gained even more attention now that H&M has been added to the mix of new retail stores.

The clothing retailer is expected to be completed in early January and although conflicting construction was in question, Anderson confirmed, “H&M is definitely coming.”

Some individuals are hesitant to encourage construction over the historic platform of Broughton Street.

Armstrong student Keeshan Williams said, “If we’re putting new stores in Savannah, they don’t need to be in our historical districts. The history of Savannah is so great – there’s already enough.”

Other students are highly anticipating the new stores and additional variety to the style of Broughton. Freshmen Austin Helms said, “There are tons of students here and we need more places to shop. I’m pretty excited about it.”

Regardless, the project continues to add the last of many retail stores signed to the strip over the past few years. Students can look forward to the future construction of Club Monaco, Michael Kors, Kendra Scott, Tommy Bahama, Victoria’s Secret and Blends: A Coffee Boutique.

Marketing director Karen Guinn explained that throughout the project, the design has continuously focused on the large population of young adults.

“While the overall project speaks and caters to a very large demographic, if we were to focus on one specific group it would be that college-student-to-young-professional range,” Guinn said.

The Broughton Street Collection has seen many new additions and the company hopes to see the majority of the new retailers open and running by fall of 2016.