• A new Residence Inn by Marriott is set to be built in downtown Augusta.
• The hotel will be located on a 2-acre site at the corner of 13th and Walker streets.
• This project is part of a broader trend of hotel construction and renovation in the area.

Another downtown Augusta hotel is preparing to go vertical four years after the city approved the project.

Augusta has seen a spate of hotel construction and renovation recently. The former Sky City building on the 1100 block of Broad Street has been demolished to make way for an Embassy Suites. In November 2025, interior demolition began at the Ramada by Wyndham Augusta Downtown Hotel and Conference Center at 640 Broad St. to transform it into a distinctive Marriott property called The Conroy.

Now, subcontracting bids are being tendered to construct an extended-stay Residence Inn by Marriott at the corner of 13th and Walker streets. Plan holder Optum Construction of Gainesville, Ga., is accepting bids until 1 p.m. on May 13.

American Concrete successfully petitioned the city in 2022 for a zoning variance on the property to allow the hotel’s construction.

The land was sold in November 2022 to a limited-liability company associated with PeachState Hospitality. The Warner Robins-based company’s property portfolio includes the Residence Inn and the SpringHill Suites at 1110 and 1116 Marks Church Road, respectively, and the Fairfield Inn & Suites at 3023 1/2 Washington Road.

The 2-acre parcel of property shaped like a piece of pie was the former site of local business American Concrete, now on Wheeler Road.

Presenting The Conroy: Here are the newest plans for transforming Augusta’s downtown Ramada

The land had been an industrial site for much of the past century, as the longtime site of Perkins Lumber, then of paving contractor Southern Roadbuilders.

Now the property finds itself amid a downtown revitalization, including improved roads and riverside activities, such as a pedestrian bridge and a planned outdoor activity center featuring a zipline over the Savannah River. The future hotel would sit near downtown, the city’s bustling medical district, and a new entertainment complex taking the place of the former James Brown Arena.

President Donald Trump’s proposal to put a coat of white paint on the exterior of a 19th-century historic landmark building next to the White House is slated for a hearing Thursday by a key federal agency he expects to approve what would be a dramatic makeover.

The proposed painting of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building is one piece of a broader plan the Republican president has said will make Washington more beautiful.

Trump is making numerous changes inside and outside the White House and its grounds, most notably razing the East Wing to build a 1,000-person ballroom. Across the street from the mansion, Lafayette Park is closed for renovations that include getting the fountains working again.

The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to begin considering the plan on Thursday, according to its meeting agenda. Trump calls for painting all or most of the Eisenhower building’s gray granite exterior with white paint. He last year called the gray a “really bad color.”

Josh Fisher, a White House official, in April told the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts — a separate federal agency that also must approve the proposal — that the Trump administration prefers painting the entire building because the exterior is stained and in “great disrepair.”

The White House also presented an alternative proposal to paint most of the building in white while leaving the granite as is on the base.

Fisher said in April that experts consulted by the government could not guarantee that an exterior cleaning would improve the condition of the building.

But the proposal has alarmed preservationists, architects, historians and others who argue that granite is not meant to be painted and that paint would trap moisture, deteriorate the stone and not solve problems the administration wants to fix.

There’s also scant public support for the paint job.

Hundreds of pages of public comment submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission and available on the agency’s website were overwhelmingly against the plan on the grounds that the granite would be harmed by being painted and that problems would remain, at great expense to taxpayers. Others suggested improved landscaping, lighting and other steps to improve the building’s appearance.

Members of the Society of Architectural Historians sent a letter this week to Will Scharf, a top White House aide and chair of the planning commission, outlining why the project “will adversely and permanently alter this important part of American heritage and should be rejected.”

A report by the planning commission’s staff recommends that commissioners support cleaning the building but said more information is needed to evaluate the proposals to paint the exterior.

Staff also recommends asking the White House to provide information about the type of paint to be used, including where it has been successfully used on exterior granite facades in other projects. It also recommends the White House summarize other ways to achieve the goal, including cleaning the building and/or lighting.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A lawsuit against the proposed paint job is working its way through federal court.

The Eisenhower building sits across a driveway from the West Wing, and its granite, slate and cast iron exterior makes it one of America’s best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture. It was the original home for the State, War and Navy departments, and it currently houses ceremonial offices for the vice president and offices for the second lady, the National Security Council and other White House components.

At its April meeting, the fine arts commission directed White House officials to return at a future date to present more information, including the results of paint testing.

This story was originally part of KUT’s ATXplained Live show at Bass Concert Hall on October 29, 2025. Get tickets to our next show on May 21 here.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love Barton Springs. It feels like the water has magical properties. Even sacred properties.

So when Brendan Cavanagh asked about the it, I knew I needed to look into it.

“Why were the springs sacred before Uncle Billy showed up?” he asked. “And what was the Indigenous population’s relationship with them?”

By Uncle Billy, he means William Barton, the man who laid claim to the springs in 1837 when he settled there with his family and the people he enslaved.

I assumed Brendan’s question came from a place of love for the springs and general curiosity. But when I talked to him about his question, he mentioned the White Shaman mural, a piece of rock art that sits in the desert about 220 miles west of Austin.  Archaeologists say the White Shaman was painted around 400 B.C. It’s really big — 26 feet long and 13 feet high.

“I learned that the springs are actually part of that mural,” Cavanagh said. “Which was astonishing to me.”

Archeologists think the mural shows a creation story. But some people think it’s even more than that.  

Gary Perez is the chief of the  Coahuiltecan/Pakahua Nation. He has come to believe that it not only tells a creation story, but that it’s also an ancient map of Central Texas.

A pictograph on the mural shows a curved line with four matching symbols that look like knives with gray handles and white blades coming off of it at regular intervals.

Chester Leeds

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Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Perez says that this pictograph represents four sacred springs: San Antonio Springs, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs and Barton Springs. All of these springs are connected to the Edwards Aquifer, an underground network of caves and porous limestone.

Perez overlaid this part of the White Shaman mural out on a modern map with the help of a mapping expert.

“Then they did. And that was it,” Perez said. “Then we knew we were looking at a map for sure.”

Perez doesn’t think the White Shaman mural just a map, but also a calendar. He said it’s like the Mayan calendar, but for hunter-gatherers.

“These calendars exist everywhere, but this particular one is specific to Central Texas,” he said.

Perez sees the mural as a scientific tool.

There are people who agree with that interpretation of the White Shaman mural. But there are people who disagree, including Harry Shafer, a former curator of archeology at the Witte Museum, which manages the White Shaman site.

“We have a really good handle on the archeology of the Lower Pecos region and Central Texas,” Shafer said. “There’s no tie in Lower Pecos to Central Texas.”

So does the White Shaman mural depict four springs in Central Texas — including Barton Springs? Depends on whose science you believe.

Ancient history

What we do know for sure is that people have lived around Barton Springs for millennia. The archaeological record at Barton Springs goes back 13,000 years.

People were drawn to the area for its abundant water and the plant and animal life. But the people who lived around the springs back then weren’t the same people who lived at the springs when William Barton arrived.

We don’t even know the names of these ancient peoples. Did they have a sacred relationship with the springs? Maybe. We may never know the exact details.

But we do know something about the Indigenous people who came later.

In 1837, we know there were the Comanche, Tonkawa, Caddo, Lipan Apache and Coahuiltecan people in the area, among others. We know some of those people had a sacred relationship with the springs, but the accounts we have are from colonists.

These were all very different cultures who spoke different languages and believed different things.

By the time William Barton showed up, Europeans had already been in the area for 100 years. The Spanish had missions near Barton Springs in the 1700s. Their arrival brought sickness and death to the Indigenous population.

Barton lived in Austin during the Texas Republic, when many of the tribes that lived here were killed or forcibly removed.

Then, there were other ways that Native Americans were erased. At one point, a law was passed legally redesignating Native people as Mexican.

This campaign to erase Indigenous people in Texas worked, at least in our collective imagination as a state.

“In Texas there’s this sort of as assumption there’s no more Indians here,” said Craig Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “When, in fact, we have this absolutely huge population of Indigenous people that rarely gets recognized.”

Texas has the fifth-largest population of Indigenous people in the country. According to the U.S. Census, there are over 700,000 people in Texas who identity, at least in part, as Indigenous.

Barton Springs are still sacred

Some modern-day Indigenous Texans have their own sacred relationship with Barton Springs. Every August, a group of mostly women makes a pilgrimage to the four sacred springs, led by Gary Perez’s wife, Matilde Torres.

At each site, they commune with the water and offer prayers. They start at San Antonio Springs at dawn and end up at Barton Springs in the afternoon.

Diana Dos Santos has gone on the pilgrimage for the last three years.

She said it’s a long day, but it doesn’t really feel long.

“The whole day feels like it just merges into a short moment,” she said. “It’s like the whole world — the past, the present, everything — just merges into one moment. And when you’re present there — with your prayer, with your medicine, with the other sisters — it’s incredible. It’s magical.”