Catching up with… Van Johnson

Van Johnson has been mayor since 2020, after serving four terms as alderman for the City Council’s 1st District. He’s leading the city during a time of rapid change, as the region prepares to welcome thousands of new people who will work at the nearby Hyundai plant and its suppliers. These are edited highlights from an interview.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson. | Photo credit: Frank Fortune

The Savannah region has an embarrassment of industry riches right now. How are you preparing for the growth?

By taking a regionwide approach. It does not bear any of us well to look at it in a silo approach. Savannah has a pretty well-developed transportation system. The goal is how do we help some of our neighbors see the benefits of connectivity with public transportation? As far as housing, how do we make it easier for affordable housing to be developed? How do we … [reach] the density that’s going to be necessary to achieve affordability? In terms of childcare, the reality is that you can have great employment opportunities, you can have great housing, you can have great transportation, but if you don’t have someone credible and reliable to look after your children – particularly on jobs that are shift-based – you can’t take advantage of those opportunities. Front of mind is making sure that we’re supporting opportunities for [attracting] solid childcare providers across the region.

Savannah receives up to 16 million visitors a year. How do you keep the city both a popular tourist destination and a good place
to live?

What makes Savannah so interesting to visit is that people live here. We’re not a museum. People live every single day among these magnificent structures and public lands that we all enjoy. It requires us to recalibrate the balance regularly between the rights of businesses to grow and develop and add to our economy and the rights of residents who should have some decent expectation of livability within their own neighborhoods. We’re working now with tourism companies and walking tours, trying to make sure that we maintain constant and effective communication between the groups.

The Savannah Convention Center is being expanded. Why is this needed, and how is it going to impact the number of visitors to the city?

Savannah … is also an excellent place for meetings and conventions. People like coming here, they bring their families, they stay longer. So the demand really drove the need to expand the convention center, which is owned by the state through the Georgia World Congress Center.

The challenge for us is that hotel rates in our area are not affordable for many conferences. We continue to push toward a convention hotel, to help create some affordability for people. I think we will get more conventions and events if we’re able to not only have the space to accommodate it, but we also have hotel rates to make it reasonable for business travelers.

How is Savannah’s film and television sector coming back following last year’s actors’ and writers’ strikes?

I think that Savannah did not suffer as much because we have independent filming options such as from Savannah College of Art and Design, so we always have something going on here. For me, it’s about creating opportunities for equity within that space, making sure that we create many opportunities for people to be a part of this bustling film and TV industry. We want to make sure that access is created for anybody wanting to get into this industry.

What have you done to make Savannah safer for visitors as well as residents?

We continue to make some very hard decisions. We just passed an ordinance requiring individuals to secure their guns in their cars. Over 80% of the guns stolen from cars last year in Savannah were from cars that were unlocked. That helps to promote responsible behavior while protecting the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.

The Coastal Georgia and Savannah area is particularly blessed right now. And we don’t take that for granted.