Known as the site for bars within walking distance of the Georgia Southern University campus, University Plaza is for sale with a list price of $5.5 million.
        In 2014, the Plaza made news in February when Rumrunners, one of several restaurants and clubs there, displayed a sign for its Plantation Room facility that included Confederate flags on crossed swords. After a GSU student said the club was sending an unwelcoming message to African-Americans and started an online petition that drew more than 1,800 signatures, the club’s owner took the sign down.
        Then, on Aug. 28, Michael J. Gatto, 18, a GSU freshman, died after a reported beating at Rude Rudy’s bar, also in the Plaza. Grant James Spencer, 20, then a Rude Rudy’s bouncer and also a GSU student, was charged by Statesboro police with aggravated battery and felony murder. After city officials alleged multiple incidents of serving underage customers, Jonathan Earl Starkey, who was identified as owner of the club — but not the building — surrendered his alcohol license.
        Now the entire center, measuring 2.39 acres at 14 Georgia Ave., is listed for sale through the real estate firm Statesboro Properties.
        The listing describes the place as “surrounded by (the) GSU campus” and containing “7 different bar and grilles with alcohol licenses, restaurants and a convenience store.”
        “It’s such a unique property it can’t be duplicated nowadays. It’s grandfathered-in” said Nick Propps, owner of Statesboro Properties and agent for the Plaza. “You couldn’t do the same thing close to the university like you have there.”
        Interviewed a week ago, Propps said he had been listing the property for about a month.
        “It’s prime for redevelopment as well,” he said. “It doesn’t have to stay bars.”
        His listing also states that University Plaza was the site of the original Zaxby’s. This restaurant was later replaced by the Zaxby’s on Fair Road, but the chicken-centered fast-food chain, which started in Statesboro and is now based in Athens, is building another restaurant on the corner at Chandler Road, next to but not part of the Plaza.

Owner cites retirement
        Holmes Ramsey, who owns the Plaza, said this week that the property has been for sale for about two months and that this is the first time he has placed it on the market.
        “I’ll be 69 this year, and I’m just getting ready to retire,” Ramsey said.
        The Plaza, he pointed out, was built about 50 years ago as a multifaceted, strip-type shopping center. It was not occupied mainly by bars, or even restaurants, at first.
        “It just kind of morphed into that,” Ramsey said.
        His father, the late Talmadge Ramsey, and the late Everett Williams, who became president of Sea Island Bank, built the Plaza in 1965.
        It was called University Plaza from the beginning, although Georgia Southern, then a college, was not named a university until 1990. But the surrounding area was known as Collegeboro, and was only later annexed into Statesboro.
        The Plaza was the home of the Oxford Shop, one of three clothing stores the Ramseys owned. Williams placed a pharmacy there. The Collegeboro post office was part of the Plaza, in the spot where Rumrunners is now, Holmes Ramsey said. A sporting goods store and a drycleaner were also among the early business tenants.
        The first bar or club to open was Cadillac Jack’s in the 1980s, he recalled. That was when Ramsey’s father and Williams still owned the property. The bar closed, and Ramsey later got Statesboro’s first Mellow Mushroom pizza place as a tenant.
Ramsey and Propps said they are getting considerable attention from prospective buyers. The Rude Rudy’s space remains vacant but is available for lease.
        Last year, Ramsey said, Georgia Southern representatives talked to him about the university possibly buying the Plaza property, but it went no further than “the talking stages.”
        “They offered me a small price for it, but I turned it down,” he said.