As an undergraduate student, Pam Shirah NeSmith (BSHE ’71) spent hours in child development labs, recording observations and writing lesson plans for preschoolers and children with developmental disabilities.

“We took it to such a degree that there were teacher instructions on what to do based on the child’s response, and a follow-up plan for what to do if the child’s response wasn’t as anticipated. Often we had to write a third plan,” NeSmith recalls. “This training, plus taking courses in just about every school at the university definitely prepared me for life.”

NeSmith used those skills during her early years as a school teacher in Jesup, but she’s also used them more recently as she and business partner, Smith Wilson, have struggled to teach the Athens community about custom-designed, mixed-use development.

NeSmith and Wilson teamed up in 1999 to develop the former Coca-Cola bottling plant on Prince Avenue into The Bottleworks On Prince, a collection of custom-designed condominiums, offices and retail businesses. But how they came to meet is a story in itself.

“It started over mules,” NeSmith says. Specifically, it began nearly a decade ago when her husband, Dink, decided they should add mules to the growing menagerie at their Hart County farm.

“When Dink started talking about buying mules we were told we needed to know Smith Wilson,” she says. “Smith had grand champions two years in a row. He persuaded us to join the Plow Club, attend mule school in Ohio and many other things you do when you own mules.”

As the three University of Georgia graduates came to know each other better, they learned they had other interests in common, including historic preservation. Wilson, a 1972 business graduate, has restored a number of historic properties in the Athens area, including the Franklin House on Broad Street and the Camack House on Meigs Street. The NeSmiths have renovated houses and newspaper offices. Recently, the rehabilitation of the former post office building in St. Marys, Ga., was completed to house the Tribune & Georgian Newspaper, one of several dozen newspapers in Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas that make up Community Newspapers. Dink NeSmith, a 1970 journalism graduate, is co-owner and president of the company.

When they learned of the opportunity to buy the Coca-Cola bottling plant, the NeSmiths and Wilson decided to combine their interests and begin the learning curve of turning the historic property into something that was new for Athens, a development that amounts to a small village. Although Dink NeSmith has been supportive of the project, he’ll quickly tell you that Pam and Smith have been the driving forces behind the project.

“At the time we began the project, this area looked like one big building,” NeSmith recalls as she provides a brief tour of the seven buildings that make up the complex. “It was just stacks of drinks and forklifts.”

One of the first things the developers did was to peel back the aluminum roof that enclosed the plant, allowing them to see how light flowed among the five individual buildings. NeSmith and Wilson were able to readily visualize the truck bays as combination garage-storage spaces for the condominiums. Another building, built in 1900, that had been used for on-site repair for the delivery trucks was transformed into the Bischero and Quizno’s restaurants. The main building facing Prince Avenue, which was the original bottling company, became the headquarters for Community Newspapers and houses several other offices and retail space.

In order to maximize the bottling plant’s footprint, NeSmith and Wilson chose to build a new three-story building and to add a third floor to an existing one. The result is seven buildings divided relatively evenly among residential, office and retail space. The residential spaces are all being sold to the homeowners. A couple of the commercial spaces also have been sold; the rest have been leased.

“One of the learning experiences has been the idea of custom design,” NeSmith says. “I’ll show a blank space and people want to know how it will look when it’s finished. I say, ‘How do you want it to look?’ The idea that we will finish a space to meet their needs has been a difficult concept to convey.”

The final tally of spaces includes 13 residential units ranging in size from 982 square feet to 2,000 square feet, three restaurants and several other businesses and attorney offices. On Jan. 2, 2000, the Athens-Clarke County Board of Commissioners unanimously designated The Bottleworks as a local landmark. The development also has been named an award winner for excellence in rehabilitation by The Georgia Trust and in community revitalization by the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation. On Feb. 1, 2006, The Bottleworks On Prince was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.

As NeSmith continues to market space at The Bottleworks, she also continues to educate the broader Athens community on the benefits of this type of development.

“Could we have done this in a cookie-cutter style?” she asks rhetorically. “Yes, but would it have kept its uniqueness? With custom design we’re able to maintain the character and uniqueness of the spaces.”

NeSmith says the project was a couple of years ahead of its time—both in the development of an in-town, mixed-use project, but also in the redevelopment of this area of Athens.

“Prince Avenue was the road that connected Cobbham, Athens’ first suburb, with downtown,” she says. “Now, with The Bottleworks, the purchase of Prince Avenue Baptist by Piedmont College and the plans for the redevelopment of the Navy School, I think this area is going to really grow.”

Although The Bottleworks has taken up a great deal of NeSmith’s time, she has been involved in a variety of other projects since she and Dink moved to Athens in 1991 from their long-time home of Jesup. She served on the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation Board for several years, including as president from 2003-2004. In 2004, she was appointed by the Athens-Clarke County Commission to a citizens advisory committee that conducted a comprehensive study of historic designation boundaries and design standards for downtown Athens.

“It took our committee three years, but downtown is now designated!” she says proudly.

The NeSmiths also are proud of their UGA ties. In addition to both Pam and Dink being UGA graduates, so are their three children, Alan, Emily and Eric, as well as son-in-law Tom Wilson. The couples’ two grandsons, Wyatt, age 3, and Hayes, age 5 months, have already been signed up as lifetime members of the UGA Alumni Association.