Published: August 25, 2009 10:54 pm      

Brian Anderson: Fall and football

The weather this weekend was awesome. It was our first hint of fall weather that is welcomed by most after a long hot summer. This weekend will be the official start to football season.

We will excitedly spend our Friday evenings and Saturdays pulling for and cheering for our favorite teams. Our teams and the players on them have spent weeks and months preparing for the start of the season and squaring off against their competitors.

I spent this past weekend enjoying the hint of fall weather visiting colleges with my son. What an exciting time in his life and his parents? Looking at different schools, considering all that each has to offer, and at some point deciding what will fit his needs for life after high school. As much as I want to think he is only considering the academic side of college life, I know that social activities like Saturday football and Greek life are heavyweights in his decision making process.

Call me crazy or just plain weird, I found myself thinking like an economic development prospect. We were viewing schools just like companies view communities. We toured each school’s hard infrastructure (buildings, grounds, dorms, etc). And we asked questions aimed at understanding their soft infrastructure (academic rigor, quality of life programming, social activities, campus safety, etc).

Companies look at communities in just the same way. They consider our hard infrastructure (geographic location, transportation assets, utilities, shovel-ready sites, etc). Soft infrastructure (climate, topography, schools, health care, housing, etc.) is also important to the decision-making process.

Our community has to prepare for competition just like our favorite football teams. Given our limited experience in competing in the pure economic development arena, we have had our two-a-days getting ready for game night. Our community, in four short years, authorized and created a Joint Development Authority, whose sole task is to lead the economic development efforts of our community. With a staff of one for most of those four years, the Joint Development Authority has:

• Developed an organization that works to increase the economic vitality of our community.

• Executed a study by Angelou Economics aimed at understanding what our community strengths and community opportunity areas are.

• Developed a list of industrial targets that we could successfully recruit given our strengths (plastics, chemicals, advanced manufacturing, auto manufacturing, etc.).

• Developed and is implementing a targeted business plan.

• Developed and implemented an incentives plan that provided recruitment incentives for new investment.

• Enabled two existing industries to expand here instead of in other competing communities.

• Revised initial incentive plans to be more competitive.

• Partnered with the Dalton-Whitfield Chamber of Commerce in creating the Grow Greater Dalton campaign that will grow public and private resources for accelerating economic development success.

• Working to change perceptions outside our community (state officials, state project managers, utility partner project managers, etc) that Dalton-Whitfield is open for business.

• Working with local government in creating the tools needed for economic development success (land, marketing resources and staffing).

Although I could go on and on, suffice it to say we have come a long way in being able to compete for economic growth. We have more to do, but as long as we continue working together as a team, proactively communicating the assets available within our community, and strategically partnering with those in the economic development arena, our future is bright!

Just like a football team dreads two-a-days in those hot summer weeks leading to the first kickoff, we have been preparing just as hard to be able to compete regionally, nationally and globally. I am grateful to be on our community economic development team. I look forward to matching up with our competing communities. With a firm foundation now in place, we can compete with the best of them. Stay tuned for the announcements of many first downs and touchdowns as we go forward.



Brian D. Anderson is president and CEO of the Dalton-Whitfield Chamber of Commerce.