Albany Herald

Daryl Ingram, vice president of Electric Cities of Georgia, explains the importance of working with state project managers and utilities to enhance economic development opportunities with the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission.

ALBANY — The heads of a group that helps link communities throughout the state of Georgia and the state’s various utilities for economic development, says Albany has no singular “fatal flaw” that is hindering business recruitment.

ECG, the entity formerly known as the Electric Cities of Georgia, works with state officials and various utilities providers to entice business development and growth throughout the state.

Speaking to the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission Wednesday, Charlie Gatlin — director of Economic and Community Development for ECG — and ECG Vice President Daryl Ingram painted an optimistic picture of Albany’s economic development efforts and encouraged the group to continue being aggressive at courting industry.

“Don’t ever give up, and don’t ever let up either,” Gatlin, an Albany native, said. “If you do, someone else is just going to jump in there and continue on, and it’ll be that much harder later down the line.”

The two gave a broad picture of where ECG and the state are putting their emphasis for economic development.

For fiscal year 2011, the number of total economic development projects are up 6 percent from FY 2010’s numbers. Jobs associated with those projects are up by 12 percent, and total new investment is up 17 percent statewide.

Economic development officials are primarily focusing on expansion of existing industry, with 64 percent of the total projects, 74 percent of the total investment and 69 percent of all jobs from those projects coming from expansion of current businesses.

“If you think about it for very long, it’ll dawn on you: Existing companies are really, really, important to the economy, and the numbers reflect that,” Gatlin said.

Gatlin also said that despite perceptions, state economic developers are devoting vast amounts of time and resources recruiting industries into rural portions of the state.

As compared with metropolitan areas — including the Albany metro statistical area — the state has said that 59 percent of its total projects, 59 percent of its total investment and 55 percent of the jobs are coming from rural Georgia.

“While the perception may be one thing, the numbers state something different,” Gatlin said. “A lot of attention is being devoted to the rural areas.”

Judy Randle, the chairman of the board for the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce, asked Gatlin, given all of his dealings with state prospects and prospective companies, if he had come across any major issue that had been consistantly mentioned as a detractor for the area.

“No, unlike some communities, you don’t have a fatal flaw here that is really driving people away,” Gatlin said. “You’re main issue is timing. So much of this business revolves around when you have a certain piece of property available with a certain set of conditions. If those don’t line up at the right time, they’ll move to another location.”

As an example, Ingram told the story of Albany Bedding.

Several years ago, according to Ingram, executives from the parent corporation of the company were traveling across the state with economic development officials largely looking at places to put in various retail stores.

Albany was one of several places they stopped, and while they were headed to Savannah, a call came in from a town in Southwest Georgia where the executives had agreed to put a distribution center.

“Well, the call came in, and the people in this town said they had another offer on the building that they were going to go with and that they were going to build this company a new building,” Ingram said. “The executive thought about it, decided against it and said he needed to fly back to Albany.”

Albany happened to have a space that worked, and a deal was worked out later that day because Albany had its economic development team ready to go, he said.

Gatlin said ECG is working on a number of retail and industrial prospects for the Albany area with local and state economic development officials and that the signs for growth are encouraging.