Meriwether County: Embracing Past And Future

Making the most of FDR and KIA

Published in Georgia Trend Magazine December 2007
Read the full article online.

Excerpt about FDR & The Little White House:

Say the words "Georgia" and "president" in the same sentence and most people think Jimmy Carter. But in Meriwether County, those words, when spoken together, refer to New Yorker Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Even now, some 60 years after his death, FDR's legacy in Warm Springs, the town he adopted as his second home, draws some 100,000 people to Meriwether County each year. And while tourism is the established economic engine in the southern portion of the county, the northern end is anticipating industrial growth sparked by the Kia plant set to open in neighboring Troup County.

Located in the town of Warm Springs, Roosevelt's Little White House offers a glimpse into the president's life. "This is where he felt like he could be himself," Kim Cushman, site director of the state historic site, says about Roosevelt. ...

Excerpt about KIA:

Courting Kia Suppliers
Greenville, the county seat, located in the center of the county, is hoping to lure tourists by sprucing up its business district with help from the state's Better Hometown program. Sally Estes, Greenville Better Hometown director, expects the program to do more than encourage tourism. "It will help economic development," she says. "When we have downtown looking good, it will bring business in. It's a cute little town with so much potential."

"We are in Phase I of the Entrepreneur Friendly Community program," says Carolyn McKinley, executive director of the Meriwether County Chamber of Commerce. "The goal of the program is to create an entrepreneur environment by building small business strategies into the community's overall economic development strategies. We want to welcome small businesses into our community, and we will work to create a support network to help them sustain and grow into successful organizations."

The county hopes to develop a youth entrepreneur program, which is especially important in Meriwether, where, McKinley says, so many "young people believe they have to move away to find career success. We want to give them a local option."

Meriwether also has recently been designated a Work Ready Community. "A local team has developed strategies to increase the high school graduation rate," McKinley says. Gap training for individuals seeking to qualify for certain jobs will be available at no cost at West Georgia Technical College's Meriwether County Workforce Development Center.

"As a rural county with a high unemployment rate and relatively low high school graduation rates, it is important for us to forge this collaborative initiative designed to prepare all our citizens for the competitive jobs our economic developers are working so aggressively to bring into our county," McKinley says.

"Economic development is key. We hope we're on the cusp of great change," says Bob Patterson, pastor at First Baptist Church in Warm Springs and chair of the Hospital Authority and of the Meriwether County Interagency Council. "If economic development comes to pass with Kia, then people could go to the Workforce Development Center then get a good job."

Tax Dollars At Work
While much of Meriwether's growth is expected to occur on the north end of the county, thanks to I-85, Kia and the sprawl from Atlanta, G&S Metals chose the Manchester Industrial Park, located in the southern part of the county, for its first Southeastern facility. G&S, which opened in 2006, expects to have 75 employees and invest $7 million in the project by 2009. The company, headquartered in Indiana, supplies the automotive industry and related industries with primary-grade recycled aluminum.

"There's good infrastructure in Manchester, Warm Springs and Woodbury because they were all developed and oriented toward Columbus," Purvis says about the towns in the county's south end. "Nobody expected Atlanta's growth to creep here. Now we're playing catch up in the north with infrastructure. It's an expensive proposition."

New industry will change the face of Luthersville in the north end of the county, just seven miles from the new industrial park. "Just riding through Luthersville you wouldn't sense the growth," says Mayor Bob Trammell, Sr., but it's there if you look. "Every building in downtown except one has a business in it. Smith Hardware on Highway 27 is the first new building for a business built here in 25 years."