Giving Cobb an EDGE: Chamber aims to boost economic development through program

by Katy Ruth Camp
krcamp@mdjonline.com

MARIETTA — What’s in it for me?

That’s the question the Cobb Chamber of Commerce aims to answer with its new, six-month economic development program, Cobb’s Competitive EDGE.

The Chamber’s CEO, chief operating officer and three of the county’s top business executives visited the Journal on Tuesday to unveil the initiative they say will assist in attracting and keeping businesses — and jobs — in Cobb.

“We want to take a leadership role and be sure this community attracts jobs and invests in the future,” said Chamber President and CEO David Connell. “Jobs and investments are the best ways for a community to grow, from a prosperity standpoint.”

The Chamber hired Atlanta-based Market Street Services to conduct the program, called Cobb’s Competitive EDGE — or Economic Development for a Growing Economy — in June. Connell said the program will likely cost $180,000 to $200,000, but no taxpayer money will be used to fund the initiative. The program will involve a four-part process, almost identical to Gwinnett County’s recent initiative, Partnership Gwinnett, said Demming Bass, the Chamber’s chief operating officer.

Bass, who was hired by the Cobb Chamber in December, was the key figure in the Gwinnett initiative launched in 2006 and implemented in 2007 when he served as the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of marketing and public policy from April 2005 to December.

But this program will be bigger and better than Gwinnett’s, Bass said, as Cobb has more to offer than the county it is most often compared to.

“Cobb has phenomenal assets in place already. The problem is, I don’t think we’ve done a good job of telling our story,” Bass said. “Even internally, within our own county. For example — I had a conversation with the CEO of the (Cumberland area-based) Weather Channel, and he said they don’t have a problem recruiting anchors, but most of their hires are software engineers. He said they struggle with finding those workers but get a lot from Georgia Tech. So I asked him about (Southern Polytechnic State University), and he wasn’t that familiar with their programs, so now we’re putting them in touch. So if people locally don’t even know about the assets we have here in Cobb, then we need to do a better job of marketing both internally and externally.”

The four phases include competitive assessment, target cluster analysis, economic and community development strategy, and economic and community development implementation plan. The competitive assessment phase will include one-on-one interviews with major public figures such as former Gov. Roy Barnes and current Attorney General Sam Olens, focus groups with targeted business groups such as young professionals, public surveys and data collection. The survey can be filled out online now through July 11 by anyone who wishes to take it, Connell said. That survey can be accessed at www.SurveyMonkey.com/CobbEDGE.

Some of the data that will be used and analyzed could include demographic information and recent business trends in Cobb, Bass said. This phase will also include comparisons to three other communities being identified as most similar to Cobb, such as Gwinnett County; Wake County, N.C. — which Bass said is fast growing and known as the “research triangle” for its higher education similarities — and Collin County, Texas — which is just outside of Dallas and has similar business corridors, Bass said.

The results of the first phase of analysis will be revealed and available to the public by the end of August, Bass said.

The second phase includes an analysis of the most important existing and the most promising niche industries for the county to focus its marketing, such as health care and aeronautics. Once those are identified, marketing Cobb to potential businesses becomes easier and more feasible, Connell said. This will conclude and be revealed by the end of September, Bass said.

The third phase will involve the program’s steering committee — made up of 39 of Cobb’s top business, education, civic and political leaders — taking the data that has been collected and developing a five-year economic and community development strategy, which will serve as the blueprint for Cobb’s immediate and long-term goals, Bass said. This will be presented to the public sometime between October and December, Bass said.

The fourth and final phase involves the committee’s creation of an implementation plan that will enable the Chamber and government leaders to “hit the ground running” with the strategy’s goals, Bass said.

That plan will likely focus on how to generate high-wage job growth in the county, said steering committee member Heath Garrett, a Marietta attorney. And Menefee and Styf agreed those high-wage jobs are necessary not only to keep their workforces strong, but also to generate revenues within their companies as those employees will be able to pay for their own health care, instead of requiring subsidies.

“The purpose is to get everybody on same page — retaining and recruiting high-wage jobs,” Garrett said. “If we can get and keep those jobs here, the county will prosper, people will be healthier and Cobb will be the kind of community companies around the world want to come to.”