METRO GUIDE 2017: Economic activity in Albany, Dougherty County increase optimism

ALBANY — It’s a good time, it seems apparent, to invest in Albany and Dougherty County.

The on-again, off-again downtown redevelopment that city officials have teased residents with for years is closer to reality now, perhaps, than it’s been since the inner city’s retail district was decimated by the move in the 1980s to make the district the center of government.

And the county’s strengthened ties with top employers like Procter & Gamble and Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany offer assurances — or as close as a community can get to assurance in what has developed into a topsy-turvey national economy — that the high-paying jobs vital to the community’s economic engine keep it purring along.

“It’s right there; you can see it,” Downtown Manager Latoya Cutts said of the planned inner-city renaissance. “We’ve had our hopes up, only to be disappointed over the years so many times. But when our citizens see the value of investing their own money in what we’re doing, that’s when you see real development.”

The redevelopment spark was ignited when vascular surgeon Dr. Tripp Morgan announced plans to build a craft brewery in the heart of the downtown district along Pine Avenue. Work on that estimated $5 million-plus project, which will be part of a Pretoria Fields operation that will also stretch into farmland in the southwestern portion of the county among prime quail-hunting plantations, is expected to start in the next couple of weeks.

The farmland that is part of the Pretoria Fields project has already been converted — or is in the process of being converted — into certified organic land on which crops that will be used in the brewing process of the craft brewery will be grown.

“We’ve already produced and harvested a crop on our land in Dougherty County, and much of it is under contract to companies that use organic products,” Pretoria Fields spokesman Albert Etheridge said. “We’ll continue to sell the crops we grow until the brewery is ready for production.”

As Morgan and company prepared to break ground on the downtown brewery, another local developer — Pace Burt, who has established himself as one of the go-to designers/builders of downtown residential complexes in the Southeast — turned his attention on his hometown after creating landmark developments in cities like Greenville, Ashville, Columbus and Mobile. At the urging of another local developer, William Hancock, Burt put together a proposal to purchase the former Albany Hotel/Albany Heights building just two blocks west of the planned brewery.

Citing his desire to positively impact “the community that has been good to me and my family” moreso than focusing on profits, Burt has come up with a unique plan for the estimated $3 million to $4 million project.

“I’m going to have (at least three) retail spaces in the building, and I’m not going to charge rent,” he said. “And I’ll ask the Albany Police Department to have one of their officers stay in the apartments at no charge to enhance security. I’m also going to create a partnership with others in the community — one that reflects the population, both black and white — in which they’ll not be asked to invest money, only to market the development.”

The Albany City Commission was to consider Burt’s proposal at its Oct. 25 meeting, and the developer promised that he would start work on the project within 30 days of that body’s approval.

Meanwhile, directly between these two high-profile projects, officials with Southern Community Newspapers Inc., the parent company of The Albany Herald, announced that the historic building that houses the newspaper and other properties on Pine Avenue and Washington Street owned by the company are being marketed.

SCNI officials have said they will search for a location that better fits the current staff and functions of the newspaper if the company’s downtown properties are sold. A number of developers have expressed interest in the properties, listed at $1.4 million.

Many followers of city goings-on point to City Manager Sharon Subadan’s decision to use up to $5 million in credits squirreled away as part of a development fund to spur downtown growth as the turning point in the current momentum. Some of that funding has been used to purchase property along Front Street and Pine Avenue and to repair those properties in preparation of expected retail development.

“I can say that there is genuine interest in downtown,” Cutts said. “There are four or five strong retailers who are very interested in that riverfront retail property.”

The county, meanwhile, is basking in the ongoing construction of a biomass energy plant on land adjacent to the Procter & Gamble campus. That $200 million-plus project not only strengthens P&G’s ties to the community, negotiations to sell energy generated by the plant to nearby MCLB-Albany could result in that base becoming the Department of Defense’s first net-zero energy installation.

The base is several years into an agreement with the county landfill through which gas at that facility, a natural byproduct of the landfill operation, is converted into energy that helps run the base.

“The biomass plant is doing so much more than creating temporary construction jobs for our region,” Dougherty County Commission Chairman Chris Cohilas said. “It’s allowing us to strengthen our ties with two of our largest employers and also putting us on the map as one of the pioneers in biomass energy production.

“The whole country is looking at this project.”

A positive economic offshoot of the biomass plant will be the creation of businesses that will supply the wood and organic products that will be burned to create the steam that will generate the plant’s energy.

Since Dougherty County and Albany’s populations have each dropped off considerably over the past two decades, most leaders in the city and county say the good economic — and thus, employment — picture is trending upward for Georgia’s eighth largest city (with a population of slightly less than 77,500) and 27th largest Georgia county (94,565 population), the third largest — behind Muscogee and Lowndes — in South Georgia.

And then there’s the promise offered by Burt as he talks of his planned development: “I guarantee you, within three years of the completion of (the Albany Heights project), there will be $3 million to $4 million in new development that will follow downtown.”

That’s a promise city and county leaders are counting on to put a positive spin on their community’s economic picture.