Cobb County | Consistently Winning

If Cobb County had a theme song, DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win” certainly comes to mind as a contender. New industry continues to choose Cobb, existing industry is expanding, tourism remains a key economic driver, and new residents keep flocking to Georgia’s third-largest county and its seven cities.

“Already this year [2023], in just nine months, we have 24 wins,” says Sharon Mason, president and CEO of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, “and that equates to more than 2,000 high-quality jobs – and half of those are existing industry expansions.”

According to Mason, the other half of new jobs were created through relocations. The county is also seeing great growth across all industry sectors, while more small- to mid-size businesses are also growing and expanding, she says.

“We have over 60 active projects currently that are considering Cobb,” Mason says. “We’re also seeing more headquarters come to Cobb.”

In addition to Papa John’s and TK Elevator, Gas South is moving its headquarters to The Battery Atlanta Aug. 1, and construction is underway on a 250,000-square-foot office building that will be the new headquarters of Truist Financial Corp.’s securities and corporate banking division, which is also expected to open later this year. About 1,000 Truist employees will relocate from Buckhead’s Atlanta Financial Center complex to the Cobb office, while Gas South’s new office, which will span 31,000 square feet, will accommodate the company’s more than 250 Georgia-based employees.

“Vanderlande, a Dutch logistics company, continues to expand their global headquarters up in north Cobb,” Mason says. “Cobb is already home to the headquarters for Home Depot and so many others. I think the proactivity and the intentional engagement to make sure we stay ahead of challenges the business community is facing are key to our success.”

To ensure continued success, last year the chamber adopted a new five-year strategic plan that seeks to champion Cobb’s prosperity by working with partners locally, regionally and statewide, according to Mason. The chamber’s roster includes 2,700 member companies.

“We’re looking to elevate areas [where] we’ve really seen success, like driving economic growth, and elevating our focus on talent and workforce development. That is a key need,” she says. “We’re focused on creating that intentional business engagement and then fostering both internally and externally impactful leaders for our organization and community.”

Safety First

On Oct. 2, the chamber hosted its annual Public Safety Appreciation Luncheon and launched its 28th Public Safety Appreciation Week. Business and community leaders gathered to recognize 20 individuals and 12 units for outstanding service to the community. Meanwhile, throughout the week, volunteers delivered gift baskets to all public safety stations in the county, including police, fire, 911 and EMS, in recognition of employees’ dedication to the safety of the community.

According to Cobb County Board of Commissioners Chair Lisa Cupid, that dedication has contributed to an overall drop in crime, particularly violent crime.

“We’ve implemented a Real Time Crime Center that allows us to take data feeds from several points across the county,” Cupid says. “It allows us to better capture what’s going on in the community in real time; it’s precision policing.”

The system, which was launched in 2022, brings in video from hundreds of cameras across the county, including license plate readers, traffic cameras and business surveillance systems. When a call comes in, police officers in the center can pull up footage from any of the cameras.

“It provides police with specific data versus generalized data and therefore, we can reduce the number of stops of innocent civilians,” Cupid says. “This allows us to go after the criminals directly instead of criminalizing the community.”

Cupid says the Real Time Crime Center won a national award from the National Real Time Crime Center Association last year and the county received the Tri Arc Award from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) for triple accreditation of its public safety services, 911, the Cobb Police Training Center and the Cobb Police Department.

“Public safety is foundational when it comes to business success,” she says. “There’s just an expectation that we’re going to have a safe community and manage our government well.”

Embracing the Chattahoochee

In addition to its public safety awards, there are other “high-level” indicators of the county’s continued success, according to Cupid.

“We continue to grow in the county,” she says. “We retain our position as Georgia’s third-largest county and one of its fastest growing. We added 11,000 residents between April 2020 and July 2022.

“For 26 years we’ve maintained our AAA bond rating and we learned from our financial advisor over the past 10 years that AAA bond rating has saved our taxpayers $20 million,” she says.

“Wonderful amenities” also make Cobb a great place to live, Cupid says, noting the county will be the site of the first regional trailhead park for Chattahoochee RiverLands, a planned 100-mile linear park through the heart of Metro Atlanta.

In March, the Trust for Public Land completed its purchase of an 8.6-acre site along the Chattahoochee River, at the corner of Mableton Parkway and Discovery Boulevard. The trailhead park, the first of approximately 25 regional trailheads being developed for the RiverLands project, will anchor the southern end of a 2.7-mile greenway trail connecting Mableton north to Smyrna. The trail will also connect to the Mableton Parkway Trail, which is currently under construction, providing direct passage from the Chattahoochee to the Silver Comet Trail.

“This project allows us to bring a natural resource to an area [Mableton] that has not had this type of access to the river that other parts of the county and other parts of the metro area have had even though the river’s in its backyard,” Cupid says.

A groundbreaking for the Cobb County portion of the RiverLands project was held in April, and the trailhead site is expected to open in 2026.

“It’s really exciting for us because the entire Trust for Public Land trail is starting here in Cobb,” says Holly Quinlan, president and CEO of Cobb Travel & Tourism. “[The project] embraces the Chattahoochee River in a way that I don’t know has ever been done before, at least not on this scale. It’s going to be transformational.”

Boosting Tourism

Quinlan sees the RiverLands project as a future attraction that will continue to bolster tourism as Cobb’s No. 1 industry. In 2022, the economic impact of tourism was $2.4 billion, up from $2.2 billion in 2021, according to Quinlan.

“In 2022, everybody was like, ‘Yes! We’re ready to have a show or convention in person,’ so that was a key driver, but another key driver is Cobb continues to have some incredible attractions that draw in visitors,” she says. “If somebody is here for a business conference, there are many things that make them want to stay one more night.”

Existing attractions like The Battery, Truist Park and Six Flags continue to draw tourists, while the county’s wineries, breweries and distilleries are proving popular among locals, Quinlan says. In March, Cobb Travel & Tourism will kick off “Bubbles & Brews 2024,” a month of special events tied to the spirit makers, brewers and distilleries throughout the county.

“We have 21 breweries in Cobb,” she says. “I believe it’s a very healthy number of breweries. It’s something that really tells the local story; all of them are different and all of them are unique.”

One of the newer breweries on the scene is Skint Chestnut Brewing Co. in Powder Springs. Skint Chestnut is the city’s first brewery, and according to Mayor Al Thurman, it’s an important part of what he sees as a burgeoning entertainment district downtown.

“We have a lot to celebrate,” he says. “We want to create density in our downtown. We started out with a $4.2 million park with an amphitheater and water features in the center and we have been building around that.”

In addition to the brewery, there are new restaurants downtown and in-town living is on the horizon. In 2021, the city sold two pieces of property to an Atlanta-based developer for a mixed-use development estimated to cost $38 million. The former city hall sat on one of the purchased pieces of property, the sale of which makes way for the construction of nearly 5,000 square feet of commercial space, along with 221 apartments.

“We just started moving dirt on the new city hall,” he says. “It will take 18 to 24 months to complete. Our courthouse was right off the square also, but the new city hall will have an atrium tied to the courthouse downtown overlooking the park. There will also be a new two-story parking deck off the back of the new city hall.”

Expanding Downtown Smyrna

As Powder Springs continues on its journey to reinvent its downtown, Smyrna is reimagining its city center, starting with the completion of a new downtown greenspace. In September, the city opened a splash pad and water feature as part of a larger overhaul of its downtown greenspace Village Green.

“We finished our downtown greenspace with the new park and splash [pad] feature, which is a great new interactive space that people are enjoying,” says Mayor Derek Norton. “In the morning people are doing yoga [in the park]. In the middle of the day, they’re enjoying the splash pad feature and the lawn, and at night they’re enjoying a glass of wine and dessert.”

Norton says the new space is “being heavily used” and drawing people and new businesses downtown. Among the new businesses are a Great American Cookie Co. location, a bubble tea shop and a planned rooftop restaurant overlooking the new green space.

As the overhaul of downtown continues, it is simultaneously growing. According to Norton, the city is purchasing Smyrna Baptist Church and its nine acres to expand the downtown footprint. The church is moving to another location on Atlanta Road, Norton says.

“We are going through a ton of citizen input to decide what our expanded downtown looks like,” he says. “I think [this purchase] increases walkability and provides retail, restaurant, green space, parking and housing opportunities or some combination of all of those things which creates more amenities for Smyrna residents.”

Renovation and Renewal

While Powder Springs and Smyrna create new spaces for people and places, the story of the county seat is one of adaptive reuse, according to Daniel Cummings, Marietta assistant city manager for economic and project development.

“Sessions Street is kind of a unique area of Marietta,” Cummings says. “There’s a lot of historic homes and eclectic buildings and uses.”

What started as a walk-up coffee shop hidden among historic homes at the corner of Campbell Hill and Sessions streets is now an anchor tenant of an old industrial building that was formerly a wholesale facility for eyewear.

Sessions Stand coffee shop and bakery moved across the street from its previous location in August, relocating into the once-idle industrial building. The new Sessions Stand also offers a full-service bar and a patio has been added to the side of the building for live music events, according to Cummings, who says in addition to Sessions Stand offerings, a retail boutique is also coming to the space.

A second industrial building next door is now home to the Rev Coffee Roasters’ roastery, which is where Sessions Stand sources its coffee. Rev Coffee Roasters owns the two industrial buildings.

“It’s a great adaptive reuse story,” Cummings says. “Now you have a lot of life and vibrancy fused into these formerly vacant buildings.”

Becoming a City

It’s been more than a year since residents voted to approve cityhood for Mableton in unincorporated Cobb County. By May, Georgia’s newest city had its first mayor and city council.

“Prior to us incorporating, Cobb was 85% unincorporated,” Mayor Michael Owens says. “At around 78,000 people, we are now the largest city in Cobb County and that’s by land mass and population. We’re the 12th largest city in the state of Georgia right now.”

Owens says he thinks belief in the new city’s potential is what led Mableton residents to support cityhood. “The collective want for Mableton to be a city was born out of a want for self-determination that was about inclusion and about celebrating our diversity and the diverse people that are here,” he says. “It’s not just racial, it’s also socioeconomic and cultural diversity as well.”

According to Owens, Mableton’s charter gives the newly elected government two years to transition four services from county-provided to city-provided, including planning, zoning and code enforcement, sanitation and parks and recreation.

“There’s not a playbook for starting a new city,” he says. “I think that going beyond just the transition of services, it’s also about how we effectively build a city government that is transparent, effective and efficient. We also want to have a high level of bi-directional communication with our citizens.”

In the first 100 days, Owens says, the council has hired a city attorney, a city clerk and an interim finance director, all of whom have previous city start-up experience.

“We have been effective in getting agreements with the county that allow us to start receiving funds for certain taxes and we’ve established an ordinance for collecting hotel/motel taxes and other revenue-generating activities,” he says. “When we started city government operations June 1, we did not even have a bank account and within our first 100 days, we had $1 million in our bank account.”

 

Local Flavor

Halfpipe Dreams

The City of Powder Springs had cause to celebrate Oct. 14, when it officially opened a $1.8 million skate park. The event featured pro skater demonstrations and a best-trick competition, and pro skaters Andy Mac, Trey Wood and Grace Marhoefer were on hand for the celebration.

“This skate park is very unique because it is for beginner skaters all the way up to world-competition skaters,” Mayor Al Thurman says. “It makes Powder Springs a destination.”

Built by California Skateparks, the 20,000-square-foot park is located at the Silver Comet Linear Park on Richard D. Sailors Parkway adjacent to the Silver Comet Trail.

“This park has been on the drawing board for at least 15 to 16 years, but there was no money put toward it,” the mayor says. (Thurman was re-elected for a third term Nov. 7.) “As we looked at planning for the future, the skate park was very high on the list of what the citizens wanted.”

That desire was fueled by a need to remove the skaters from shopping center parking lots, Thurman explains.

“The kids had no place to skate, so this was a big deal,” he says.

In addition to the skate park, the Silver Comet Linear Park has two playgrounds, including an accessible playground, a concession stand, restrooms, a circuit exercise area and a covered outdoor basketball court.

“[The Silver Comet Linear Park] is a signature park,” Thurman says. “It’s right next to the Silver Comet Trail, which comes through the heart of the city. About 100,000 people utilize the trail each year.”

Also making Powder Springs a destination is its annual “Bringing the Sea to The Springs” seafood festival held downtown at Thurman Springs Park, which is named after the mayor. Each spring more than 10,000 people descend upon the city to enjoy fresh seafood, beer and wine gardens and live music. The festival also features non-seafood options, as well as cookies, ice cream and funnel cakes and has an area for kids to play. Admission is free. In 2022, the three-day festival won the “Spot-On Event of the Year” Award from Cobb Travel & Tourism.