Savannah | Chatham County: Running on All Cylinders

When a massive development like the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America comes to town, it lands with such force that the impact blurs city and county lines. The electric vehicle assembly plant is in Bryan County, not Chatham, and closer to Statesboro than Savannah. But the sheer size of the plant – which will employ 8,500 people at full capacity, while employment at supplier plants will push that to 14,476 – has made it as impactful for Savannah as if it were on River Street.

To prepare, a workforce development agency drawing from multiple counties has begun work before it even has a name. Meanwhile, a regional chamber of commerce collaborative – again, working ahead of its formal naming – has begun meeting to discuss ways the chambers can deal with more regional interests.

Filling Jobs: Hugh “Trip” Tollison, president and CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority. | Photo credit Frank Fortune

“What we are doing now is basically shifting our focus as a region to getting workers to fill all these jobs. What SEDA [Savannah Economic Development Authority] did is start a multicounty jurisdictional effort that is going to go out and spearhead a drive to get new workers and to get people interested out of high school,” says Hugh “Trip” Tollison, president and CEO of SEDA.

SEDA will manage the startup of this workforce group, which will ultimately become an independent entity with its own board of directors. It currently has a staff of four, drawn from the counties most impacted by the plant. Anna Chafin left the CEO position at the Development Authority of Bryan County to become the new group’s president and CEO.

The work is too pressing to wait, Tollison says. The original start date for the metaplant was the first quarter of 2025, but it’s been moved up to the fourth quarter of 2024.

The Hyundai supplier plants being built in the region are matching that pace. Three are South Korean firms that announced in 2023 they would be locating in Chatham County:

• Seoyon E-HWA, which is investing $76 million in a plant making bumpers and interior parts such as headliners that will employ 740 people.
• PHA, which is investing $67 million and creating 402 jobs in a plant that will make door modules, tailgate latches and hood latches.
• Daechang Seat Corp. USA, which is investing $72.5 million and will employ more than 500 people making automotive seat frames.

Future Practice Facility: James Touchton, Port Wentworth’s director of economic development, standing with Port Wentworth City Manager, Steve Davis, on the construction site of an ice rink being built for the Ghost Pirates minor league hockey team. | Photo credit: Frank Fortune

“You don’t really get to choose whether you’re ready or not – it’s going to happen. Every day, we are working on how to be as ready as possible,” says Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bert Brantley. “We’re looking at things like traffic patterns, childcare – things that you really don’t know if you have enough of until the answer is ‘no.’”

The various area chambers of commerce are hearing the drumbeat as well. Brantley describes a regional chamber collaborative that has taken shape and now meets every other month. It includes the Savannah JDA membership of Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham and Effingham counties, plus Liberty County, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and South Carolina’s Beaufort and Jasper counties, just across the Savannah River.

“Everybody’s been willing to come together to discuss issues and they’ve jumped in with both feet. We’re working every day to be as ready as we can be,” Brantley says. Projects up for discussion include things like a regional version of the relocation guides most individual chambers produce.

Savannah Mayor Van R. Johnson II says there are some issues around readiness in the region. “I don’t think we’re as ready as we could be. There’s still questions of housing and transportation and workforce development that have to be addressed. I want to make sure that Savannah residents have a viable shot at these jobs,” he says. “There’s a lack of public transportation and furthermore, I-16, which is a bottleneck anyway, can be further challenged by the development.”

Johnson says he hopes for state help with the regional public transportation problem. “If people can’t get to the opportunity, they can’t take advantage of the opportunity. My role is to make sure that the hometown advantage is preserved. Savannah can handle the growth,” he says.

Coming Together: Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bert Brantley. Photo credit: Eliotvanottern.com

Savannah had affordable housing challenges before Hyundai ever looked at the area, but Johnson says progress is being made. “Savannah is literally running on all cylinders,” he says. “We have made historic inroads on making housing affordable for Savannahians and addressing the needs of our roofless neighbors, all while having our taxes at historic lows because we have been able to identify other funding.”

Credit the Georgia Ports Authority with a large chunk of that “other funding.” The ports stepped forward last fall to pledge $6 million over the next eight years to Housing Savannah Inc., a relatively new nonprofit at the core of the city’s housing initiative to repair existing housing, assist first-time homebuyers, increase housing stock and leverage public and private dollars to provide affordable housing.

The nonprofit Galvan Foundation is behind another $5 million investment in housing stock in historic Black neighborhoods and a $1 million donation to Housing Savannah.

The Savannah JDA’s commissioned workforce study predicts that 84% of new hires in the region’s existing industries are to be filled by people with no higher than a high school education. That puts a focus squarely on Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools, where Denise Watts became superintendent last July.

Addressing Challenges: Housing Savannah, a nonprofit, works to create safe, stable, high-quality housing for people at all socioeconomic levels. | Photo credit: John McKinnon

“We are cultivating a very strong partnership with SEDA, and they are really serving as a facilitator or convener for Hyundai and the various school districts so that we will have a presence at the table to meet both school and industry needs,” Watts says. “I would say primarily our initial steps have been around our facilities plan, especially in West Chatham. We are really well positioned as we think about the workforce development needs, since I think we really already have some strong programs in place.” And, Watts adds, the district’s Woodville-Tompkins High School includes Korean in its foreign language offerings.

More than Hyundai

Despite all the attention paid to the Hyundai project, Tollison says that’s not all that’s cooking on the coast. “So far, our projects and pipeline of opportunities [are] robust, so the short answer is we have not seen a slowdown,” he says.

The numbers support that. The organization handled 11 company announcements in 2023, three of them related to Hyundai. Those 11 projects will account for an eventual 3,731 jobs and a total projected capital investment of more than $2.6 million. Gulfstream Aerospace is on that list. Chatham County’s largest manufacturing employer is expanding again and is looking to hire 1,600 more people, Tollison says.

Naturals2Go, a vending machine company geared toward healthy food and drink choices, shows the diversity of the incoming companies. The company, part of Vend Tech International, is moving its headquarters, training, assembly and manufacturing and global distribution operations into quarters it is constructing at the Savannah Chatham Manufacturing Center. That center, the newest of five industrial/manufacturing parks in which SEDA is involved, is also home to all three Hyundai suppliers moving to Chatham County. Tollison says that with these four commitments, the park was about half full as of early February.

Strong Programs: Denise Watts, superintendent of Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools. | Photo credit: contributed

“If you can train anywhere, it’s a great place to be,” says Heath Falzarano, president of Naturals2Go. “The port is part of that. Since we get products from all over the world, it benefits us being a near shot to that port.”

Naturals2Go is more of a “sales-assisted” owner-operator model than the traditional franchise operation, Falzarano says. He expects at least 400 new owner-operators to come to Savannah this calendar year for training. Since the building won’t be finished until 2025, the company is training in an airport hotel in the meantime – moving from its existing training quarters in Buffalo, New York. Since Savannah is already known as a tourist destination, Falzarano says, some trainees have extended their stay pre- or post-training to enjoy the city.

Entertainment and Tourism

Savannah is literally in the spotlight with the release this year of Juror No. 2, a Clint Eastwood-directed thriller starring Toni Collette, Nicholas Hoult, Kiefer Sutherland and Zoey Deutch. And Apple TV+ began streaming out the seven episodes of Manhunt in mid-March. The true crime series focuses on the search for Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

SEDA, which includes the Savannah Regional Film Commission, says that the past year’s film work resulted in a $98 million direct spend from entertainment producers across 62 projects. The combined writers’ and actors’ strikes took a big bite out of 2023’s haul, although Savannah did host three independent productions that had union waivers and were able to film during the strike.

Healthy Choices: Rendering of Naturals2Go’s new headquarters at the Savannah Chatham Manufacturing Center. | Photo credit: contributed

“I was a producer in L.A. and it’s a very crowded space to work in. I found the city [Savannah] was very easy to navigate from a production point of view,” says Walker Dalton, film commission executive director, whose resume includes multiple years of Jay Leno’s Garage. “You can put all the money on the screen. The city is so beautiful, it’s kind of its own backlot.”

Savannah is an attractive setting for tourists, as well. Joseph Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, confidently predicts that when the data comes in later this spring, Savannah will see another record-breaking tourism year for 2023. Visit Savannah reported 9.7 million overnight visitors in 2022, and previous years’ reports, which included day-trippers, have reached as high as 16 million.

Savannah’s minor league hockey team, the Ghost Pirates, makes its home at the two year-old Enmarket Arena. The team is also the catalyst for a new ice rink in Port Wentworth – one that will do double duty as a public ice-skating venue and offer figure-skating lessons and adult curling leagues.

“It will draw people from South Carolina and all the way from Statesboro – the closest ice rink is all the way to Jacksonville,” says Port Wentworth City Manager Steve Davis.

Hometown Advantage: Savannah Mayor Van R. Johnson II. | Photo credit: Frank Fortune

James Touchton, Port Wentworth’s first director of economic development, says the ice rink is an element of a public-private partnership in a 165-acre complex that will include government and public safety offices, a concert amphitheater with 6,000 hard seats and additional seating in a grassy area, athletic fields, trails and pickleball courts. The Ghost Pirates will continue to play their games at the Enmarket Arena, but the training facility will host training sessions, some preseason games and maybe some exhibition competitions, he says.

The practice facility itself will include two ice rinks, each with seating for 250, and a bar and grill overlooking the rinks. Completion is expected in the summer of 2025. The Ghost Pirates have estimated the facility’s cost at $25 million, and Port Wentworth will loan the team at least $6.5 million of that, along with other concessions such as developing the parking. “It can be cross-utilized as a convention center by covering the ice,” Touchton says.

Medicine and More

Savannah will soon help solve another workforce challenge Georgia faces – a shortage of physicians. When its academic year begins in July, the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) on the Savannah campus of Georgia Southern University will become a full start-to-finish medical school. That means first- and second-year med students will attend classes on the Savannah campus and third- and fourth-year students will do their clinical rotations at St. Joseph’s/Candler, as they have since 2011.

MCG joins Mercer University School of Medicine as Savannah’s second complete medical school. The additional school could help Savannah because doctors are likely to practice near where they train.

“There’s data from the American Association of Medical Colleges that if students train in a regional campus, that they are more likely to practice in that region,” says Dr. David C. Hess, dean of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Significantly, 46% of the residents who completed their programs in the summer of 2023 chose to practice in Georgia.

Georgia ranks about 40th among the states in doctors per capita, Hess says. “Our current class size is 264 [across all regional campuses, both partial and full] and we are going to grow to 304, one of the five biggest medical schools in the country,” he says.

Dr. Elizabeth Gray will serve as founding dean of what will be called the Augusta University/Medical College of Georgia-Georgia Southern Partnership campus. The school will hire eight to 10 faculty members to teach the first 18 months of classes, she says.

But increasing medical school slots alone will not immediately solve the physician shortage. The next step is a residency in a chosen specialty, and Georgia also ranks about 40th in the availability of those slots, Hess says.

Memorial now offers residency programs in six specialties and more advanced fellowships in three subspecialties. Bradley S. Talbert, CEO at Memorial Health (parent agency of Memorial), likewise is considering expanding its residency program.

“We are 1,000% committed to graduate medical education,” he says. And at St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System, President and CEO Paul Hinchey says the hospital is considering adding a residency program, especially in light of the expansion of the medical school.

Memorial and St. Joseph’s/Candler are also looking at opportunities to expand access and services. Memorial plans to build two freestanding emergency departments, one in the fast-growing Chatham municipality of Pooler and one in Bryan County. Memorial has the land and the plans and could open within 12 to 15 months if it gets the go-ahead, Talbert says. “The fact that the sixth-fastest-growing county in the United States doesn’t have an emergency department is ridiculous,” he says.

St. Joseph’s/Candler is also building in Bryan County. Hinchey calls it part of the company’s new identity as a “health access” company, focusing on where people live and work. This fall, St. Joseph’s/Chandler expects to open its health clinic within the walls of the Hyundai plant, where it has already hired and put in place a physician to serve as medical director. Across from the plant, it is investing $10 million in medical offices and urgent care facilities – investments that position it to cater to both plant employees and their families.

LOCAL FLAVOR

Fueled by Fossils

Shark Tooth Hunter: Bill Eberlein holds the huge tooth of a megalodon, the prehistoric ancestor of the modern shark, which he found while diving. | Photo credit: Frank Fortune

SAVANNAH BOASTS BUILDINGS from the 19th and even 18th centuries and features exhibits and artifacts, from slave quarters to relics of the region’s Native American population. But the oldest things you are likely to see in Savannah are in a display case in a hallway at the Savannah Convention Center: megalodon teeth from the prehistoric ancestors of the modern shark.

Bill and Dodie Gay Eberlein are the couple behind that display – and behind the business at www.megateeth.com, where Bill sells fossils that he finds in his dives in coastal river waters. It’s an odd niche business that grew from Bill’s hobby and eventually prompted him to give up traditional jobs like being a network analyst and accountant at Gulfstream Aerospace and teaching IT at Savannah Technical College. Now he’s a professional shark-tooth hunter.

Prehistoric Find: This fossilzed mastodon jaw with teeth still attached was recovered in the mud of a riverbed in Savannah. | Photo credit: contributed.

If he dives every day, he can expect to collect about 100 teeth in a month; four per day makes a good day, Bill says. Some days, he comes up empty. He keeps his personal collection in a safety deposit box and sells the others at prices upwards of a thousand dollars for a museum-quality piece to under $50 for smaller and less intact pieces.

“I started diving in 1986 up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and it was going to be a hobby,” Bill says. “My instructor was the captain of the sheriff’s department dive team, so we did a lot of low-visibility diving since they dove to recover weapons or find abandoned cars. A lot of times in Lake Erie, it is zero visibility.”

That training in murky water comes in handy along muddy riverbanks, where it’s like diving in chocolate milk, he says. “The currents are so strong here and those currents move the water very quickly and erode the banks, changing the depths. It’s always exposing new fossils and covering them up,” Bill says.

Don’t mistake these fossils for the dime-size shark’s teeth you might have spotted on the tideline the last time you strolled a beach. A megalodon tooth approaches six inches in diameter. About half of the Eberleins’ customers are people buying presents for dinosaur-loving kids, and the other half are collectors.

Bill likes the hunting part of the process better than the having. And, at 59, he doesn’t regret trading in his corporate jobs. “I dread the day I have to retire,” he says.