Macon | Bibb County: The Macon Moment
Tourism, Revitalization, Success
Macon-Bibb County is on the cusp of reaping the reward of years of hard work – the state’s first, and the nation’s 64th, national park. The imminent national park designation will be an achievement 90 years in the making – one that promises to turbocharge Macon’s renaissance and spill over to a large swath of Georgia.
Generational Progress: County Commissioner and Mayor Pro-Tempore Seth Clark is the executive director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative. Photo credit: Matt Odom
“We’ve been trying to rebuild our economy since textile companies pulled out,” says Seth Clark, executive director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative. “This is a really, really big way to do that. It’s something we’ve been working on since 1933. This represents generational progress and stabilization and growth of the middle Georgia economy that we have been advocating for decades now,” says Clark, who is also a county commissioner and mayor pro tempore for Macon-Bibb County.
Legislation pending a vote in both the U.S. House and Senate will expand the park and change its National Park Service designation from a historical park to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve. The park will protect more than 25,000 acres along the Ocmulgee River and the site of the more than 12,000-year-old burial and ceremonial mounds of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The legislation will also establish the Muscogee Nation as co-managers of the park, making it the only national park co-managed by a removed tribe.
“We have an opportunity to show that after 200 years of history in which land was stolen from its original inhabitants, there is a way to come back together to transform our community,” says Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce President Jessica Walden.
Transforming the Community: Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce President Jessica Walden atop the Atrium Health helipad. Photo credit: Contributed
The National Parks Conservation Association projects widespread impact on Macon-Bibb and middle Georgia over the next 15 years, including an increase in annual visitors from 200,000 to 1.3 million, an additional $207 million annually in economic activity, annual tax revenue of $33.5 million and an additional 2,800 jobs.
“Macon is just having such a moment,” says Walden.
Rich Cultural Heritage
The new park status will top a decades-long revitalization effort built on Macon-Bibb’s rich musical and cultural past. The ongoing renaissance continues to earn Macon national and international recognition, draw tourists and create a multiplier effect likely to last for decades.
“Our pride and self-worth is through the roof, and that has not always been the case. But I think now the people who come visit, they feel it,” said Josh Rogers, the former CEO and President of NewTown Macon, an independent nonprofit focusing on economic development and revitalizing downtown Macon. Rogers was interviewed shortly before his death from a heart attack on November 24, 2024.
Last spring, NewTown Macon was named one of three winners of the 2024 Great American Main Street Award. And in June, CNN named Macon No. 7 on America’s Best Towns to Visit in 2024, saying Macon “went from ‘ghost town’ to a ‘popping destination.’”
Rogers said the NewTown five-year strategic plan stretch goal in 2022 was 10 national news stories about Macon. “We’ve had 47 so far [between 2022 and 2024], and they’ve all been positive.”
Lifting the Community
See And Be Seen: The 10-day Cherry Blossom Festival attracted plenty of visitors (and at least one colorful dog), raking in more than $6 million in 2024. Photo credit: Matt Odom
Macon’s numerous festivals and events continue to draw tourists. The annual Christmas Light Extravaganza in historic downtown features more than 1 million lights synced to music arranged and performed by Macon Pops. Gary Wheat, president and CEO of Visit Macon, says the festival drew 850,000 to 900,000 visitors in 2024 and generated approximately $6.8 million.
The 10-day Cherry Blossom Festival saw a big increase in tourism dollars, topping $6 million in 2024. And there’s the King of Soul Music Festival honoring Otis Redding, Bragg Jam and the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration.
The recent openings of the world’s largest indoor pickleball facility and a 12,000-seat amphitheater are also bolstering tourism revenue.
“The numbers coming from those have just been tremendous for us,” says Wheat. [They’ve] given us some new components to work with as far as attractions that generate visitors, as well as quality-of-life for our community.”
Since opening to the public in January 2024, Wheat says Rhythm & Rally’s tournaments have generated about $5 million in revenue, while amphitheater shows from March through October averaged $1 million in hotel/motel tax revenue. Wheat says 2023 was a record year in hotel-motel tax collections with a 3% increase over the previous year.
Wheat says Visit Macon will be looking beyond state and even national borders to attract visitors in 2025.
Big Fun: Rhythm & Rally, the world’s largest pickleball facility, celebrated its one year anniversary in January. Photo credit: Contributed
“We’re really starting to plunge into the world of international tourism and marketing,” he says. Visit Macon hosted 15 international tour operators December 2024 with stops in Macon and Savannah.
Tremendous Attractions: Gary Wheat, president and CEO of Visit Macon. Photo credit: Contributed
Is it too much attention? “There is such a thing as over-tourism,” says Wheat, “and you want to make sure it’s intentional, smart, strategic growth.”
Maintaining “our authentic Macon story” is top-of-mind for Wheat. “We work every day to be a destination that attracts thousands upon thousands of people to our community to promote economic development,” he says. “We want to make sure that at the end of the day, they have a wonderful experience, but also we keep in mind that our citizens live here and work here.”
Maconites First
“NewTown’s core value is local loyalty,” said Rogers, who served as NewTown Macon’s president from 2014 until his death in 2024. “Maconites first, second and always is how we describe it. Losing the plot is when you forget that we’re trying to make a great place for Maconites, and if new people want to come be Maconites with us, great.”
NewTown has been leading revitalization efforts in downtown Macon for 29 years and has lent more than $24 million to local businesses and real estate developers through its small business and real estate loan program. When a bank wants 30% to 40% equity in a project, but an entrepreneur or developer only has 10% to 20%, NewTown can provide a loan to fill the gap.
Crowd Pleaser: Macon’s Atrium Health Amphitheater is a prime location for live music and other performances. Photo credit: Koe Wetzel
“Honestly, a lot of why we focused so heavily on local entrepreneurs in the beginning was to try and make people feel self-confident about what was possible,” said Rogers. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to go recruit a national retailer when things are half vacant. A lot of our messaging focus was, ‘This is what we can have, and it’s a good thing.’”
Macon now boasts 55 restaurants and 30 bars and music venues, including a soon-to-open location of Atlanta-based Flying Biscuit Café. Rogers said the current occupancy rate is 85% and the biggest success in 2024 was storefront diversification.
“We now have 52 Black-owned businesses in downtown storefronts, and we started with 28 in 2022,” said Rogers. In less than three years, Macon nearly doubled the number of Black-owned storefronts in downtown and went from an 18% to 28% share. “We think that may be one of the highest percentages of Black-owned storefronts in the country.”
Revitalized Downtown: Musicians perform outside the Capitol Theatre. Photo credit: Contributed
Long supported by the Peyton Anderson Foundation, NewTown notched a major accomplishment in 2024 – self-sufficiency. Cash awards from the State Small Business Credit Initiative and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund helped tip NewTown into the black and will allow it to grow.
“If we can do this downtown, and we can do it self-sufficiently,” said Rogers, “how many more neighborhoods can we do this in? And every week I’m having conversations with the adjacent counties, mostly the bankers, who are like, ‘Oh, can you do this here?’ And we can’t yet. But if we couldn’t get to self-sufficiency, we couldn’t ever.”
Chamber of Commerce president Walden says Macon’s growth has created a new era of relevance for the organization. Last year it hosted more than 100 programs and saw a 67% participation increase. Programs included a supplier diversity summit to connect minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses with local resources and a welcome reception featuring speakers, vendors and food for the nearly 300 new teachers in the county. And through the Business Education Partnership, teachers could sign up to match with a local business for first-year support, from classroom needs and field trips to navigating their new hometown.
“What that does is build a bridge of, hey, we want you to stay here; we want you to have the resources you need,” says Walden.
“What you’re seeing now isn’t your grandfather’s chamber,” she says of the 140-year-old organization. “You’re seeing a lot of young business leaders coming in and plugging into the chamber, choosing Macon, wanting to get engaged.”
Spreading The Wealth
Alex Morrison, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Urban Planning Authority, says the challenge now “is delivering the promise of downtown development to more people, more neighborhoods, and really putting a national statement on downtown Macon.”
In the past, Morrison says surrounding neighborhoods have felt unheard and pitted against downtown. He says a key focus of the latest Macon Action Plan released last October is making sure everyone has a seat at the table and “addressing our weaknesses while preparing ourselves for an even bigger future.”
Coming Soon: Rendering for Bicentennial Park, which will be outside of a planned second entrance to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. Photo credit: Contributed
“We want to really create this front porch atmosphere for our national park,” says Morrison. “And then also making sure that our locals are the ones benefiting from all of that.”
Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller says the planning authority has been very strategic in its planning for the national park, including purchasing property outside the park and downtown to accommodate new hotel/motel space.
The new Bicentennial Park outside a planned second entrance to the national park in East Macon is set to open in 2025 and will feature art from world-renowned artists telling Macon’s history. The historic DeWitt-McCrary house across the street is expected to become the Cultural Center for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation – anticipated co-managers of the new national park.
“It’s important that all this kind of ties together and gives a headquarters there for the tribe to come back to Macon,” says Miller.
Challenges Ahead
Miller says Macon had over $1 billion in economic investments and 1,500 new jobs in 2024.
Brightening a Transitional Housing Center: Students paint a “hello” mural, funded by a $10,000 Macon Violence Prevention grant, at Brookdale Resource Center. Photo credit: Contributed
“Our challenge,” says Miller, “will be to manage growth that’s been underway even without the park. … We want people to come here to visit our community, fall in love with it and say, ‘I can see myself living here;’ start looking for houses and realize how inexpensive it is to live here.”
Miller believes a pending renewal of the current 1% Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) is key to Macon’s continued renaissance. He says 71% of those who pay the tax come from outside the county lines. Renewal of the 10-year, $450 million-threshold SPLOST is up for public vote in mid-March and could fund a broad range of projects, chief among them infrastructure – roads, bridges, and sidewalks.
Participants in the Men About Change program pose in front of a mural in the gymnasium of the center, where homeless people can seek shelter. Photo credit: Contributed
“Our community has had decades of lack of road improvements,” Miller says. “We have approximately 1,200 miles of roads in Macon to pave, and we’ve been paving about six to eight miles per year. We want to connect our communities, make them safer. To make a great impact, we figured the best way to do it is through our one penny sales tax.”
Miller knows that attracting and keeping residents requires continuing efforts to tackle crime and blight. He says the Macon Violence Prevention Program has brought a 64% drop in juvenile violent crime and significant reductions in overall crime from 2022 to 2024, earning Macon a Visionary City Award from the Georgia Municipal Association and Georgia Trend magazine. And he says the city has now demolished nearly 800 houses and purchased nearly 100 for rehabbing as part of its Blight Flight program.
Strategic Vision: Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller at the site of the old Bibb Mill, which is being transformed into a $350 million development in East Macon. Photo credit: Matt Odom
“I’ve got to be able to create a vision for sustainability over a long period of time, even 50 years, through infrastructure, through transportation, through land acquisitions,” Miller says. “I’m thinking about playing chess, not checkers.”
Success Breeds Success
Stephen Adams, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority (MBCIA), says the downtown revitalization efforts and “quality-of-life” piece are crucial to his ability to recruit and expand. And it’s paying off.
Last year, two existing industries began expansions of more than a billion dollars. Irving Consumer Products will add at least 100 new jobs as part of a nearly $600 million expansion at its tissue plant. And First Quality Baby Products announced a $418 million expansion at its current manufacturing facility that will add 600 jobs.
Adams says the Industrial Authority’s success has created land inventory challenges and pressure to be development ready.
Fast-Track Development: Stephen Adams, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority, Jessica Walden, president of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, and Chamber Board Chair Tyson Firlotte, who is also vice president of human resources at Irving Consumer Products. Photo credit: Contributed
“When that call comes in,” says Adams, “the speed to market is incredibly quick. There’s no time to go out and buy the property, do the due diligence and determine the developability. They’re really looking to communities to have already done that.”
As a result, Adams says the authority’s property acquisition playbook is the Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development (GRAD) certification process, a proactive effort by Georgia’s economic development community to provide sites ready for fast-track development.
To boost readiness further, Adams says they also apply for grants through the state to jumpstart development on GRAD-certified sites.
“That does give us a leg up on our competition,” says Adams, whether it’s neighboring counties or other states.
Future Workers
Another leg up, says Adams, is an available workforce, a challenge he and others in Macon-Bibb have been mindfully addressing.
Leading the charge is Cassandra Washington, executive director of Bibb County career technical and agricultural education and CEO of the W.S. Hutchings College and Career Academy. The Macon high school was established in 2002 to prepare students for 21st century careers and offers courses ranging from engineering to health sciences and cybersecurity. Students can earn both high school and college credit.
Doing Her Part: Cassandra Washington, executive director of Bibb County career technical and agricultural education and CEO of the W.S. Hutchings College and Career Academy. Photo credit: Matt Odom
Washington also sits on the industrial authority board, opening her eyes, she says, to workforce needs. When a company chooses to bypass Macon because the area lacks the workforce, Washington knows she’s got work to do.
“The workforce comes from where? Education,” says Washington. “So, if we’re not doing our part, then we’re not going to grow our community.
“I think academically, when you talk about the math, the science, we do that well,” she says. “But how do we connect the other pieces so when [students] graduate, they’re truly a pipeline for that individual company?”
The latest focus – manufacturing. Washington and Adams are working with local manufacturing partners to develop a manufacturing curriculum for high school students. They’ll have the chance to work with the machines and equipment they’ll see regularly.
“They’ll be that much further along in the process of their potential day-one employment at one of our manufacturing partners,” says Adams.
Education and Training: A student watches an instructor’s demonstration at the Training and Sustainment Center, a joint effort between Central Georgia Technical College, Robins Air Force Base and the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority. Photo credit: Clarence Powell
One Macon
Macon’s leaders agree a key to their success is One Macon, a strategic plan made by an alliance of business and community leaders who meet monthly and rely on collaboration.
“This isn’t a place where an old guard keeps new ideas from happening,” Chamber CEO Walden says. “We’re full of ideas, and those ideas get turned into action plans.”
One Macon will launch its third five-year plan this year.
Miller says the city and its leaders have got huge momentum for the future. “We’re singing off the same sheet of music now,” he says.
Local Flavor
Music for All Ages
Fostering Creativity: Justin Andrews, director of special projects and outreach at the Otis Redding Center for the Arts, and grandson of the legendary musician. Photo: Matt Odom
For the past nearly-two decades, the Otis Redding Center for the Arts has brought music to Macon’s children – often in tight quarters.
“Private lessons on top of private lessons and people on top of people,” says Justin Andrews, grandson of the legendary Otis Redding and director of special projects and outreach at the Otis Redding Foundation. “And [for] our summer programs, [we were] using other people’s facilities.”
Those days will soon be over with the spring opening of a new 15,000-square-foot, two-story facility in downtown Macon featuring five practice rooms, a high-tech recording studio, an indoor/outdoor amphitheater, and programming for the young and old.
“I think it’s honestly spectacular,” says Andrews. “When you walk in the building, it gives you a sense of creativity. … It’s fun, it’s bright, it’s vibrant. We feel the kids are going to enjoy it.”
“There’s nothing else like this for young people,” says Karla Redding-Andrews, Redding’s daughter and the vice president and executive director of the Otis Redding Foundation. “The most important thing for us is to have a space where our kids can come and perform and showcase their music, showcase their talent, whether it’s dance or music or spoken word.”
Redding’s widow Zelma established the Foundation in 2007 to carry on her husband’s belief that music and arts, combined with academics, make a well- rounded individual. Since then, more than 1,000 children have enjoyed their programs.
Among the center’s alumni is world-renowned conductor Roderick Cox and up-and-coming hip-hop artist Dakarai Williams (DKOMX, meaning Dakarai Over Music). Williams had an “aha moment” in 2020 as a high school senior at the Otis Music Camp. He and some fellow campers won best high school song in a contest sponsored by Soundtrap.
“I was like, wow, I could see myself making music forever, whether it’s being in production or just rapping,” Williams says. “It just felt like a good synergy.”
Williams is now a senior at Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University, a DJ and recording artist. He believes the new center will give students more freedom to be themselves.
“It’s [a place] where students can really just create to the fullest of their ability,” he says. “I’m most excited about seeing how they make the space their own.”
Redding-Andrews says the center will also provide job opportunities for local artists and musicians who often leave the area to find work. She says it is contributing to Macon’s renaissance: “Just to walk in this community and know that everybody has a dream for Macon being the best that it can be, and we’re going to keep that going.”
