Carrollton: Carroll County | 200 Years of Growth

Plenty to Do: Carroll County Chamber of Commerce President Rhyne Owenby at Laura’s Park, a scenic section of Hay’s Mill Trail overlooking Buffalo Creek. Photo credit: Kevin Garrett

It’s Carroll County’s 200th birthday, and the region has much to celebrate: The county is booming with new residents, business startups and job opportunities. Thanks to both public and private investments, newcomers are discovering enhanced amenities, workforce training and better infrastructure.

For Carrollton, the county’s economic hub, the recent progress is strategic. In 2024, the city created a new downtown master plan with the help of the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute. Carrollton City Manager David Brooks says the city began to implement the plan last year by widening sidewalks, adding crosswalks, planting trees and landscaping. “We’re doing a lot in our downtown area to try to help keep it vibrant for our retail shop owners and restaurant owners,” he says.

More broadly, Carroll Tomorrow, the county’s economic development partner, has been preparing the community for long-term growth by investing in site readiness and infrastructure.

“We’ll do this by partnering with our local municipalities, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Carroll EMC and Georgia Power to make sure that we’re taking a holistic approach to our economic development efforts,” says Joseph Ingui, president of Carroll Tomorrow.

Carroll Tomorrow focuses on supporting the success and growth of existing industries while recruiting new investment in agribusiness, advanced manufacturing and life sciences.

In January, the Carroll Tomorrow team traveled with representatives from the city of Carrollton to Birmingham, Alabama to participate in a Retail Academy hosted by Georgia Power Economic Development and Retail Strategies. The group learned about retail recruitment and attraction, and how to better position the community to bring in retailers that residents want.

Vibrant Amenity: Carrollton City Manager David Brooks at Lakeshore Park, a 19-court, state-of-the-art pickleball complex. Photo credit: Kevin Garrett

“We are working closely with our local school systems, West Georgia Technical College and the University of West Georgia, to ensure our workforce pipeline remains strong and aligned with industry needs both for companies already here and those considering Carroll County for future investment,” says Ingui.

Carroll County’s population of nearly 130,000 residents grew by 9% since 2020, in part because housing is relatively affordable. In fact, the county remains one of the most affordable housing markets in West Central Georgia, according to a 2023 comprehensive plan by the Carroll County Department of Community Development.

“We are very fortunate in Carroll County because we have a great education system and a great healthcare system,” says Carroll County Chamber of Commerce President Rhyne Owenby. “We have all the amenities that people want – restaurants, retail, outdoor activities and the GreenBelt [biking and walking trail] with lots of great things for families to do.”

Carrollton’s Next Chapter

Carrollton broke ground in 2025 on a still unnamed $58 million mixed-use development downtown. It’s set to include housing, retail shops, a parking deck and a city-funded conference center.

Beautification and Safety: Rendering of the roundabout at the intersection of Maple Street and Hays Mill Road, which will include a designated bike lane. Photo credit: Contributed

“It’s the first really big public-private partnership that we’ve done in Carrollton in terms of the city building the parking deck, the conference center and a pedestrian promenade,” says Brooks, who adds that the new and existing lodging could help attract conferences of up to 400 participants.

Brooks says a new 99-room hotel and 80 luxury apartments will provide stability for the development’s restaurants and retail and give a boost to existing restaurants and retail downtown. “Our goal is to never have empty storefronts,” he says.

This year, the city is starting the design phase of a multiyear beautification and safety project along the Maple Street Corridor. Backed by a $9.2 million grant, along with a local match of more than $2 million, the plan includes a roundabout at the intersection of Maple Street and Hays Mill Road to slow traffic, as well as bike lanes, upgraded signals and improved pedestrian crossings. Decorative lighting and other streetscape elements are also part of the plan. Plus, a recently renewed SPLOST is set to fund the relocation of the city’s senior center and the addition of new spurs to the Carrollton GreenBelt trail, a 20-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail system that encircles the community and connects schools, parks and shopping areas with city neighborhoods.

The trail isn’t the only fitness-oriented feature seeing improvements. Last year, Lakeshore Park added a 19-court, state-of-the-art pickleball complex and has since hosted multiple tournaments and offered youth pickleball classes. “That’s been a really big project for us and a real amenity to our community,” says Brooks.

Arts and Quilts

Fabric of the Community: Amy Loch, executive director of the Southeastern Quilt and Textile Museum. Photo credit: Kevin Garrett

Other amenities include institutions supporting the arts. Carrollton Center for the Arts offers a wide range of events, workshops and performances. It includes a 272-seat theater with rehearsal, dressing and costume rooms, a 3,000-square-foot art gallery, a galleria for permanent art and rotating art exhibitions, a choral studio, ceramics studio, dance studio and more. In Fiscal Year 2025, which goes from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, the center served over 66,000 visitors, with an estimated economic impact of nearly $2.5 million.

“The arts play a vital role in our community’s health and wellbeing, driving job creation, fostering community development and enhancing the overall quality of life for residents and visitors alike,” says Center for the Arts Director Tim Chapman.

Around the corner from the arts center sits the Southeastern Quilt & Textile Museum. Since its opening in 2012, the museum has hosted over 50 exhibits that include a diverse mix of artwork from traditional quilters to trendy textilers. Among this year’s exhibits is a quilt show to celebrate Carroll County’s 200th anniversary that will run from September 19 to November 17.

“In addition to displaying local quilts from our permanent collection, we’ll also borrow quilts from community members that show off more great Carroll County history,” says the museum’s Executive Director Amy Loch. “It’s a history that’s still part of many families here who want to pass on the tradition of quilting to future generations.”

Loch says the museum will also feature original silk screens designed by Carrollton resident Bruce Bobick. His commissions include the bedspread designs at the All-Star Sports and All-Star Music complexes at Disney World in the early 1990s. Bobick is a watercolor artist and Department of Art professor and chair emeritus with the University of West Georgia.

Something for Everyone: Carrollton Center for the Arts includes a theater, art gallery, choral studio, dance studio, ceramics studio and more. Photo credit: Contributed

Loch says most of the museum visitors travel to Carroll County specifically to visit the museum and many stick around for lunch and shopping, providing an economic boost to the community.

“In 2025 we had 6,000 visitors from all over the country and other parts of the world,” says Loch, adding some came from as far west as Alaska and Washington state. International visitors traveled from Australia, Japan and several European countries.

Mind and Body Healthcare

Behavioral Health Facility: Willowbrooke Urgent Care for Mental Health and Substance Use. Photo credit: Contributed

While museums may draw visitors, having good healthcare is key to bringing residents to the community. Tanner Health started in Carrollton as a small, rural hospital in 1949. Today, it boasts four hospitals across West Georgia and East Alabama and has primary care offices, urgent care clinics and specialty centers.

Recent initiatives include a new 97,000-square-foot patient tower at Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton that opened in February, and a four-story expansion underway at Tanner Medical Center in Villa Rica that will add more than 25 inpatient beds and feature a new, comprehensive women’s center. Last year, Tanner launched another new service in Villa Rica: Willowbrooke Urgent Care for Mental Health and Substance Use.

“Urgent care is a common service for most people,” says Tanner Health President and CEO Loy Howard. “But behavioral health is a little different. One of the biggest problems with behavioral health, and one of the biggest barriers to adequately addressing behavioral health needs in the United States and in our community, is access.”

Willowbrooke works like other urgent care centers. Patients can walk in without an appointment and pay with insurance. If they don’t have coverage, Howard says Tanner will absorb the cost. He says the facility serves about 1,000 patients per month, ages 5 and up, for issues that include addiction, mood disorders, family conflict and grief and loss. Willowbrooke also partners with Carroll County Schools to provide a school-based therapy program with mental health services.

Hospital Expansions: Tanner’s Carrollton facility opened its new patient tower in February, above. Tanner Health President and CEO Loy Howard, center, attends the October 2025 groundbreaking of the expansion of Tanner Medical Center in Villa Rica, below.  Photo credits: Contributed

Education Destination

The county is home to two institutions of higher learning, the aforementioned University of West Georgia and West Georgia Technical College.

Welcoming More Students: Michael Johnson, president of the University of West Georgia. Photo credit: Contributed

In August 2025, Michael Johnson took the helm as president of the University of West Georgia, which welcomed over 16,000 students in the fall 2025 semester, the largest student body in the school’s history.

“That’s a huge push as we’re coming out of the COVID sector and getting more and more students back onto the college campus,” says Johnson.

2025 also saw a record-breaking number of students graduate: The university awarded 4,500 degrees, a 31% increase over the previous year. Other highlights include last year’s launch of a concentration in construction management at the Richards College of Business; the 2024 establishment of the Dr. James Earl Perry College of Mathematics, Computing and Sciences building named in honor of a beloved math professor; and the athletic department’s transition to an NCAA Division I school. It will achieve full-member status during the 2027-28 athletic year.

Johnson says future goals will focus on improving the graduation rate and increasing innovation.

“We currently graduate about 43% of our students over a six-year term,” Johnson says. “The national average is 63%, so we need to do better.” He has challenged the university’s faculty and staff to move that number by 10 percentage points over the next five years. In addition, Johnson says he is aiming for a hefty increase in the school’s research and innovation budget from its current $700,000 to $50 million.

“That’s a significant investment in ourselves to make sure that we have the resources and the core facilities that our faculty needs to start doing the research that matters to the region,” he says.

While UWG anchors the county’s four-year academic experience, West Georgia Technical College focuses on workforce training and technical education. Carroll County’s new West Georgia Tech campus in the Buffalo Creek Technology Park opened in 2022, replacing the 52-year-old campus on nearby Newnan Road. Programs include nurse aide, computer programming and engineering technology. The school added a new diagnostic medical sonography program in January.

West Georgia Tech President Julie Post says the school is looking for ways to prepare students to join the rising data center workforce.

Offering Industry Experience: WGTC’s new campus opened in the Buffalo Creek Technology Park in 2022, above. West Georgia Technical College students get hands-on training through an internship with global security company TydenBrooks in Tallapoosa, below left and right.  Photo credits: Contributed

“It’s become an important priority for us this year to really drill down what we offer and repackage it to meet the needs of the data centers that are coming into all the counties that we serve,” says Post.

WGTC already has workforce training collaborations in other areas. The school partnered with global security company TydenBrooks in Tallapoosa in 2025 to launch a new internship program that offers industry experience to students in engineering and electrical systems. The initiative is supported by a NASA-funded grant through the Georgia Space Grant Consortium. The school also celebrated its second year as a recipient of the Metallica Scholars Grant through the heavy metal band’s All Within My Hands Foundation. It gave 13 students the opportunity to get on-the-job, paid training in the electrical and welding industries last semester. In addition to supporting workforce education, the All Within My Hands Foundation works toward fighting hunger and provides medical resources in response to disasters.

Nonprofit Impact

Many nonprofit organizations partner with the Carrollton-based Community Foundation of West Georgia to meet community needs, provide financial assistance and improve quality of life.

Addressing Poverty and At-Risk Youth: Kim Jones, president of the Community Foundation of West Georgia. Photo credit: Contributed

In 2024, the community foundation launched an initiative called The Connector, aimed at bridging the gap between nonprofit organizations and those in need of assistance. This tool simplifies the application process and allows nonprofits to collaborate more effectively on cases. The Connector also provides the foundation with hard data on the community’s most pressing needs.

Foundation President Kim Jones says the startup cost was $138,000. Since its inception, she says thousands of Carroll County residents have used the program.

“In a 10-day window in June [2025], we had right at 4,000 individuals that accessed it,” says Jones.

The foundation is also working on programs to address poverty and initiatives to reach at-risk youth in the county.

“We live in an incredibly generous community,” says Jones. “For example, I got a call from a business on Friday, saying ‘Look, we’ve just bought $7,000 worth of $150 grocery vouchers. Who needs them? Can you help us deploy them?’ I mean, out of left field. Stuff like that happens all the time.”

Villa Rica’s Growing Pains

While Carrollton is the biggest city in the county, some of the other cities are growing rapidly. Villa Rica, which means “rich village” in Spanish, was founded on Georgia’s gold-mining past. Today, it is a city in transition, navigating the challenges that come with rapid expansion.

“We have had phenomenal growth and to be honest, we are outgrowing our infrastructure,” says Villa Rica Mayor Leslie McPherson, who has put residential development on hold until the city expands its wastewater capacity and builds roads to support traffic.

Dealing With Change: Villa Rica Mayor Leslie McPherson, above. Photo credit: Gregg McGough; Chat & Choo, a restaurant serving Southern fare, has added some Thai options to the dinner menu, below. Photo credit: Contributed

In the meantime, McPherson welcomes new businesses into existing spaces. For example, Captivating Camino, a family-owned, Latin fusion restaurant, took over the old O’Charley’s building. The new owners of Chat & Choo, a downtown fixture, serve up traditional Southern cooking by day and add a Thai twist to their dinner menu. And Gabe’s Downtown, a Louisiana bistro, moved back to Villa Rica in 2025 and anchors the city’s historic downtown.

Temple’s Steady Progress

In Temple, located a 10-minute drive west of Villa Rica, the recurrent theme seems to be “out with the old, in with the new.” Several facility and infrastructure projects are moving forward. An upgrade to a key section of the city’s sewer system, the Williams Mill Creek Interceptor, has been completed. Temple City Hall unveiled its William Simmons Administration Building in 2025, adding space for council meetings and municipal court. Meanwhile, the city’s upgraded water meters have been up and running for around three years, a move that has modernized billing and reduced manual meter readings.

“It’s lightened the load from the standpoint of reading them physically,” says Temple Mayor Michael Johnson.

Making Upgrades: Temple Mayor Michael Johnson. Photo credit: Eric Sun

A new public works facility, including a pole barn for equipment, is nearing completion and will be “a great upgrade for our public works staff,” says Johnson.

Temple has also approved about 400 new single-family homes and townhomes across three residential projects, according to Johnson, who adds that the city has approved an industrial development on 131 acres. It’s expected to bring new jobs to the area.

Whether it’s adding amenities, welcoming businesses or improving infrastructure, the cities in Carroll County are making changes to accommodate the region’s growth while continuing to draw residents and visitors alike to its cultural offerings, healthcare options and institutions of higher learning.