Brunswick | Golden Isles: Rich in Resources

The Port of Brunswick is on pace to become the leading automotive port in the country and expects to set a new record for vehicles handled when its fiscal year winds up later this month.

No surprises there – ports officials have been up-front about their ambitions, and there’s nothing subtle in the multimillion-dollar investments that have crafted the port’s Colonel’s Island facility over the years into a competitive Ro/Ro (roll-on, roll-off) facility. What is surprising, however, is that despite its resounding success, the port has not eclipsed the rest of Glynn County’s economy. It’s a diverse economy and it fires on lots of cylinders: a tourism industry that capitalizes on the Golden Isle’s natural beauty; industries that include a major naval defense contractor; a healthy retail sector making financial hay out of superstar convenience store chains, among other factors; and healthcare and education facilities that make the county a hub for the surrounding area.

Still, it’s the port that commands attention – mainly the Colonel’s Island facility where ships dock and inbound and outbound vehicles cover acres of parking, but also including the smaller Mayor’s Point dock in downtown Brunswick.

“On the volume side, we are on track to hit a record year on Colonel’s Island. We may surpass 800,000 units at the end of the fiscal year [June 30], and that is a record,” says Griff Lynch, president and CEO of the Georgia Ports Authority.

In contrast, the nation’s leading auto port, in Baltimore, handles about 850,000 units per year. The collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore in March, which closed the port temporarily, is not expected to have an extended impact on port volumes, although the closure has impacted short-term volumes and given a temporary boost to Brunswick and other auto ports.

GPA has already announced that Brunswick handled 775,565 autos and other vehicular units in the calendar year 2023, an increase of 15.6% over 2022. These “units” can be anything that rolls: mostly cars, but also heavy earthmoving equipment or custom-made touring buses. In addition, earlier this year all non-containerized cargo, which had previously been handled at the Ocean Terminal in Savannah, transitioned to Brunswick.

Staying competitive as a port requires near-continuous rounds of capital improvements, blending federal, state and port-generated revenue. “We have invested a total of $262 million in Brunswick for processing and Ro/Ro storage, all part of shifting Ocean Terminal’s business there from Savannah,” says Lynch.

Those completed improvements include lots of warehouse space – 350,000 square feet of it on-dock and an additional 108,000 square feet at the south end of Colonel’s Island. Then there’s 80 additional acres of Ro/Ro storage – essentially, pavement. Still in the works this spring were additional warehousing and storage.

Next up? Harbor improvements. The Brunswick shipping channel needs to be widened and the turning basin, where ships turn around, needs to be expanded to accommodate the larger vehicle carriers now making the rounds, carrying up to 7,000 vehicles, Lynch says.

The harbor project carries a $17.45 million price tag, with federal funding accounting for 65% of the cost. The state legislature this session approved the $6 million allocation that will cover the state’s share of the project. “We are greatly appreciative of Gov. Kemp and the General Assembly for supporting this allocation,” Lynch says.

Still to come are plans to add a fourth berth to Colonel’s Island – a project for which engineering studies have been completed and federal sign-off received, but which still lacks the GPA board’s formal approval, a step Lynch anticipates this summer.

Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the Ro/Ro shipping giant, signed a 20-year extension to its contract with GPA this spring, Lynch says. The company is a long-time Brunswick customer and did some business out of the Port of Savannah as well, but with the Brunswick port improvements, it is consolidating its operations there, he adds.

Southern Hospitality

Glynn County’s tourism industry got a new advocate this spring when the Tourism Leadership Council (TLC), formed 25 years ago in Savannah, opened a chapter in Brunswick. The Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) and the TLC jointly announced the formation of the group in March. The CVB serves as the area’s major marketing agency, while the TLC will serve as an advocate for hospitality businesses, offering lobbying for the industry, training and financial assistance for hospitality workers.

“The tourism and hospitality industry is the largest industry in Glynn County, and there is not an agency that is an advocate. We need more expertise and capacity in that role,” explains Scott McQuade president and CEO of the CVB.

Meanwhile, McQuade says, business is good.

“Really, what has happened in the last three years here, we have seen nearly 100% growth in our tourism numbers. Believe it or not, [COVID-19] was something that had a very positive impact on the Golden Isles. It introduced new people to the Golden Isles, and we have held on to those gains,” McQuade says. And while occupancy has dipped slightly this year, by about 4%, that decline has been offset by higher room rates, he adds.

Mark Williams, who became the Jekyll Island Authority’s executive director last summer, says about 3.6 million people visit the state-owned island annually. “I see my job as maintaining and sustaining what we’ve got, and making our visitor experience better,” he says.

By design, things change slowly on Jekyll. Williams said recent additions will include a new public safety building, set to open in August, that provides quarters for the Georgia State Patrol, fire department and other first responders; and Mercer Medicine, which now offers urgent care services in the island’s first medical facility.

Jekyll Island Golf Club’s 63 holes of golf are one place where change is underway, Williams says. The Pine Lakes course is getting a facelift with new grass, new greens and a new irrigation system, all set to finish this fall. Then, the nine-hole Great Dunes course and the front nine of the Oleander’s18-hole course will be merged and redesigned, freeing up the remaining land from the Oleander course to become greenspace available for low-impact activities like walking trails.

Other Industries

Avoiding a loss can be an important win for a community. The Golden Isles Development Authority scored a major achievement by retaining one of its top employers and securing the financial arrangement that will bankroll its $45 million expansion.

Ryan Moore, president and CEO of the Golden Isles Development Authority (GIDA), says the county’s experience with Jered was a highlight of the past year. He says since 2016 or 2017, the company – which manufactures heavy mechanical systems for the U.S. Navy like the elevators that carry planes on aircraft carriers – had been considering whether to relocate from the Glynn County site it has occupied for the past 30 years.

“They were looking at other locations to see if there was a better place to do what they do,” Moore says. That search led instead to a plan announced in February to consolidate and expand the company’s holdings locally.

“They actually have two facilities in the community, and they will be combining them, then closing one. They have a facility in a development called Liberty Harbor… They will shutter that and move all operations to the McBride Industrial Park,” Moore says. “They employ a little more than 200, and they’re among the top 10 employers, so they’re a very important part of our economy. They pay very well and have some of the most accomplished welders in the Southeast.

“It’s a retention success story and, as we’ve gotten into it, it has grown,” he says.

Under the terms of GIDA’s agreement with Jered, the authority will issue bonds to cover the cost of the 100,000-square-foot expansion, with the company paying Glynn County back through payments in lieu of taxes.

Glynn’s industrial scene is not without its challenges, however. A fire in April 2023 at the Pinova chemical plant, which made various resins and rosins, put the facility out of business, and a few months later parent company DRT announced the plant would not be rebuilt. At the time of the announcement, Pinova employed 213 people in Brunswick.

“That facility had been in operation over 100 years [under various ownership], but unfortunately, it didn’t make sense to rebuild,” says Moore. The site itself is a brownfield that Moore says has been under remediation for more than 40 years. Pinova’s portion of the cleanup and decommissioning is scheduled to be complete by the end of the year. The previous owner, Hercules – which initially produced rosin and turpentine from pine tree stumps and later manufactured an insecticide called toxaphene to combat boll weevils – is still involved in remediation on parts of the property, with a projected completion in early 2025.

“It’ll be an interesting process to see where the community takes that site. It’ll be an adaptive reuse of a brownfield site,” Moore says.

Workforce Development

Workforce development is a critical issue for most areas. It’s especially important for Glynn County, with industrial and logistical jobs to fill, not to mention the demands of the labor-heavy tourism industry.

“We’re seeing all kind of great partnerships forming around workforce development, like the example of the hospital and the college working together,” says Ralph Staffins, president and CEO of the Brunswick Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce.

That partnership, now several years old, includes the Southeast Georgia Health System, whose flagship is Brunswick’s 300-bed hospital, and the nursing program of the College of Coastal Georgia. The hospital underwrites the salaries of five nursing faculty members, says Coastal Georgia’s former President Michelle Johnston, and as a result the nursing school graduates two cohorts of new nurses per year instead of just one. Johnston recently left to take a job as president at Georgia Southwestern State University, and Dr. Johnny L. Evans Jr. has been named interim president of the College of Coastal Georgia, effective June 1, 2024.

“The chamber and the development authority have come together to take the lead in workforce development. The authority has helped fund the CEO of the Golden Isles College and Career Academy, and we also have a teacher externship program,” Staffins says.

“The teachers go into these companies in teams covering all grade levels and spend three days immersed with the company and learn what skills are needed, how much money [employees] make, and then they return to present [information] at their home schools,” Staffins says. “They get $500 from the chamber to buy supplies for the classroom. That program has expanded from 15 teachers in four companies two years ago to this year, 28 teachers in six companies.” Those companies are some of the largest employers in the county, representing many sectors: King & Prince Seafood, Southeast Georgia Health System, Sea Island Resort, the Jekyll Island Authority, Okefenokee EMC and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers.

The College of Coastal Georgia, meanwhile, has secured the backing of a regional business leader to offer entrepreneurship courses.

“We established the Art and Lindee Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship in 2022 when we hired our executive director [Ande Noktes]. Really, the focus has been on providing academic opportunities here at the college for our students to pursue a concentration or a minor in entrepreneurship,” says Johnston. “That is the central part of the center, but we also have an outreach program to support entrepreneurs as they get started, being able to bring a fleet of mentors who have had successful business careers and can help them develop.”

The for-credit coursework, much of it taught by Noktes, is based on the college’s main campus, but the outreach program for the Lucas Center is in downtown Brunswick.

“We’re for people who say, ‘I have a business idea, but I don’t know where to start,’ or ‘I have a business already and I’m really good at hair or barbecue or sewing, but I don’t know anything about the business side.’ We have an idea bootcamp – completely free – where you come in with an idea and leave with a plan,” Noktes says, adding the program has served 550 entrepreneurs since its founding two years ago. “We call it bootcamp for a reason: If you can get through that, it says a lot about whether you are ready to be an entrepreneur.”

Noktes says the next step is Acceler8, an eight-week course leading up to a pitch opportunity in front of a panel of judges and an audience of community members and investors.

Celebrating Convenience

When the arrival of two convenience stores makes economic development news, you know you are dealing with really big convenience stores.

“We’re going to have Georgia’s first Wawa and the nation’s largest Buc-ee’s [in Brunswick],” says Staffins.

And there’s legitimate cause for celebration in the impending store arrivals, Moore says.

“When you talk about economic impact, it boils down to capital investment. A $50 million investment in the community, [plus] the sales tax… The good news there is the vast amount [of sales tax] comes from people who don’t live there, and the third [benefit] is the job creation and the quality of jobs,” Moore says.

“For Buc-ee’s, one of their stores pulls in a tremendous amount of sales off the interstate. Also, they pay really well, and their culture is to take care of their employees,” he says.

The coming Buc-ee’s will be located at Exit 42 off I-95. Groundbreaking occurred in January; the store will have 120 fuel pumps.

“Buc-ee’s needed some upgrades to the interchange, and we were able to figure out a way to pay for those with future tax income,” Moore says. “The county commission stepped up and funded $3 million for the interchange, and they will get repaid with future taxation.”

Wawa, also a large chain with a significant following, broke ground in March at the intersection of Community Road and U.S. 341. “This is the first Wawa in the state, on 341 and a few miles from I-95, so they are making a bet on the community, not interstate traffic,” Moore says. “They both have a cult following. It’s amazing how many people know them.”

Agency Training

Glynn County is rich in higher educational resources, with both the College of Coastal Georgia and a campus of Coastal Pines Technical College. But it also boasts a more unconventional training facility: the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) – essentially, a huge police academy serving 127 federal law enforcement agencies, from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to tribal police. FLETC facilities are found also in South Carolina, Maryland and New Mexico, but Brunswick’s is the largest and serves as headquarters.

The numbers here are impressive: Last year, 27,629 individuals trained at FLETC, or Glynco, as it is also known, a title derived from the former naval air station that once occupied the site. In FY 2024, 33,000 graduates are expected, according to Benjamine “Carry” Huffman, who is director of FLETC. He took up the lead role last September, after 30 years in Customs and Border Protection.

“It’s a great facility, and it’s very complex. We train a lot of different agencies and they each have a unique mission,” Huffman says. Assets include 18 firearm ranges, a driving range, an explosives range, a mock point of entry, a forensic lab and a mock city with bars, banks and coffee shops. To that, add housing for the students and facilities to prepare 12,000 meals a day. No recent economic impact study has been done on FLETC, but its scope is evident from the fact that it has 965 employees.

“We really treasure our relationship with the local community,” Huffman said. “There’s a lot of things going on here. One we are working on right now is with Glynn County and GSA [General Services Administration] to give land for a new fire station.”

And why is Glynn County a good fit for this federal agency?

“I’ve worked all over the country, recently out of Washington and then back to Texas. I first noticed the work ethic of people in this part of the country, to do a job well and do it to completion,” Huffman says.

While the closure of Naval Air Station Glynco in 1974 was an economic blow at the time, the repurposing of the site as FLETC not only helped fill that gap, but ensured the area remains active in national defense.

Local Flavor

Café With a Mission

What is an art café? In Brunswick, it’s a place where you can take in some caffeine and express some creativity. The staff of Makers BWK, at 1214 Newcastle St. in the historic district, will bring you hot Haitian coffee and fresh pastries from a local bakery – and the makings of an art project of your choice.

The arts menu runs from painting to creative writing. Once you make your choice, the staff members bring you all the supplies and step aside to let you deal with your muse. Watercolors, writing prompts, marbles that you douse in paint and roll around to create abstract images – it’s all there.

Makers is a lot of different things packed tightly into what used to be part of a bottling plant. Microretailing gives local artists and crafters a space to sell their wares. There’s the coffee shop aspect. The walls form an art gallery. Classes are offered in a variety of crafts, and there’s a photo studio in back. And it is a conventional shop of unconventional wares, imported from Haiti as part of an effort to provide jobs for people there. Picture it as part-merchant, part-mission, a low-key effort to make the world a little better place.

Owner Kathy Brooks is a graduate of the Art and Lindee Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship’s outreach program in downtown Brunswick.

“I had taken Ande’s [Ande Noktes, executive director of the Lucas Center] class, even though I have been in various businesses for years, and I learned a lot,” Brooks says. “There are people in this city to help you. There are organizations and people all around the city who are waiting to help you if you want to start a business here – and Ande brings them into the room with you.”

The business grows out of mission work in Haiti, which Kathy and her husband Beaver have been involved with since early in this century. She says she believes what the Haitian people need most are jobs – an opportunity to support their families. She founded 2nd Story Goods as a nonprofit that makes it possible for Haitian craftspeople to sell their wares.

Brooks buys stock from that company to retail in Makers in Brunswick, including jewelry, leather goods and ornaments. Among the most popular sellers are little angel figures made of broken glass salvaged from garbage dumps.