Southwest

You don’t hear much complaining about the economy in Albany and Dougherty County these days. Sure, the area has seen some tough times over the years. Two separate floods in the last decade have severely damaged Albany. Some of the…

It is midmorning in the air traffic control tower at the San Antonio International Airport, and it seems that everything that could go wrong has. Planes are straying from their designated take-off and landing patterns; one recently departed plane is…

Mark Glass has the twice-daily task of feeding 100,000 head of stock on his Mitchell County farm, with the leading fashion houses of the world taking a keen interest in his final products. Glass grows alligators, whose hides are turned…

It seemed a curious exercise last spring when Greg Coop and a dozen other parents took their kids for a morning walk to school on Moultrie’s first “Walking School Bus” trip. “You could tell at first the kids didn’t like…

You have to hand it to folks in Albany and Dougherty County – they’re never short on optimism, and perhaps that helps account for the new companies and jobs that keep emerging from some grim economic reality. It hasn’t always…

By the time unemployment figures for Southwest Georgia counties were announced last August the region’s optimism index was already at a two-year high, thanks to a number of announcements that promised more jobs, the better-paying kind, and more capital investments,…

On a Sunday afternoon, John Norton stands in the shop attached to his Albany home and holds a 15,000-year-old fossilized Siberian mammoth tusk in his hands. He’s surrounded by containers holding shredded currency, denim, exotic woods, shotgun shells, large-caliber ammunition,…

Last April when The Associated Press carried a story about the online monthly publication JobBait.com’s including Valdosta on its list of two dozen American “recession-proof” communities, the city’s residents received the recognition with the same mixture of joy and dread…

On more than a few occasions in modern times the people of southwest Georgia have resorted to prayer to bring rain for thirsty crops or provide other forms of relief for their economic woes. But those were times when almost…

In Thomasville these days, you can hardly turn around without running into a newly arrived Florida refugee. Not only are their numbers growing, several have brought their businesses and employees along with them. This story is repeating itself all across…