Alpharetta

Engineers  Architects  Planners  Constructors Pond is proud to be a partner with the City of Alpharetta in turning its infrastructure vision into reality. www.pondco.com Republic Services is proud to be a partner in servicing the city of Alpharetta ALPHARETTA, GEORGIA PREFERRED VENDORS n Pond www.pondco.com n Republic Services www.RepublicServices.com center, our population almost doubles during the work day, and we need to provide pipelines for commuters. At the same time, we are a sub- urban market with citizens who want to main- tain the residential feel of their neighborhoods.” Aptly dubbed “Technology City of the South,” Alpharetta is home to more than 600 tech- based, new economy companies. Drinkard reports, “In a lot of ways, Atlanta is jealous of us because of our technology base.We com- pete with Austin, Boston, Silicon Valley– areas like that.We even have an operation that has re-located to Alpharetta from Silicon Valley because they can leverage those angel investor dollars far more here. It’s simple economics. At the same time, they have the advantage of our highly-educated labor market, and research universities based in Atlanta, proper. “We do not tend to see the early start-ups that are still trying to develop their product or ser- vice. Those are being located inside the city of Atlanta, largely around Georgia Tech. But once they have a proven concept and they’re ready to launch their company, they come to Alpharetta. Where Atlanta is focused on incubators, we’re focused on accelerators. Fintech, and things like cyber security. Beyond that there are healthcare and corporate headquarters operations.We’ve become a preferred location for all that, not just in the southeast but throughout the country. “We don’t compete against, say, Plano, Texas – a suburb of Dallas.We compete against Dallas. We’re going up against the large cities, and we’re international. Our Economic Develop- ment Director just came back from a technolo- gy conference in Spain; third trip to Barcelona in three years, and we’re seeing international investment coming from that. Now we have companies from around the globe saying they’ve heard about Alpharetta and want to come here. It’s been a huge change in the past six years. Prior to that, we were just a suburb of Atlanta.We still are.We don’t see ourselves as ‘we don’t need Atlanta’- it’s a symbiotic rela- tionship but the symbiosis has changed. It’s no longer that we rely on Atlanta, we truly play off each other.”