Civil Municipal Magazine - Nov 2023

51 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 11 CHAT TOOGA COUNT Y, GEORGIA Atrium Floyd purchased the twenty-six- acre property with future expansion for the ER center in mind, and it has already resulted in forty-four new kinds of healthcare jobs being introduced to the area. “I’d like to see this be a template or blueprint for other rural areas of the state that are struggling with access to healthcare,” Elsberry states. There is no doubt that Chattooga County and its leadership are on the front lines of innovative solutions for rural healthcare access in Georgia. Developing Chattooga’s Economic Engine Taking care of resident needs is important, but Chattooga’s leadership has also made it a point to take care of the county’s economic needs as well. Their development strategy focuses on two things: retaining already existing mom-and-pop shops and attracting larger corporations via tourism. “We’re really trying to support the small businesses and farms that are already in the community,” Elsberry says, “but we also have large corporations like Mohawk as well as one of the longest-running denim mills in the nation, Mount Vernon, here as well.” With both big and small businesses being present, county leadership has focused its efforts on providing those businesses with an influx of regular customers, both familiar and unfamiliar. Executive Director at the Chamber of Commerce Cindy McGraw confirms this, saying, “We’ve gone through a rebranding and are pulling all of our natural resources together [to be] more attractive to tourists and locals.” One of the two big ways that the county has done this is by better utilizing the Chattooga River flowing through it. The Chattooga River Group organizes annual river festivals to both emphasize the area’s natural beauty and turn that beauty into a source of economic development for the county.