August/September Business View Magazine

200 201 and monitored-use apparatus in the showers and kitchen. “We have also constructed a 285-acre industrial park here in BarrowCounty,”he continues,“which is County owned. It is called the Park 53 Industrial and Commercial Complex.The road infrastructure into the park was completed in 2016, and we have just been GRAD-certified (Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development) by the state of Georgia.This is a certi- fication program through which local governments, or owners of property, can get certified,which accelerates the upfront work if an investor/develop- er comes in. It means we have already completed the wetlands identification, the wetlands delinea- tion, all the permitting, hydrology, and geotechnical information.All that is gathered up front, so it saves prospective companies and businesses a lot of time and money.” One of the real benefits of this industrial park comes from the location of BarrowCounty, itself. The County is located halfway between metropoli- tan Atlanta and the City of Athens, Georgia,which is home of the University of Georgia.The corridor that the business park is located on is a heavily-traveled, four-lane highway connecting the two cities and is known as Innovation Crescent.“There is a lot of industrial and commercial development occurring along the corridor,”Renshaw points out,“which is about 45 miles long. But BarrowCounty, being strategically placed at the midway,makes it a really choice site.” “In the 2018 Financial Year,we had 18 prospect site visits of companies that were interested in lo- cating to Barrow,” says Renshaw,“We are still trying BARROWCOUNTY, GEORGIA to land our first site at the industrial park.We have had an international development firm express a lot of interest.Hopefully, things will go well and we are able to land our first tenant.” There are two reasons for optimism along this front: the first being a partial property tax abate- ment which the County is offering.This is typically based upon the amount of a prospective company’s capital investment, capital expenditure, and job cre- ation.“We are looking for jobs that pay higher than the median average wage,”explains Renshaw,“and the property tax abatement is typically 50 percent. And this can run anywhere from five to 10 years depending on the investment and the number of jobs being created.” “We also have a really unique synergy happen- ing in terms of workforce development,”Renshaw claims.“A question being asked by the prospective businesses looking to relocate into BarrowCoun- ty is ‘What kind of amenities or facilities does the County have in terms of training the workforce?’ Again, the advanced manufacturing cluster seems to be the one we are getting the most requests and site visits from, so I wanted to mention that we have two tremendous assets in the County. The first is Lanier Technical College,which is a 65,000–70,000-square-foot facility that was com- pleted in 2016.The college specializes in advanced welding-a technical discipline known as ‘Mecha- tronics,’ combining electronics and mechanical engineering.They also have a full curriculum in the health sciences and building automation systems.” “So again,”he continues,“this is a state-of-the art workforce development facility, part of the Georgia Technical College System, and a relatively new, and I think a relatively significant, asset that we have that a lot of communities don’t.And the site visitors - like the company I mentioned earlier - spent 45 minutes touring Lanier, because one of their needs is a highly-skilled,welding workforce. So, they were really intrigued and excited by the programs offered by Lanier Technical College. It is also conveniently located, literally, next door to our industrial park.” “The other asset, institutional-wise, is Sims Acad-