Metter: a Georgia Grown Community

Metter:

Georgia Grown Community

by LeeAnna Tatum

Everything’s better in Metter! Situated about halfway between Macon and Savannah on I-16, the City of Metter is ideally situated to entice drivers off the interstate to refuel and refresh. But in an effort to become more of a destination point rather than a stop-over, Metter is embracing its rural roots.

Through a pilot program of sorts initiated within City leadership and approved by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, Metter has become the first Georgia Grown Community. More than simply a marketing gimmick, The City has fully incorporated Georgia Grown into its economic development strategy by choosing to focus on the industry that is already it’s number one driving force - agriculture.

“Metter was able to identify agriculture as being such an important part of its community that they wanted to embrace the industry and utilize it as an economic development strategy,” explained Matthew Kulinski, Deputy Director of Georgia Grown, Marketing Division.

“When they came out with this economic development strategy,” he continued, “it really all fell into place and they created this three legged stool, in a way. One with the marketing of Metter as being a Georgia Grown Community, the other leg being the improvements they made to their Visitor’s Center to turn it into a Georgia Grown showplace or store, and the third leg being their interest in creating Georgia Grown based small business incubators … with Georgia Southern to help grow those smaller businesses in Metter.”

This initiative was the brainchild of City Manager Mandi Cody and Director of Tourism and Business Development Heidi Jeffers. The two women were looking for a cohesive way to bring in new businesses and attract I-16 drivers to do more than make a quick stop in Metter, while embracing the essence of smalltown, rural life that the community wants to maintain.

So, instead of trying to draw new types of businesses into the community, they spearheaded a plan to use their agricultural assets to the town’s advantage. By targeting agricultural based businesses, they hope to attract, not only farmers and producers, but all the support businesses that are a part of the industry of agriculture.

“The local community has embraced this,” Cody explained. “Primarily because it’s embracing who they already are and what the community is already about. We already have farmers, we already have insurance agencies that serve the farming community, or accounting agencies … one thing that gets lost when talking about agriculture is that it’s not just the farmers, but there are all these support businesses that have to contribute to their success and serve those farmers. They are accountants or marketing folks or production facilities or logistics.”

“Farming, like any other industry is a specialized industry,” she continued. “We want to be able to provide that niche We’re not trying to be anyone other than who we already are.”

The Metter Welcome Center, located at 1210 S. Lewis Street (Exit 104 from I-16), has been updated to act as a storefront for many Georgia Grown products. The City hopes this will provide additional reasons for drivers to exit the interstate and will also serve as a way to introduce Georgia Grown products to a greater audience.

“A lot of new product development, especially ag based can’t afford … even a small retail space ... but they still need a place to showcase their products,” Cody contended. “That’s why we wanted to convert our Welcome Center into a Welcome Center and Retail Center because there again, there are those 30,000 cars (passing on the interstate) and many are stopping at the Welcome Center anyway, but that gives them the opportunity to introduce themselves to a Georgia Grown product they may not have had before.”

This new retail center is only one of the ways Metter is hoping to encourage new and existing Georgia Grown businesses to consider choosing their community as a base of operations. They are also offering incentives targeted specifically to agricultural enterprises. By reducing start-up costs and creating an atmosphere that fosters growth, Metter is catering to the ag industry.

“This follows very close in line with … a new philosophy in economic development that’s spreading around the country,” Kulinski noted, “and that’s as opposed to going out and finding a big company, trying to steal it from another state and bring it in; their strategy is more of an economic gardening concept. Where you take a community, you remove the barriers and some of the restrictions that may be there for attracting or growing small companies ... Create an atmosphere, a feeling of growth, creating the right environment to help them grow.”

As part of that growth-conducive environment, the City of Metter has also partnered with Georgia Southern University to create a business incubator program. This program will provide support services for small businesses to help them through some of the hurdles of starting up a new enterprise.

“Most producers are passionate about what they are producing,” Cody said, “not necessarily about writing a business plan … so having a place where they can exercise that passion and bring their product to creation and take it to market while getting support on those necessary but not necessarily fun parts in an affordable way. It gets them a strong start.”

Cody is hopeful that businesses who participate in the incubator program will choose to continue in Metter once they complete the start-up process. The incubator is one more asset that the community can now offer to new agricultural businesses.

In May, Metter signed its first business into the incubator program, Better Fresh Farms, a hydroponic farm that uses technology to cleanly grow fresh produce year around.

“For the City, we hope Better Fresh Farms and whoever else participates in our incubator ... they benefit from the reduced costs that come from the incubator, that they grow through the resources given to them through Georgia Southern’s assistance and ours. And that when they graduate from that program, we want them to move out into our community and buy a building in Metter or lease an existing facility that’s in the City of Metter,” Cody Explained.

A community devoted to its small-town essence but in need of economic growth in order to maintain a vibrant population is choosing to capitalize on its rural assets. With their new partnership with Georgia Grown, Metter is seeking to improve tourism, attract and grow new businesses, and to ultimately improve the local economy.

“It’s a very strategic way of marketing our community,” Jeffers summed up. “It’s exciting that everyone buys into what we’re doing… it’s a wonderful feeling to know your community is behind what you’re doing.”

It’s precisely because of its community-wide support that Georgia Grown was convinced to partner with Metter in this initiative.

“One of the things that we are very concerned with is we don’t want to be going to cities or communities or businesses and tell them what they need to be doing in order to benefit their cities,” Kulinski explained. “So they came up with the strategy and we worked with them on that, but in the end, it’s their strategy and we figured out where we could fit into that strategy to help them implement as they moved forward.”

In regard to the possibility of other communities emulating the partnership between Metter and Georgia Grown, Kulinski responded, “I would say that it really has to begin at the community level. Not to kill with these puns, but it’s a grassroots program - it has to start organically. The community has to ask for it, it can’t be something that we just show up and do for them,” he concluded.

Metter, like many rural communities here in Southeast Georgia, has suffered from dropping numbers: population loss, lower tax base, fewer jobs. Faced with this economic crisis, they are choosing to recognize the very nature of their rural community as an asset, not a liability. By acknowledging the importance of their agricultural roots and the existing support system for that industry, they are cultivating a fertile environment for growing the agricultural industry.