Inside the choices, connections and collaboration that bring companies to metro Atlanta
What makes a company look at Atlanta and say, “This is where we want to be”?
For Gregg Simon, the answer goes far beyond a single incentive, available building or business-friendly policy. It’s the combination of talent, population growth, quality of life, connectivity, universities, employers, and, perhaps most importantly, a business community willing to work together.
Gregg, the Senior Vice President of Business Recruitment at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, works with companies considering metro Atlanta for their next investment.
After more than 30 years in economic development, Gregg has helped companies evaluate communities across the country and played a role in bringing companies like Rivian, Mercedes-Benz USA, Glytec, Authority Brands, and AIG to metro Atlanta. Today, he’s helping companies see what makes this region different, and how the decisions they make today can create new opportunities for the people who live here tomorrow.
We sat down with Gregg to talk about what companies are really looking for when they choose where to grow, what he shows them when they visit Atlanta and why collaboration may be one of the region’s biggest competitive advantages.
Gregg: The main role of an economic developer is to work to ensure the economic vitality of a region. There are a lot of factors that can impact people who live in a region, but to me, a big part of that is opportunity and job opportunities.
Especially for a parent who’s raising kids, if you want your children to have opportunities where you live, you want to ensure that there are new employers coming into the region and creating jobs. Otherwise, your kids are going to have to move away and leave the area to find jobs elsewhere.
Gregg: Atlanta has an amazing talent pool. If I were to generally characterize our talent pool, I’d say we’re young, highly educated, and diverse in every way that you can be diverse.
People are coming to Atlanta from all over the world, and diversity is welcomed and embraced here. That’s why a lot of the companies that I’ve worked with over the years, like BlackRock, Microsoft, Google and many others, have opened large operations here.
We have amazing colleges and universities like the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Morehouse College, Savannah College of Art and Design and many others that are teaching people a wide variety of skills.
Businesses are following where talent goes, and a lot of that talent is here. So it’s no surprise that businesses are coming here also.
Gregg: One of the most challenging parts of my job, but also one of the most fun parts, is the opportunity to host executive leadership of companies for two or three days when they come to visit Atlanta as part of their decision-making process.
They want to know everything about Atlanta. So I’m pulling in experts to talk about public transit and transportation, K-12 education, our hospital system and anything else you would want to know about the area.
In doing that for a long period of time, I’ve come to realize that all these segments or sectors that you think are really separate are actually very connected.
We need a great public K-12 education system to help with economic mobility. We need a good healthcare system to ensure that our people are healthy and have access to good health care. We need great employers creating well-paid jobs to provide economic opportunity.
We have a great quality of life. We have developments like the Beltline, where you can go out on a sunny weekend and see people biking, walking dogs, jogging, eating at great restaurants, and enjoying themselves.
All of those ingredients fit together to create this amazing dish that is Atlanta.
Gregg: We have so many great restaurants, and I love to show them off. I don’t want to take them to national chains. I want to take them to our chef-driven, Atlanta-created places.
One of the things I love about Atlanta is that you can find cuisine from almost any country on the planet here, and it’ll be really good. Whether you’re craving sushi, Colombian food, Ethiopian food, dim sum or pizza, you can find it in Atlanta.
For something beyond restaurants, Ponce City Market and the Beltline have become some of my favorite places to take people.
Ponce City Market is such a popular spot. It’s a neighborhood where people live, a place where people work, and a tourist attraction all at once. I’ll take prospects there, meet with some of the office tenants and then walk down the Atlanta Beltline toward Inman Park.
You can go for a jog, meet people for a drink after work or have a serious business meeting, you can do all of that along that stretch of the Beltline.
Gregg: Having been an economic developer in other communities, I can say with absolute certainty that one of the biggest values of the Metro Atlanta Chamber is bringing corporate leadership to the table to help promote Georgia and Atlanta as a place to do business.
We have great partners with the state of Georgia through the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and they play a key role in recruiting businesses.
But to have a leader like Carol B. Tomé from UPS or Ed Bastian from Delta Air Lines sit down with a corporate leader over lunch, dinner or coffee and give their perspective on why Atlanta is a great place for their business carries so much weight.
Gregg: I’m really happy to say that in metro Atlanta, everyone collaborates really well, whether it’s the state, the 29 counties that we operate in, the various cities in those 29 counties, the colleges and universities, private-sector companies or service providers.
We’re all on the same page. We’re all going in the same direction.
A great example is an event we held at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to mark 100 days out from the start of the World Cup. You had the Republican governor of Georgia, the Democratic mayor of the city of Atlanta, and corporate leadership like Jeff Sprecher, the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
The audience included business leaders and consultants who advise companies where to locate. I think they were blown away by seeing all that collaboration, not only among the private sector, but across political parties and municipal boundaries.
Gregg: A great example is Fayette County. Fayette County is a rural community south of the city of Atlanta and south of our airport. Historically, it has been known for having a great K-12 education system and great quality of life.
Ten years ago, a challenge they were having was that young people were graduating high school, moving away and not coming back.
But one of our business leaders, Dan T. Cathy, who owns Chick-Fil-A and lives in Fayette County, saw an opportunity to recruit Pinewood Studios from England to locate near Fayetteville.
It was a very successful film studio that worked on the Marvel movies and many other films. It was so successful that a residential neighborhood called Trilith was created across the street. That became a mixed-use development with restaurants, a hotel, houses and retail.
Once that was there, people got really excited about living in Fayette County. Rather than a declining population, it turned around and people started moving to Fayette County. Then other businesses became interested, including the U.S. Soccer Federation, which moved its headquarters from Chicago to Fayetteville.
For residents who were already there, it made it a better place to live. It brought in new restaurants, new retail, new vibrancy, and new people into the area and, again, helped ensure the economic vitality of Fayette County.
Gregg: It’s notable how much success Atlanta has enjoyed for a very long time, really for decades.
Development goes through cycles. We’ve had periods, like during the Great Recession from 2009 to 2012, when we weren’t performing as well as we have historically. But generally speaking, when you look over time and average everything together, metro Atlanta has been performing very well.
We’ve been attracting projects that bring significant private investment and jobs to the region. I could go on and on with the private investment and companies that have been creating jobs and moving to Atlanta.
We’ve been a very successful region, and it seems like that success is going to continue into the future.
