When I became Chairman of the Gilmer Chamber of Commerce in January, 2013 Paige Green (Chamber President) and I began a dialogue about Economic Development in our community. Back in 2009, Gilmer County had designated the Chamber as the Economic Development agent of the county. This relationship is noted on the Gilmer County website here:

http://www.gilmercounty-ga.gov/departments/economic-development.aspx

Paige and I agreed that the Chamber had done a terrific job in promoting tourism in the past few years. In fact, the Hotel/Motel tax increased by 113% in just four years. We also concluded, however, that the Economic Development efforts could be vastly improved. After much discussion regarding improving our Economic Development efforts on behalf of the community, we presented to the Chamber Board of Directors the idea of having the Pendleton Group come and facilitate a series of meetings between the Public and Private sectors of Gilmer County. I wrote an article about the initiative for the Times Courier which is available here:  Catalyst Plan Travis

As the Catalyst Group began to meet, Whitney covered the process from its beginning here:  Catalyst to help development 1A 040413 and continued here:  Catalyst to help development JUMP 3A 040413  

As the group continued its initial work, she wrote an additional update article here:  Catalyst sets goals 1A 070413 and continued here:  Catalyst sets goals JUMP 3A 070413

After phase one of the initiative was complete, the Catalyst effort shifted to smaller task forces to investigate moving forward on specific goals. One of these teams worked on two of the Group’s goals, namely 1)Developing a Comprehensive Marketing Plan for the Community and 2) Developing a more Centralized and Simplified Economic Development Process. The Economic Development team continued their work through the fall and into the winter and unveiled its plan on February 28, 2014 to the full Catalyst Group and a few other key parties from our community leadership. The following press release was sent to the Times Courier and Fetch Your News the next day: Catalyst unveils plan and continued here:  Catalyst unveils plan continued