Ordinance Makes Smyrna More Attractive to Businesses

Businesses now have stronger incentives to relocate to Smyrna after the to amend the city’s code of ordinances regarding economic development.

The updated ordinance was based on recommendations made by the Economic Incentives Advisory Committee and mirrors the economic incentive ordinance passed by Cobb County in October 2011. The EIAC is a 13-person committee comprised of representatives from the business community. The mayor designates two appointees and each council member names a representative from their ward. The four remaining seats are filled by representatives from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Development Authority, the Smyrna Business Association and the Planning and Zoning Committee.

Eric Taylor, assistant city administrator, said the city’s old ordinance put Smyrna at a disadvantage because the eligibility thresholds for economic incentives were unreachable even for large economic development projects. If businesses meet certain criteria the city has the option to waive several fees for that business including development impact fees, plan review fees, water system development fees, occupation tax certificate fees, building permit fees, financing of sewer system development fees and water/sewer use charges.

The old eligibility thresholds required that businesses provide at least 10 new jobs with an estimated annual revenue impact of $250,000. The EIAC recommended instead that the city put a tiered system in place to allow companies to provide less of a direct economic impact in exchange for creating more jobs.

“A lot of times jobs are provided, but you may not have this huge impact,” said Ken Suddreth, Smyrna’s community development director. “We’ve also added definition to the incentive period to count for the time that new job or job would indeed create that economic impact. That’s a slight revenue issue that I mentioned early. It really does become an economic impact because it’s over a longer period of time.”

Some businesses would be eligible for incentives based on their location in the city. Community development staff would identify these target areas in Smyrna and present their suggestions to Council for approval at a later date.

“It doesn’t matter the number of jobs or the economic impact,” said Suddreth. “If you’ve already been identified to be in an area that was believed necessary the mere fact that you were doing any of this would make you eligible for some type of incentive program.”

Taylor said the EIAC was formed about a year ago to evaluate city programs and improve the incentives offered to potential businesses. The committee met up to twice a month until it presented its final report to community development staff in October. City staff fine tuned the recommendations and presented it to the Council Monday.

“The difference between staff’s recommendation, which is this, and the committee’s recommendation is they’d turned this more into a matrix and a point system that you would add points in order to get stuff,” Suddreth said. “In discussing this with other economic development professional in the state that was viewed to be slightly complex. It’s also a little bit more than what the county did in terms of complexity. So staff said, ‘Let’s take it down one step so it’s easier from the state level.’

“Again if you recall past discussions a lot of prospects start at the state level and is filtered down from there. They rarely knock on community development’s door first. They start at the state level and trickle down. This makes it easier for Cobb County and the cities within Cobb County, and in our case in Smyrna, to be pretty consistent. We think ours takes it a step further, which is necessary to recognize the targeted properties and small businesses.”

Andrea Blustein, Ward 2, expressed her “continued gratitude” to the EIAC representatives.

“I think citizen help on these projects is always of tremendous value,” she said.

Teri Anulewicz, Ward 3, thanked one EIAC member in particular.

“I want to first of all thank Renee Rowe, the proprietress of The Wine Cellars for her participation in the economic incentive committee,” she said. “I appreciate the work that all of the citizens that were appointed do, but I’m particularly proud of Renee, one because she’s in Ward 3, but also because I think she runs a fantastic business and I really appreciate her help.”

Representatives to the EIAC are Alex Hill, HillStone Construction; Eric Williams, Lanier Parking Solutions; Leo Smith, Diligent Smith Inc.; Todd Patrick, CenterState Bank; Renee Rowe, ; Kenny Burts, Kenny's Great Pies; Jay Wallace, ; Steve Morini, Inland Pipe Rehabilitation; Michael First, Graphcom Inc.; Brooks Mathis, ; Buddy Purvine, RE-MAX; Sean Murphy, B+C Studio; and Joel Powell.