Wednesday, March 26, 2025–12:20 p.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
Business leaders gathered at the Forum Wednesday to hear from Rome City Manager Sammy rich and Floyd County Manager Jamie McCord during the Rome-Floyd Chamber of Commerce Seven Hills Series State of the City and County.
Rich spoke on a number of issues, including housing.
Currently, there are 5,010 residential units in the pipeline. Of those, around 3,900 are in the city.
“If you are wondering where these people are coming from, Georgia Power was kind enough to share this data with me,” Rich said. “If you look at about 45 minutes out, we’ve got a pool of about 400,000 people. If you want to think about who drives here, you have about 20,000 driving into Rome every day and 8,000 who are driving out. The county has a more comparable in and out. What that tells me is that if you have opportunity for folks, they would be here.”
Rich also spoke about the Rome Tennis Center at Berry College.
The tennis center has an annual economic impact of around $7 million.
“We didn’t build the Rome Tennis Center because we didn’t think we had enough courts,” Rich said. “It was built based on the idea that we needed an economic engine in the community. That economic engine is creating $7.7 million. Now, of course, Berry—a great partner—has built the Fairfield, so you can stay and play at the Fairfield hotel with the Rome Tennis Center, and you’ve been able to see some great tennis lately.”
Before the tennis center was built, Rome hosted an average of 12 tournaments a year. In 2025, there are 70 events.
McCord gave updates on a number of topics, including economic development.
We have the sixth highest number of economic development announcements in the nation, per capita,” he said. “Rome is the number one metropolitan statistical area—which is Rome, Floyd County and Cave Spring—in Georgia for job growth since 2020 at a rate of 16.1 percent. This outpaces Gainesville, Savannah, Athens, and Atlanta. This doesn’t happen by coincidence, it happens with a lot of hard work and effort.”
There were 130 projects in 2024 with $21.2 million in capital investments and 85 new jobs created.
McCord also gave an update on the runway extension at the Richard B. Russell Regional Airport.
“It’s 150 feet wide by 1,000 feet long, so why did it take 10 years to do?—Well, there are a lot of things that happened as far as obstructions, drainage and permitting,” he said. “We actually have to relocate Jones Mill Road. We’re not closing it, it just going to move to the north, actually improving the intersection. So, for anyone Using our Hatfield remote site, it will still be accessible. We got this completed before the end of the year, thank goodness. Armuchee turns into a swamp in winter and that was another big victory. These guys were out there paving a couple of days before Christmas, so we are really excited.”
The county has also received a $3.5 million grant to improve the taxiway system on runway 7/25.
A new corporate hangar is under contract and more t-hangars are planned for the future.
