Pinewood Atlanta Studios in Fayetteville is known for making blockbuster movies. But on March 7, Soundstage 8 was the setting for several hundred people from across the county to talk about what Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy and others described as the need to attract a decreasing age group back to Fayette County. “Fayette Forward” was designed to set the stage for the return of millennials to Fayette County.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines millennials as those born between 1982 and 2000, roughly those people between the ages of 16 and 35.
Cathy began the day’s sessions describing his own experience and that of others who call Fayette home.
“The baby-boomers loved a house with five acres,” Cathy said, noting that that day has changed. “The community is out of balance and cannot sustain itself.”
As evidenced with his own now-grown children, Cathy said one of his sons lives in Buckhead while the other lives in a converted warehouse area on the Chattahoochee River in Columbus.
“We built a county that my own two sons wouldn’t come back to,” Cathy said.
The idea for Fayette Forward, said Cathy, is to begin a conversation on how to correct the balance in Fayette.
“We (Chick-fil-A) operate all over the country. I’m all in for this county. I’m committed to this county. I’m committed to my own backyard,” said Cathy. “I’m making a big bet on motion pictures and Fayette County.”
Cathy noted plans for adding more soundstages at Pinewood Atlanta, the construction of the Pinewood Forrest residential, retail and office area on Veterans Parkway across from the studio and “some exciting things for downtown Fayetteville.”
A portion of the event included a panel discussion on “Planning Growth for the Millennials.” Panel members included Atlanta Regional Commission Research Divison Director Mike Alexander, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce member and former Suwanee Mayor Dave Williams and Suwanee City Manager Marty Allen.
A 2014 report by Realtyrace.com sampling 1,800 counties in the United States showed that Fayette County led the nation with a 31 percent decrease in millennials. Across the metro area, Fayette had the lowest percentage of working age (ages 24-36) millennials with 10.5 percent.
Included in the conversation about millennials, in Alexander’s comments at the March 3 meeting of the Peachtree City Council and in the news over the past few years is the new national trend that has people in their 20s and 30s increasingly living at their parents’ home and waiting much longer to get married and begin their own families.
Millennials are delaying marriage to a greater degree than their parents did and, said Alexander of the metro Atlanta area, often prefer living in a one-bedroom housing units.
“We did two bedrooms and a roommate in the past. Today it’s fundamentally different than what we did when we were that age,” Alexander said, noting the societal change and outlook that has occurred in past decades. “Today it’s likely that if millennials move to an area and like it they’ll stay in those communities.”
Alexander said the ARC sees the importance of incorporating the ideas coming from millennials.
“Otherwise, as we age (our communities) won’t be re-stocked and re-loaded for the future,” Alexander said. “Fifty percent of millennials expect to move in the next five years.”
Alexander in addressing the current metro Atlanta workforce said there are more millennials than baby-boomers in the workforce today.
“(Millennials) are making decisions about where they are going to put down roots, where they are going to live,” said Alexander.
Williams and Allen noted the changes in Suwanee after the community made the decision to offer more choices to residents that led to the development of a town center area for living, working, civic and leisure opportunities.
Allen described the town center as a social center that functions day and night and on weekdays and holidays. In terms of residential offerings, the town center includes single-family, attached-homes and apartments positioned above retail stores.
Suwanee arrived at the position of creating a town center over a two-year period where public discussions were held in a variety of non-city hall locations such as churches, homes and bars.
“It was an entirely public process,” said Allen.
Nearly every county in metro Atlanta and the nation is aging. It is just that Fayette is aging faster than most Georgia counties. An ARC study from several years ago noted that Fayette County’s senior population was projected to increase by 450 percent by 2040. Those figures may or may not hold true today. Yet what is known is that from 2000-2010, the percentage of all other age group demographics in Fayette decreased slightly while Fayette’s stock of older residents increased significantly faster than the state average. The 2015 estimate is 16 percent compared to 12 percent in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). If that rate continues, nearly one in every five Fayette residents will be 65 or older when the 2020 Census is taken.
Both Alexander and Fayette County Development Authority CEO Joan Young noted recently that Fayette needs to strike a balance in its age demographics.
