BUSINESS
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2013/Marietta Daily Journal
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Biotech firm moves HQs to Marietta By Jon Gillooly
jgillooly@mdjonline.com
MARIETTA — A biomaterials company based in Kennesaw is moving its corporate headquarters to an 80,000-square-foot building in Marietta, where it is expected to create a number of lucrative jobs. Mayor Steve Tumlin said it would “aid Marietta, the Sawyer Road area, and Canton Highway with a great business and attractive employment opportunities.” MiMedx Group Inc. is a manufacturer of regenerative biomaterial products physicians use to help the body heal. “They use amniotic tissue for wound healing,” said Beth Sessoms, the city’s economic development director. “They’re getting really good surgical results using amniotic tissue to help wound healing for surgeons.” The company has about 150 employees now and plans to grow to 190 by the end of year, she said. “Then they have plans to increase that each year over the next three years,” she said. Sessoms said the job opportunities will be for scientists and technicians. “I think the salaries, maybe the technician jobs are more in the 40s, but the scientist will be more in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said. “These are the kind of jobs that we really need. We were really great to get Osmotica. I think MiMedx is another great company, and I think the fact that WellStar Kennestone’s here, and they’re growing, now they’re a regional medical center, all these things attract very intelligent people and good jobs and good research.” The company is expected to keep using at least one of the two 20,000-square-foot buildings it has in Kennesaw off Chastain Road, she said. The 80,000-square-foot Marietta facility is located in an industrial park at 1775 West Oak Commons. MiMedx entered a lease agreement with HUB Properties GA LLC on Jan. 31 to lease the Marietta facility, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The initial term of the lease is for 69 months with an option to renew for another five years. Rent is $15.50 per square foot minus certain discounts for the first 18 months.
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to be a tremendous amount of improvement,” Moore said. “People are still basically afraid, and they’re not really wanting to spend money, and they have money. Case in point now: We have some of the lowest inventory for homes for sale. So if you are looking for a house, it’s going to be very difficult to find one, and I think there are a lot of people that want to sell, people are waiting, they just don’t want to get that depressed value. They’re waiting for things to get a little better. I think that things will, but the first part of that is activity, and I think that we’re seeing sort of the first phase of that recovering, so I’m very inspired by seeing that activity.” Cobb Chamber Chairman Greg Morgan said with existing businesses strengthening across all industry sectors and the creation of 1,773 new jobs in 2012,
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The looming cutbacks to the defense budget do not bode well for defense in general, Blackwell said. “And however that shakes out here in Marietta, it can’t be good whatever it is, because spending is going down, not up, and they’re already at a minimum operating level,” he said. “They can’t continue to stay in the plant as it is and continue to operate, because it’s just too big, too much overhead.” Blackwell said Lockheed has done this before, back when it lost the C-5. Lockheed Marietta’s current headquarters in the building off South Cobb Drive used to be the C-5 building, he said. “So we pulled out of that and gave it back to the Air Force, and the Air Force used it for contract management and other DODrelated things, and it was not until I became president that we took it back again because we had that much business, but basically they can retrench … and close down facilities and put them in mothballs and reduce their overhead, and they’ll be fine for a while and
Staff/Todd Hull
The new small market Walmart concept sells only grocery items and is much smaller than a typical Walmart super center. Here, store manager Wanda Shack stands in the freshly stocked produce section.
Fresh thinking Grocery-centric Walmart store opens in Marietta By Sheri Kell business@mdjonline.com
MARIETTA — The first of three Walmart Neighborhood Market concept stores coming to Cobb County opened recently at 1167 Powder Springs St. in Marietta near Bellemeade Drive, in the former Food Depot site. According to store manager Wanda Shack, 90 new full- and part-time jobs, including four assistant manager positions, have been filled. The 41,000-square-foot store will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Shack said the store — which is one-fourth the size of a typical Walmart Supercenter — includes produce, meat, deli, frozen, and beer and
all signs show that Cobb is on a healthy path. “One of the most encouraging trends in our community is that we’re seeing local entrepreneurs take their first steps toward leasing or purchasing office space, versus operating out of a home office,” Morgan said. “Also, our economic development team has seen a slight rise in e-Commerce and Information Technology prospect activity.” Two of the sectors that have held the region back from achieving 2007 levels of growth have been the construction and financial services sectors. Georgia led the nation in bank failures during the recession, for example. But this is the year Georgia will catch up, Tutterow predicted. “Before the end of 2013, metro Atlanta and Cobb County will experience employment growth higher than the national average for the first time since about 2006,” he said. Tutterow applauded the county’s relationship with the state’s economic development office,
just hopefully they can hang out for a better day,” he said. The issue is there are no more programs out there for which there is a need to build airplanes, Blackwell said. “They’re cutting back in Afghanistan, they’re cutting back in Iraq, so they’re downsizing again,” he said. Blackwell predicts the nation will undergo Base Realignment and Closure in the next few years. “It’s just going to be a smaller armed forces, high tech but smaller,” he said. The president and Congress made what Blackwell calls a tragic mistake in closing down the F22 line and not opting to sell overseas. They could have kept the F-22 in production by “dumbing it down” and selling it to U.S. allies, he said. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics has called Marietta and Cobb County home for 62 years. “This year is no different than any other year in the fact that we plan to continue and extend this tradition,” Cooper said. Today it is home to 6,800 employees who design, build, fly, modernize and sustain some of the world’s most recognizable military aircraft. This year, Lock-
wine departments, as well as a pharmacy, paper goods, pet products and a limited hardware department. “With our smaller format, our store is perfect for those on the go,” Shack said. Bill Wertz, divisional director east of community and media relations for Walmart, said last year that the company is responding to its customers’ needs. “We are becoming a more flexible company with larger and smaller formats,” he said. “We also try to make each store reflect the preferences of the customers in the area.” The new store includes a rice and bean walk-around area and a Hispanic doughnut case. “We will be meeting the needs of
this community, but we expect our demographic to be evenly split,” said Shack. Shack said that due to the smaller format, the fresh department will need to be restocked more frequently than supercenter stores. “Fresh produce and meat will be the key areas we give more focus to,” she said. Brooks Mathis, executive director vice president of Economic Development at the Cobb Chamber, said, “A wonderful sign of the economy is the growth in retail operations in our community. With the recruitment of new corporations to Cobb come new jobs, which provide more financial resources for our citizens to spend on goods and services.”
Staff/Laura Moon
Cobb Chamber of Commerce President David Connell, left, and Mercer University professor and noted economist Roger Tutterow meet after a speech in which Tutterow says he expects it to be 2015 before Cobb and the Atlanta area start to experience a resurgence in growth.
noting how critical it was to landing companies interested in the region. Cobb Chamber of Commerce CEO David Connell said having a single point of contact for the state in the form of Chamber vice
president of economic development Brooks Mathis, is essential for Cobb. “That means when a project comes in, then he brings together the people that should be brought together,” Connell said. “He real-
Staff/Samantha M. Shal
Lockheed Vice President and General Manager Shan Cooper was honored with a Martin Luther King Living the Dream Award during Cobb’s recent 27th King Celebration Day. Sammy Foster, president, Odyssey Productions, also received the same award.
heed Martin’s Marietta employees will support existing contracted work on the C-130J Super Hercules production line, the P-3 Orion replacement wing line, the C-5M Super Galaxy modernization program and the F-35 Lightning II center wing assembly production line. The F-22 Raptor program is
transitioning from Georgia to Texas, with 560 jobs moving from Marietta to Aeronautics’ Fort Worth headquarters, mostly in the first half of 2013, said Lockheed spokeswoman Stephanie Sonnenfeld Stinn. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics continues to be active in the Marietta, Cobb County and metro
ly brings together the people that are important to the decision. He doesn’t make the decision, he doesn’t get to decide where they go, but he gets to show Cobb County and what we do, and that’s going to help us because we’re positioning our self to grow.” Tutterow said for the county to have maintained its AAA bond rating through the recession is something to be proud of, because businesses view that as a sign of a fiscally responsible government. Cobb continues to have a good school system, a responsible government and one that invests in its infrastructure, he said. “We do need to acknowledge that the competition is intense,” he said. “The North Fulton Corridor, Gwinnett County, obviously Paulding and Cherokee, are counties that are also trying to be very aggressive with the same issues, but I do think we are still in a position to be the leader for metropolitan Atlanta over the next decade like we have been over the last two.”
Atlanta communities through volunteer work and dedicated community partnerships. Last year, it donated about $2 million to local nonprofits, community groups and educational organizations that support a variety of causes including science, technology, engineering and mathematics educational initiatives, military customers, regional economic development, social services and healthcare programs. “Our employees are essential to Lockheed Martin’s community outreach and continue to donate their time, talent, treasure and passion to area nonprofits, schools and the military-focused organizations through volunteer efforts,” Stinn said. In January 2011, Cooper was named vice president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company and general manager of the company’s Marietta facility. She is also responsible for the company’s subassembly sites in Meridian, Miss, and Clarksburg, W.Va. “Lockheed Martin has proudly called Cobb County home for the past 62 years, during which time our employees have designed, built, flown, delivered and maintained the world’s best military aircraft,” Cooper said.