James July-August 2024 web - Flipbook - Page 12
from Macon. From the mayor (re-elected in May with 80 pecent of the vote) to
Rogers to Walden, many of the leaders
of these groups are native Maconites
and their dedication is obvious.
In addition to her work at the
Chamber of Commerce, Walden founded Rock Candy Tours the day after the
closing of the Georgia Music Hall of
Fame in 2011. (Walden is the daughter
and niece of legendary Capricorn Records founders Alan and Phil Walden.)
“Our position on that was that
Macon’s music history does not have to
live within a museum’s walls. It’s on our
sidewalks and it’s on our street corners.
And if our walls could talk in Macon,
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they would sing,” said Walden. “So
we set out to tell Macon’s music story
and became the official tour company
doing that in Macon. Rock Candy Tours
has been a small business that we’ve
continued to operate and now have
expanded our tour product to include a
ghost tour, a beer tour and food tours.”
New Business Means More Jobs
One thing about Macon-Bibb that
becomes apparent is the focus on
spreading the revitalization across the
community. Robert Fountain chairs the
Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority and, like many places across the
state, Macon has landed big economic
development wins during Fountain’s
tenure. When he started, things were
still somewhat depressed around
town. Businesses were closing, especially when the Brown and Williamson
tobacco factory closed in 2004. It had
been Macon’s largest single employer,
with some 3,000 people involved in
making cigarettes for British American
Tobacco. The loss of all those wages
resulted in the estimated loss of 10,000
jobs. “That hurt a lot of people and we
didn’t know if we could recover from
that,” said Fountain.
But, enticed by the convenient
access to two interstates, Kohl’s
located a distribution center there
