The Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) is the principal driving force for new and current business development in all of Chatham County. Trip Tollison, president & CEO of SEDA, has been serving in that capacity for about a-year-and a-half.

Preceded by Steve Weathers who resigned abruptly in September 2012, Tollison took over as interim president & CEO by a unanimous vote of the SEDA Board. Tollison is the former vice president and chief operating officer for the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce and Visit Savannah. He was integral in helping SEDA with several economic development projects, including both phases of major Gulfstream expansions. Tollison also mediated an agreement with the state, county, Georgia Ports Authority and Caterpillar, eliminating ad valorum taxes on Caterpillar’s goods-in-transit through GPA. That issue was the final obstacle to Caterpillar’s decision to build a major new facility near Athens and to export a considerable number of products through the Port of Savannah. For the past ten years, Tollison has been in the thick of negotiations around the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project as spokesman for the business community’s support for the expansion – a role that kept him busy between Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

In April 2013, the SEDA board voted again unanimously to remove the designation of “Interim” from Tollision’s title and installed him officially as the permanent president and CEO. “Right now, outside of the day-to-day routine at SEDA, we’re trying to make Savannah and the Savannah area more competitive,” said Tollison. He explained that there are three big pieces to that: “SEDA has to go out and identify land that we can use for prospects,” said Tollison. “The nature of this business has become so competitive that, with the right prospect, most communities are offering free land to entice new businesses to come. We are in the process of doing that.” When the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) initiative passed last November, $15 million to $30 million of that money was designated to SEDA for the purchase of land to attract prospective new businesses.

“The top two things that prospects look at when they’re trying to make a decision on where to go are the infrastructure, which is the site itself, what are the road systems are like, as well as the railroads, the ports, etc., and we’ve got infrastructure in Savannah covered,” said Tollison. “The only down side in Savannah on the infrastructure side is some of the wetlands and topography we have down here, but that’s something you can overcome with fill dirt and so forth. That’s issue number one.”

Tollison said Savannah’s second big challenge has to do with its current workforce. “What we’ve been doing these last eight months are two studies on our current workforce,” he said. “One study was completed by Armstrong Atlantic State University, to provide the community as a whole with 96 pages that talk about the strengths and weaknesses of our current workforce, what are the deficiencies, what are the skill gaps, what are the soft-skill gaps, what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong.”

The second study produced a workforce snapshot to identify who is doing what in Chatham County related to workforce development. “That study identified 61 different institutions that claim to be doing something to improve the workforce in 247 programs,” said Tollison. “Out of these many institutions and programs, we learned that over 65 percent of all the workforce development in Chatham County is coming out of Savannah Tech.”

This new data prepares SEDA for its second step, which is to determine what the community is going to do to improve the workforce. “At the end of the day, when we talk about those top two things, infrastructure and workforce, since SEDA is a sales and marketing organization, I want to be able to go out there and say we’ve got the greatest infrastructure and the greatest workforce in the Southeastern United States, period. That’s the goal,” he said. “With infrastructure, we’re there. This land development strategy that we have in place will definitely take us to the next level. When it comes to workforce, obviously, we’ve got work to do.”

SEDA is, indeed, a sales and marketing organization with plenty of competition for wooing new business investment into the Savannah area. “These things are exciting for us because it’s about being as competitive as you can be, because right now, I will argue with anybody that this is the most competitive business in the country,” said Tollison. “When a prospect is down to selecting from among three cities, it is extremely competitive, not just on incentives but how the visits go. It comes down to who does what on a presentation. If you’ve got one screw-up, the whole thing can get tossed out. We’re excited about the steps we are taking to make our area more competitive.” SEDA is heavily involved in the Outlet Mall of Georgia project in Pooler. “It’s a $200 million development project and SEDA was and will continue to be a part of all that,” said Tollison.

Tollison explained a unique challenge that he and his colleagues at SEDA face every day – a challenge not common to the rest of the state. “Right now, in the State of Georgia, if you look at cities the size of Savannah, i.e., Columbus, Augusta, Macon, Valdosta, and Brunswick, we’re the only city left that still charges an inventory tax on manufacturing inventory,” he said. “The good news is, voters who live in the City of Savannah will be able to go to the polls during the May primaries this year and vote to remove that tax. That’s a big deal for us because right now, in unincorporated Chatham County, there is no inventory tax.” Tollison said that if the voters adopt the measure to discontinue the inventory tax on May 20, it would greatly help the City in landing new jobs and attracting investment in manufacturing. “There will be a revenue loss to the cities (Savannah, Pooler, and Tybee Island) in the short term but they will obviously gain it back in the long run with the adding of new jobs,” he said.

The prospects are there in abundance, according to Tollison. “Our prospect market right now runs the gamut. We have prospects from overseas and the U.S., and we work on business retention projects day in and day out – folks who are considering consolidating – so we obviously have to take care of what we already have.” Tollison also said that Savannah attracts growing attention from the international community. “We’ve had a couple prospect business visits from overseas; we’ve had domestic prospect visits,” said Tollison. “In our business, all we have to hear are the words ‘Company X is looking at doing something in the Southeast and we’re on it.’”

Tollison said SEDA is optimistic about the economic future of Savannah. “I think with all the steps we’re taking to make Savannah more competitive, the future is bright,” he said. “As we continue to climb out of the great recession and you see the market performance and things like that, we’ve got a positive outlook on where we’re going.”

The two major measuring sticks here, Tollison said, are: 1) What is SEDA doing to create investment in the community, and 2) What kind of jobs is SEDA bringing into the community. “Those two really capture whether we’re doing a good job or a bad job and last year we had incredible numbers,” he said. “Hopefully, this year we can continue to do the same.”

Tollison, aged 40, is a native of Brunswick, Ga., and has lived in Savannah for the past 12 years. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and is married, with an 8 year old son and a 7 year old daughter.

Company contact information:

Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA)

131 Hutchinson Island Road, 4th Floor, Savannah, GA USA 31421
Ph: 912-447-8450     Toll Free: 1-800-673-7388     Fax: 912-447-8455     email: [email protected]