The long-planned NOA wine tasting event was drawing near. I had devised an interesting (and amusing) wine quiz as part of ythe entertainment. But on Tuesday afternoon, there was a dispiriting telephone call – it has all been cancelled due to the intervention of the City Hall bureaucrats, claiming that necessary permits had not been arranged. There is more to this upset than that my brief statement, and investigations are going on as to what really happened. More news as it comes out.
However, there was a public meeting organized about economical development in the area. The City Mayor, the chairman of the Lumpkin County commissioners and the Directors of the two Development Authorities, Downtown Dahlonega and Lumpkin County, were present and tried to answer questions. Attendance was a bit sparse (perhaps since the amount of publicity about the meeting was minimal). I was not very happy when the Director of Lumpkin County Development Authority (who is also Georgia state senator for this constituency) blandly stated that there would be no significant retail development in the foreseeable future. Apparently comparing the demographics of Lumpkin county to the next county south shows that there just isn’t a big enough pool of affluent shoppers here. I think his analysis was a bit lacking – there are several other counties with smaller populations and poorer households than Lumpkin in all directions, and they have lots of “proper” shops. I will wait to see what is reported in the local paper, “The Dahlonega Nugget”, about the meeting before raising any comments.