From the Rome News-Tribune

STRANGE as it seems to say it in what clearly are harsh, difficult economic times hereabouts but Greater Rome has strong cause to be optimistic. The community’s future, after these times pass, must be considered unusually bright given all the investments being made.

It’s always difficult to see causes for optimism when the fog of pessimism is the atmosphere in which individual citizens move about. This region has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state; on Thursdays the paper’s legal notices section is filled by page after page after page of foreclosure notices. There’s worry that in the approaching season jingle bells will not include the merry ringing of cash registers.

Yet it appears that a whole lot of folks, with a whole lot of investment money, and from all over the economic landscape, are betting that Greater Rome’s long-term future is very bright.

There’s good reason for that, even if sometimes forgotten by the current gloom clouds that hide the light. This community, after all, has developed a very diversified economic base built most strongly upon providing needs that are both constant and growing: health care and education.

IT’S ALSO SORT of off by itself, in the center of the so-called Golden Triangle (Atlanta/Chattanooga/Birmingham) and thus has developed as the central services/retailing/entertainment center for a close-by population probably 10 times greater than the city’s actual size of about 35,000.

In other words, while not divorced from national economic trends, it is not dependant upon some single boom-or-bust industry nor is it a bedroom parasite of some urban area. It is able to great degree to stand on its own feet and is more master of its own fate than many places in the nation.

With most citizen attention diverted toward current financial pratfalls — both those of others and of ourselves — it is difficult to notice there are many here who seem to be tiptoeing gingerly on an advancing, progressive path. Yet those stand out, particularly given that few neighboring com-munities, larger or smaller, seem equally fortunate.

Indeed, there seems to be so much tiptoeing through the dandelions in a time when the tulips are gone hereabouts that reviewing them risks leaving out a few inadvertently. More important still, the majority appear to be solid and certain and not trial balloons or dream scenarios.

FOR EXAMPLE, the most recent big bet on Greater Rome offering a jackpot opportunity is the bid by an Atlanta developer to buy the Hight Homes site opposite Floyd Medical Center from the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority (roughly $4.5 million, private sector, with additional millions indicated to actually build a shopping center that might well include a Publix supermarket).

Then there’s the $15 million being laid down for the Harbin Clinic Cancer Center (private sector) as well as the 77-unit Etowah Terrace Senior Residences ($10.2 million, nonprofit sector). Both could be up and running about a year from now.

Rome’s Southeastern Mills has bought Ontario, Calif.-based Superior Quality Foods plus the 100,780-square-foot building currently occupied by Eagle Rock Distributing on Old Lindale Road for offices and expansion (unrevealed millions, private sector).

Work is about to start on the $12 million Armuchee connector (public sector, local SPLOST money and not a federal stimulus). Berry College (nonprofit) has offered land to assist in creating a 55-court tennis center (public) and offered to help run/maintain it. That’s more millions.

FLOYD COUNTY is only a funding source decision away from building a new Georgia State Patrol Post ($3.6 million, public).

Just off the newly named J.L. Todd Drive leading from the roundabout to Veterans Memorial Highway construction has started on a series of new medical office buildings (private sector). That, in turn, is roughly across the highway from where the new second location of Bella Roma restaurant (private sector) is nearing completion, one of several new dining emporiums announced (Pizza Hut, Zaxby’s).

Very clearly, all those in public, nonprofit and private sectors with money to invest and a willingness to do so seem pretty certain that Greater Rome is not about to dry up and blow away — indeed, much the opposite.

These are firm and solid, not the “off in the future” stuff that media in other communities most often offer up as hope for a brighter tomorrow (new Atlanta Falcons stadium, $500 million ... maybe in about eight years).

There is, in other words, much reason for local optimism about the future and the prosperity it holds for Greater Rome even though what is usually dubbed “consumer confidence” relies mostly on individual paychecks and not what the whole of a community is doing.

NONETHELESS, in the past couple of decades Greater Rome has earned a warranted reputation for economic progress. It is clear that while many others are now simply trying to stay afloat by bailing budget water, or laying low and guarding their money until the perceived storms pass, this community’s many elements have the intention to keep on keeping on in moving toward better times.

Perhaps such times have hit an interruption, an interlude, elsewhere but not here.