The 2024 Maury Alliance Annual Meeting was held on Tuesday, January 30th at the Memorial Building in Columbia, TN. Our Presenting Sponsor was First Farmers & Merchants Bank and our Silver Sponsors were Brindley Construction, Columbia Power & Water Systems, Maury County Living Magazine, and Zion Christian Academy. During this annual event we gather 300+ business and community leaders together to network, highlight our past accomplishments, celebrate our members, and transition our volunteer leadership. Remarks were made by Outgoing Chair, Russ Adcox; Incoming Chair, Stephen Hughes; and Maury Alliance President and CEO, Wil Evans. This year was especially significant as 2024 will mark the 100th anniversary for the Chamber in Maury County.
Key 2023 Highlights
We had two economic development announcements in 2023. SGB Enterprises, Inc., a flight training simulation company, relocated its headquarters to Columbia and plans to expand their manufacturing capabilities. Xxcentria Technology Materials Co. is establishing its first U.S. metal composite production facility in Mount Pleasant. Together these companies brought $46 million in capital investment, 126 new jobs and a combined average wage of more than $60,000.
Great strides were made in our workforce development initiatives, specifically launching our Talent Attraction Campaign, Maury is Ready (www.mauryisready.com) and identifying potential barriers to those entering the workforce, such as childcare.
2023 was a record-breaking year for two of our programs as we celebrated 54 ribbon cuttings and sold over $60,000 in local first gift cards, bringing the total dollars kept in Maury County through this program to over $200,000. The year also marked continued membership growth with 135 new chamber members, bringing our total membership to over 630.
We are seeing positive trends looking long term as well. Over the past 10-years, Maury County has experienced double digit percentage growth almost across the board, but to highlight a few:
- Per capita income has increased by 54%
- Average Annual income has increased by 36%
- Median household income has increased by 42%
- And Retail Sales has grown by 86%
Additionally, SmartAsset just released their annual report which placed Maury as the #1 county in TN for Business Growth, GDP Growth, New Building Permits, and Incoming Investment. Nationally, Maury County was #3 for Incoming Investment and #7 for Business Growth – that’s out of 3,143 counties.
Our organization has been focused on growth for many years for the opportunities a thriving economy provides our community. As we head into 2024, we understand that Maury County is facing different challenges than we were 10-15 years ago and have begun tailoring our approaches towards economic and community development to ensure we are supporting thoughtful and sustainable growth.
Advance Maury Campaign Update
In 2020 we launched the 5-year capital campaign – Advance Maury.
Our Advance Maury Strategic plan had four goals:
- To create 2,000 jobs in Maury County
- To inject $90 Million in new annual payroll for Maury County
- To secure $225 Million in Capital Investment for Maury County
- To conduct 125 Business expansion/retention visits
As of December 2023, we have:
- Announced 3,490 new jobs coming to Maury County (175% of goal)
- Announced $159.7 Million in new annual payroll (177% of goal)
- Announced $4.88 Billion in new capital investment (2,169% of goal)
- Conducted 112 existing industry visits (90% of goal)
We have well exceeded three of our four goals and are on track to exceed the fourth as well. While these numbers are exciting, we understand that this momentum may not be sustainable, so we spent a great deal of time in 2022 gathering input from our key stakeholders and in 2023 we began re-calibrating our strike zone to ensure that we are focusing our resources as an organization on projects that are truly going to move the needle forward for Maury County.
Annual Meeting Highlights
Chairman’s Award for Volunteerism
Russ Adcox presented Gina Wolf with the 2023 Chairman’s Award for Volunteerism in acknowledgement of her years of service and dedication to Maury County.
Ambassador of the Year
Kara Williams presented Denise O’Neil as the 2023 Ambassador of the Year.
Meet your 2024 Volunteer Leadership Team
Board Chair: Stephen Hughes – First Farmers Bank
Chair-Elect: Richard Law – Baird – The Parker Group
Past-Chair: Russ Adcox – Maury Hills Church
Treasurer: Caleb Mathis – Chick-fil-a
Chamber Council Chair: Rob Ferrara – First Farmers Bank
Economic Development Council Chair: Jimmy Phillips – BMC Metalworks
For a full list of our Maury Alliance volunteers visit mauryalliance.com/board.
Thank you to Visual Media Co. for capturing pictures at Annual Meeting. Here are some of the highlights, but the full catalog of images can be viewed here.
Our table decorators invest a lot of time and energy to make Annual Meeting look fantastic and keep this tradition going. We sincerely thank them for their hard work and encourage everyone to view the tables here and admire their creativity.
The 2024 Table Awards went to Grinder’s Switch Winery for “Best All Around” and Breezy Powerwash for “Most Creative”.
