Hot Rod Rearick

(published in the September/October issue of Pooler Magazine)

Before the 2011 baseball season began, Chris Rearick’s name was not on any lists of the top prospects in the Tampa Bay Rays’ organization, and why should it have been?  After all, the Pooler native wasn’t drafted until the 41^st round last year – yes, there are that many rounds in a Major League Baseball draft.  Guys drafted that late are usually projected as no more than minor league roster-filler, players to provide some competition for those considered to be genuine major league prospects.  But after an All-Star season for the class A Bowling Green Hot Rods, Rearick proved he is much more than a roster spot.  Indeed, he was the best closer in the entire Midwest League.

“I had never been a closer before this year.  I was always a starting pitcher,” Rearick told me before his team practiced prior to a road game with the Great Lakes Loons.  “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a closer when they talked to me about becoming one, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”  You couldn’t tell that by the way he has pitched this year: as of the end of August, a 7-2 won-loss record with 19 saves, a miniscule 1.38 earned run average (ERA), and 86 strikeouts in 78 innings pitched.  Unsurprisingly, Rearick was just named to the Midwest League’s 2011 All-Star team.  Somewhat surprisingly, the left-hander showed just as much talent with a much bigger ball when he was growing up near the old Pooler Recreation Park.

“I was a very good bowler from the time I was a teenager,” Rearick says of his 194 average when he was bowling in a junior league as a 15-year-old.  Like a lot of boys, Rearick also played virtually every other sport growing up, and he played basketball and football, in addition to baseball, through high school at Savannah Christian.  Despite having corrective surgery on both ankles after his sophomore season, Rearick was a star, even if it was more so on the diamond than on the gridiron and the court.  “I liked football and basketball, but I stuck with baseball because I was better at it than the other sports.  I knew I had a better chance of playing college baseball.”

In January of 2006, just before his final high school baseball season, Rearick signed to do just that at Berry College.  The school nestled in the mountains of Northwest Georgia is small when it comes to student numbers, but huge when it comes to land – at more than 26,000 acres, it is the largest college campus in the world.  “I liked Berry because it was so big, and growing up loving the outdoors, the campus was very appealing.  I also wanted to play baseball for them because I knew their pitching coach, Josh Hopper, and thought he could help me.”

His college career started slowly, but by his junior year, Rearick was one of the Vikings’ top pitchers, going 9-2 in 16 games with a 3.58 ERA.  But Rearick would leave Berry after that season in order to help his chances of becoming a pro.  Berry competed in the NAIA, the small college equivalent of college sports’ major governing body, the NCAA.  Even though Berry was attempting to move up to the NCAA, “a scout told me that major league teams don’t generally look at (lower division) college players when it comes time for the draft,” which is why Rearick transferred to North Georgia College.

The Dahlonega school’s official name is actually a mouth-filling North Georgia College and State University.  All Rearick cared about was that the Saints’ baseball team competed in NCAA Division Two – the same as Savannah’s Armstrong Atlantic State University; Rearick competed against AASU that season since both schools are members of the Peach Belt Conference.  If Rearick’s goal for his final college season was to get the attention of scouts, mission accomplished.  He was the conference’s pitcher of the year with a 9-2 record, a 3.20 ERA, and 99 strikeouts in 98 and one-third innings pitched.

Despite the impressive numbers, major league scouts tend to look more for raw talent that can be developed in the minor leagues, and as draft day in June 2010 dragged on, Rearick grew despondent – his phone wasn’t ringing.  “The draft went on and on, and some of my friends started getting drafted in the later rounds, so I was starting to resign myself that I wouldn’t be drafted.  That’s when Tampa called.” 

The Tampa Bay Rays boast one of the finest collections of young pitching talent, particularly starting pitching, in the major leagues, and that’s why Chris was excited to be drafted by them.  “Unlike some teams, Tampa had a reputation of developing young pitchers through the minor leagues and giving them a legitimate chance at the major league level, rather than simply trading for established major league pitchers,” Rearick says.  As with most young pitchers, Rearick began at a low rung of the minor league ladder – advanced-Rookie League ball in tiny Princeton, West Virginia.

His first professional season could have been better.  A 3-1 won-loss record was belied by a somewhat high 4.72 ERA and a lot of hits allowed in 40 innings pitched.  “It was tough to adjust to pitching to teams where every guy on the opposing team was a professional, as opposed to college ball where only a couple of guys on each team had any chance of playing professionally.”  After trying to speed up his delivery in spring training prior to the 2011 season, Rearick says he made some simple adjustments suggested by Bowling Green pitching coach R.C. Lichtenstein, and as the coach attests, he has been almost untouchable ever since.

 “He made it look easy,” Lichtenstein said in a recent interview with the Bowling Green Daily News. “It got to the point where we thought, ‘That was fun to watch. He deserves to pitch in meaningful innings now.’ “The ninth inning is not for everybody. To his credit, he has taken it and run with it and never looked back.”  Rearick also attributes some of this year’s success, including the lowest ERA and the highest strikeout-rate of his career, to the development of his favorite pitch.  “I love throwing my slider, but a slider is a pitch that sometimes takes your entire life to learn.  You just have to keep working on it every day to have a good one.”

Rearick is diplomatic when it comes to the $64 question for pitchers; the preference between starting and closing.  “I liked starting, but I really have adapted to being the guy that’s ready to come in every night or every other night and finish a game.  There is some pressure, sure, but I enjoy that kind of pressure, so I will do whatever (the Rays’ organization) wants me to.”  One thing Rearick will close on very soon is his personal life; on September 30^th Chris is marrying Courtney Webber, whom he met while at Berry College.  Webber was also an athlete, a star on the Lady Vikings’ soccer team, and the two will get married in Courtney’s home town of Houston, Texas.

If baseball doesn’t work out, there are always other options for Rearick’s future.  “I could try bowling again,” he says with a laugh, reminding slightly older baseball fans of former Atlanta Brave John Burkett, another pitcher known for his talent on the lanes.  Indeed, Chris knows the odds are still stacked somewhat against him.  He turns 24 in December, and since most players in low-Class A ball are 21 or younger, some scouts will discount Rearick’s numbers. 

But one would think it would be very difficult for the Rays’ organization to completely ignore the best season by far of any relief pitcher in the Midwest League.  Chris also knows he has an advantage in being a southpaw.  “There is always a need for left-handed pitchers in the majors, even if it’s to come into a game and get just one guy out.”  If Chris Rearick keeps getting outs the way he did this year, the club will have little choice but to move him up the ladder and closer to his big league dream.

(Note: Rearick finished the season with a 7-2 record, 20 saves in 50 appearances, a 1.66 ERA, an amazing WHIP of 0.799, and 89 strikeouts in 81.1 innings.)

Robbie Cowart - Racing's In My Blood

(published in the September/October issue of Pooler Magazine)

Some of the most recognized names in racing – Dale Earnhardt, Junior Johnson, and David Pearson among them – have taken the turns at Oglethorpe Speedway’s half-mile dirt oval over the track’s 60 years.  But a surname that has been one of the Pooler raceway’s most familiar is one than only an ardent local racing fan might recognize.  The Cowart family has been around race tracks, including Oglethorpe, for generations, and this year, Pooler’s Robbie Cowart took the family know-how and his love for speed and brought home Oglethorpe’s Southern Eagle Budweiser Late Model Series Championship.

“I love dirt track racing because you have to adjust to different track conditions every time you race,” Cowart says of why the clay, like that at Oglethorpe, has been his preferred racing surface for the last six years.  “Asphalt racing (what you watch if you are a NASCAR fan) is more and more about the amount of dollars behind you than actual racing ability.”  There aren’t many dollars in Robbie’s kind of racing, but there is plenty of driving ability, ability he began developing while still in middle school.

“I started racing go-karts with my brother when I was 11,” Cowart says of his youth on the South side of Savannah.  Born in 1963, he had racing in his blood in an almost literal sense, particularly since his father, Robert Cowart, was a racer himself.  “For many years, he was also Oglethorpe’s Chief Steward,” the junior Cowart says, which is the official in charge of the speedway any time cars are on the track.  Better known to race fans, particularly in the South, was Robbie’s uncle; the famous or, perhaps infamous Delma Cowart.  Delma’s car number was ‘0’, and he raced a little of everywhere, even occasionally on the major NASCAR cup circuit.  He is perhaps best remembered for throwing a legendary hotel party after qualifying for the Daytona 500 in 1992 (Delma supposedly told a reporter, “I ain’t never won a race, but I ain’t never lost a party”).

Robbie Cowart went to work for Delma’s team after high school, though he already had other aspirations.  “I wanted to buy a dirt track car after I turned 18 so I could race at Oglethorpe, but my uncle talked me into going into asphalt racing.  He said I was still young and could use the experience.”  Six years later, Robbie got behind the wheel on asphalt for the first time at one of auto racing’s hallowed grounds.  “It was really something to run your first race at Daytona,” Cowart says of the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series race in which he finished a respectable 16^th.  “My uncle told me you just have to go flat out all the way around the track.  At first, I’d get a little nervous and let up in the corners, but once I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun.”

Cowart drove for his uncle for several years, but then decided to return to his original plan to play in the dirt.  “In the late ‘90’s, I finally started racing on dirt like I had always wanted to,” Cowart says, racing at Oglethorpe and other dirt tracks across the South.  At first, he was primarily a driver, racing (and winning his first dirt-track race) in a car sponsored by Ward’s Auto Paint and Bodyworks of Savannah, but it wouldn’t be long before Cowart was a car owner again, as well as off the dirt.

“My dad and I decided to buy an asphalt car,” in 2001, and Cowart says they also decided to give the ARCA series another go.  “It was fun, you know, getting to race on some of the best known tracks in the country; Talladega, Charlotte, places like that.”  ARCA was and remains a proving ground for drivers looking to move up to the major circuits, and Cowart competed with the likes of future NASCAR Cup stars Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman.  Paying for it was another matter.  “Our family business (Southern Pavers) was our sponsor, and we just didn’t have the money behind us that a lot of those teams had.” After qualifying for ten races over three years and finishing in the top-ten just once, Cowart decided it was time to get dirty again.

“There’s just something about dirt-track driving,” Cowart says, clearly excited to be talking about his favorite racing surface.  “You never know from one day to the next how your car will handle or what adjustments you’ll have to make.”  Cowart recalls a lap he turned earlier this season at Oglethorpe, where everything on the car seemed to be perfect.  “We came in at 18 seconds, and I thought about the superstition I had heard from my father and a lot of people where you don’t touch anything on the car as long as it’s running well.  I didn’t even wash it, which is unusual for me, but the next time I took it out, we went a lot slower. It was all because of the condition of the track and the adjustments you have to make to those conditions.”

Cowart raced quite a bit at Oglethorpe and other tracks over the next few years, then gave another travelling circuit a try in 2009.  “We raced in the National Late Model Series for two years,” Cowart says of the Southern dirt track series, “but that was tough, spending the money to get the car ready for different tracks, and not a lot of time to get used to each track.”  This was on top of his day job at Southern Pavers, and the physical and financial strain of building driveways and patios during the week and travelling as far as Florida and Alabama to race on weekends caught up to Cowart and his family.

This year, Cowart decided to stay home to race, and he thinks that’s one reason for his success.  “I’ve been around Oglethorpe all my life, and when you can race on the same track week after week, you pretty much know what you have to do to win every time on.”  Five race wins, including wins in the last two races of the season, clinched the Late Model Series title for Cowart.

Cowart wishes there had been more people in the stands watching those victories.  “It’s probably because of the tough economy, but it seemed like we had a little trouble drawing fans.  I know the economy took a toll on the number of cars and drivers,” Cowart says.  Indeed, only eleven cars competed in this year’s Late Model Series according to Oglethorpe Speedway’s web site.  “But we don’t do this for the money.  We love this business, and with tires alone costing $600 a piece, if you win some prize money, the best you can hope for is to break even.”

Break even or not, Robbie Cowart isn’t about to leave the driver’s seat.  “I love it and I’m having fun, and as long as I’m having fun, I’m going to keep driving.”  As he showed at Oglethorpe Speedway this year, that day is probably a long way off.

Embry-Riddle is ready for takeoff

(published in the Nov./Dec. issue of Pooler Magazine)

The pictures hanging on the walls conjure up thoughts of Snoopy and the Red Baron, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy zooming through the black and white sky of the old movie “Test Pilot”, and even of the founders of flight, the Wright Brothers.  That’s no accident, as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was founded 85 years ago on the anniversary date of the Wrights’ maiden air voyage.  Today, not only is Embry-Riddle on the cutting edge of aviation education, it also trains the next generation of pilots, engineers, and other leaders in the world of flight on more than 170 campuses around the globe.  Its newest location is here in Pooler at the Park West office complex next to Pooler Parkway.

Pooler’s mayor could barely contain himself when talking about the new kid on the block. “We are thrilled to have Embry-Riddle here,” says Mike Lamb.  “We have had so much growth in other areas and other industries, and now to have a major university locate here, so close to Gulfstream and the airport, is just wonderful.”

Some may raise an eyebrow at the idea that Embry-Riddle is a “major university.”  After all, we think of Georgia, Georgia Tech, or Armstrong Atlantic State in that manner, certainly not an institution with a hyphenated name.  But Embry-Riddle easily qualifies as ‘major’, especially for its specialization.  “If you’re in the field of aviation, you know the name Embry-Riddle,” says Jennifer Furlong, the Pooler campus’s Director of Academic Support.  “We have well over 30,000 students when you combine all of our worldwide campuses, and according to the latest numbers, about 25-percent of all commercial pilots are Embry-Riddle graduates.”

It began as a private company in 1925, formed in Cincinnati by entrepreneur T. Higbee Embry and John Paul Riddle, a stunt pilot, or "barnstormer" as they were called during the roaring ‘20’s.   “They formed this company to train pilots,” Furlong says, and the following year, 1926, they changed their business plan and turned it into a school for pilots - the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation.  After some lean times during the Depression, the school exploded in the 1940’s and 1950’s thanks to the need for pilots and technicians during World War II and the Korean War.

Embry-Riddle had schooled thousands of pilots at training centers in Florida since the Second World War, and in 1965, the school consolidated all of its main operations in Daytona Beach.  Within three years, it became an accredited university and by the 1970’s had established a second traditional campus in Prescott, Arizona, as well as its first satellite campuses, mostly on military installations.  Indeed, Furlong says, the Pooler campus was located at Fort Stewart’s Hunter Army Airfield for more than 25 years.  “There used to be a time when the majority of our students were military, which is why most of the extended campuses were attached to a military base.  There has been a shift in student demographics over the past several years.  Now, most of our students are civilian students.”

While they maintain an office at Hunter to serve active duty soldiers, Furlong says Embry-Riddle wanted a campus that was closer to the local aviation action, and she says Pooler was the perfect spot.  “Gulfstream is the obvious reason, but the Savannah airport is also growing by leaps and bounds.  We’re hearing that expansion at Gulfstream and at the airport could add as many as 3,000 new jobs.”  Furlong also mentions last year’s announcement by Boeing that it would locate an assembly line for its 787 Dreamliner two hours from here in North Charleston, South Carolina, and that Boeing may create a maintenance facility for that plant in Georgia.  “You’ve got to be where your target audience is going to be.  I call it the aviation corridor, because that’s really where this area is headed.”

Pilots may still be the superstars of the air, but flight training isn’t yet offered at Embry-Riddle’s Pooler campus.  However, there’s much more to aviation and the training offered at Embry-Riddle than the type that creates flyboys and flygirls.  “There are so many different career paths,” says Furlong.  “You have got to have the support element for those pilots, everything from maintenance to safety, to operation, even management.  There’s a business side to aviation where you need people with an aviation background but also with the business knowledge to run things.”  You can get a four-year degree in Pooler in fields ranging from Aviation Business Administration to Technical Management in Logistics or Occupational Safety and Health.  Furlong also says that, starting in January, the Pooler campus will offer an aviation MBA degree similar to what other Embry-Riddle campuses offer. 

The campus is small, for now, with a couple of classrooms, a computer lab and offices on the first floor of its Park West building, with plans for more classrooms on the second floor.  Only night classes are taught in nine-week terms, and as Furlong points out, Embry-Riddle offers five different ways of taking those classes.  In additional to the traditional classroom setting, “we have what is called blended learning.  It’s a combination of students meeting in a classroom for a certain amount of time, with the remaining portion of their class meeting online.” 

Embry-Riddle helped pioneer distance learning, and Furlong says they also offer classes in what they call “Eagle-Vision”, taking the name of the university’s mascot.  “It’s where a classroom hooks up with another classroom at another campus via teleconference.  We also have Eagle-Vision Home in which students meet at a certain time just as would in a traditional classroom, only everyone is at home using a web-cam.  And we also offer pure online learning.”

Given the times and methods in which classes are offered, it’s easy to tell that many Embry-Riddle students are non-traditional.  “Most of our students work full time,” Furlong says.  “Most of them are already in aviation and are working to advance in their particular field.”  Her campus has served more than 800 students over the past year, with about 300 of those currently active, and Furlong says the move to Pooler will allow them to grow.  “Within the past year, we’ve had about 125 applications, and we think that once the January term, we will start seeing some of that growth.”

Those numbers may sound small when you think of the thousands of students educated at some schools.  But don’t let that fool you, as Embry-Riddle prides itself on training the cream of the aeronautics crop.  “We’re not about getting the numbers,” is how Furlong puts it.  “With some colleges, it’s more like a sales pitch for them.  ‘Let’s get the students in there, and we’ll charge them an outrageous amount, so let’s get their money and get the enrollments.’  Embry-Riddle has such an important relationship with the field of aviation, and we have really high standards for our students.  If you don’t have a love for aviation, I’m not going to try to convince you to attend our school.   It’s not for everyone.”

Maybe not.  But Mayor Lamb is glad that Embry-Riddle is for Pooler, because he says Pooler is very much for Embry-Riddle.  “I am tickled to have them.  I think this is a match made in heaven.”  The feeling is mutual.

Pooler says, "Take that, recession"

(published in the Nov./Dec. issue of Pooler Magazine)

Six months ago, Tony Miner decided it was time for his business to leave Savannah. It wasn’t for lack of customers. His training school for young baseball and softball players was doing pretty well, but its location - the middle of a malodorous industrial area – didn’t exactly conjure up idyllic images of the national pastime. When it came time to find a new home, Miner considered only one city, and many other business owners appear to be doing the same.

“Pooler was the only place I looked at,” Miner says. “I didn’t need to look anywhere else, because this is where I wanted to be.” For that simple reason, you can now find the Miner League Baseball and Softball Academy just off Highway 80 East behind the New Super Buffett Chinese Restaurant. Spend any time in Pooler and you’ll hear other stories like that of Tony Miner. Whether it’s a brand new business like the Publix supermarket off Pooler Parkway or a relocated company like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Pooler is growing again. Perhaps ‘still growing’ is a better way to put it, because the infusion of people and business never actually stopped. The faucet was just turned down to a trickle during the economic downturn.

“We were fortunate in that we weren’t affected by the recession as much as some other cities,” says Mayor Mike Lamb, “because we have people working for the city who did an excellent job of keeping an eye on the economy.” For much of the past decade, it didn’t seem that a recession or anything short of a neutron bomb could stop Pooler. Its population almost tripled, from 6,239 according to the 2000 Census count to a 2009 Census estimate of more than 16,000, “a number we still think is too low,” Lamb quickly adds.

Beginning in the 1990’s, Pooler was a mass footrace between new residents and homebuilders. The city added 500 to 600 new residents per year, and that doesn’t take into account people who live just outside the city limits. “When I talk about growth in Pooler, I really like to talk about the Pooler area,” Lamb says. “Even though the folks in some of the subdivisions off Jimmy Deloach Parkway aren’t technically in the city, a lot of them still have Pooler addresses, so they are just as much a part of us as anyone.” All those new residents needed places to shop and eat, and they got them.

It’s true that the Wal-Mart Supercenter, Sam’s Club and Home Depot near I-95 are technically in Savannah, as are the hotels near Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport, something that even confuses the hotels. “The manager of the new Embassy Suites that just opened (near I-95 behind Wal-Mart) invited me to be part of his ribbon-cutting,” Lamb says, “and I told him I’d be honored to come, but that he’s not in my city. He seemed surprised.” But just down Pooler Parkway within the city of Pooler, eateries like Longhorn Steakhouse, Fatz Café, Lenny’s Sub Shop and Cancun Mexican Restaurant arrived and thrived before the economic slowdown.

Construction also picked up on Highway 80 east of downtown, as business after business sprang up on the road toward Garden City. The Mighty Eighth Air Force may have been founded in Savannah, but its memory and legacy have been preserved at their gorgeous museum that opened at Highway 80 and I-95, in 1996. Now, the museum is getting even bigger with the restoration of a World War II-era B-17 bomber that began last year.

On the housing side, among the many subdivisions bursting from the dust was Godley Station, with a mix of single-family homes, apartments, and office complexes. The influx of people forced the hand of the Savannah-Chatham County School Board to build Godley Station School, which opened its doors this year to 1,100 students ranging from Kindergarten through 8^th grade. But as the bricks were being laid for the school, some began to wonder if the mortar had been mixed too soon, as the triple threat of the nationwide housing glut, the financial crisis, and the recession brought most building to a halt.

Well, almost a halt, at least in Pooler. Sure, some major plans fell through, most notably 16 West – the plan for a Target, JC Penney, Belk and many other stores near I-16 at Pooler Parkway which fell through when the developer defaulted on a loan and went bankrupt during the real estate meltdown. But Home Depot competitor Lowe’s followed through with plans to open a new store in that area. The hammers building new houses and apartments fell silent for the most part, but some businesses near the homes that were already built kept moving in or making plans to do so.

A drive down Benton Boulevard, which runs past Home Depot, yields small shops like a golf store, larger businesses like Savannah Tire and new restaurants such as Smokin’ Pig and Cheddar’s Casual Café. Frames-N-Games, which features a sparkling bowling alley, laser tag center, and video game arcade, just celebrated its first anniversary. Frames-N-Games is also home to another restaurant – The Pooler Grille Bar – as well as a “balladium”, where you shoot (and are shot at with) foam balls in a 3-D, blacklit, fluorescent-colored room reminiscent of a life sized video game or a losing politician’s bad dream.

This year, the nation started to slowly emerge from the recession; slowly as in the speed of a slug. But things are moving faster in Mike Lamb’s city, maybe not top gear speed, but quicker than many other cities. “We still aren’t seeing the housing construction we had earlier in the decade,” Lamb says, “but the pace of business growth has definitely picked up.” Lamb proudly points to the relocation of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s campus to Pooler from Hunter Army Airfield, but under the radar of such headline-grabbers, small business owners like Suzanne Varas are also helping to make Pooler work.

“I had been operating under another business owner’s roof when they went out of business, which was bad, but it was also good because it forced me to do what I had always wanted to do”, Varas says from Coastal Design Connections, located at Pooler Commons on Highway 80 East. Her background is interior design, but Varas mostly concentrates on the sale and installation of flooring, carpets, backsplashes, cabinets, and custom-made blinds.

Varas used to work in Savannah, and that was one reason she wanted to open her own store in Pooler when she got the chance. “It’s safer here, and in Savannah, I always got the sense that I wasn’t accepted because I’m not from here originally – I’ve lived here for ten years, but yes, I’m a Yankee.” Varas also felt like the victim of an old-boy network because of her gender; cabinetry and flooring tend to be male-dominated businesses.

When she opened her Coastal Design Connections store in February, Varas didn’t have a party, a ribbon cutting, a plethora of dignitaries or flowing champagne – at least not in public. She had something she thinks was more important, a host of well-wishes from people like her. “Everyone, other business owners, came out just to say hello, welcome to the area, and if you need anything just let us know. It was so different than anything I had experienced before.” Varas now understands that Pooler business owners have a Musketeer-like grasp on the concept of one for all and all for one. “Everyone wants you to succeed to keep the business coming to the neighborhood.”

Varas was also attracted to Pooler’s abundance of potential business locations, something that also caught Tony Miner’s eye as he looked for his new hardball home. “We were able to build a brand new facility, 7,200 square feet. It’s 1,200 square feet bigger than our old academy.” To help execute his mission to provide expert baseball and softball instruction to the next generation, Miner also wanted to be centrally located to his customer base. While he is still relatively close to Savannah, his academy’s home for two years before the move, “now we’re in the middle of a city that’s growing rapidly and has more of our target demographic. We’re also closer to Effingham and Bryan Counties and the folks across the line in South Carolina and all the growth there. We think we have found the perfect location.”

Many of the region’s industrial recruiters had focused for years on the effort to lure somebody, anybody, to the so-called Mega-site at I-16 and I-95. After numerous manufacturers took a pass, the effort finally yielded fruit when Mitsubishi announced they would create up to 500 jobs there. To be sure, Mayor Lamb is excited about Mitsubishi, but you’ll have to forgive him if his Mega-site attention span was interrupted by other job-yielding projects that were moving more quickly. “We’ve got the new Publix (on Pooler Parkway) that everyone is excited about. We also have not one, but two multiplex movie theaters being built”; one near Publix, the other near Frames-N-Games. “Housing construction still hasn’t come back to its previous levels, but the businesses are coming in droves.”

Lamb hasn’t gotten everything he would like to see. A new high school, for instance, isn’t likely to be built to Pooler and may not be built anywhere in West Chatham for a while, as the school board wrestles with the problems of where to build it and how to pay for it. “Sure, I’d like to see it in Pooler because I’m selfish, and I think our growth justifies it. At the same time, I don’t envy the job of the superintendent and the school board. They have a lot of tough decisions to make, and some groups of people will always be upset regardless of those decisions.”

Still, Lamb believes that if taxes remain reasonable and banks slowly start to lend money to entrepreneurs again, Pooler will continue to be fertile soil in which to seed a business. “I think that, eventually, 16 West will be developed into a viable shopping alternative to the malls in Savannah. I believe Wal-Mart or some other big box store will eventually build at 16 and Pooler Parkway near Lowe’s. And I think people will continue to move here because of the quality of life our city offers.” Even after a decade of expansion only mildly abated by recession, Pooler remains, as the folks at Embry-Riddle might say, ready for takeoff.