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December 7, 2011

They love the night life

Young professionals want more places in Dalton for music, art and entertainment

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com

Young professionals in Dalton have spoken — they want more “authentic local places to have dinner, meet for coffee, hear live music, visit galleries, attend theater or just hang out.”

That was the top answer given — by more than 50 percent — of young professionals surveyed by Rebecca Ryan, author of “Live First, Work Second.”

Ryan, whose work focuses on why young college graduates decide to live and work where they do, spoke in Dalton in October and later brainstormed with a group of about 100 young professionals and college students about ways to make the city more attractive to people like them. She put the results of that meeting together in a “white paper” that was recently delivered to local officials.

Many of those young professionals will meet this afternoon to discuss the results of the white paper and decide on a plan of action based on it.

“Basically, we’ll be discussing reorganizing the young professionals. It has been pretty loosely based. Now, we want to get more structure, such as committees and leadership, and discussing what our goals will be for 2012,” said Alex Stall, economic development senior project manager for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, who is spearheading the meeting.

Stall said the white paper has already been emailed to members of the group and they’ll be ready to discuss it.

“The feedback I’ve gotten is that it exactly captured the feelings and thoughts that a lot of people had,” Stall said. “She did a very good job of capturing everything that was said at the meeting, and of course, she did a survey.”

That survey found that, after a more active night life in Dalton, the next most important things to Dalton’s young professionals are “a stable economy with good jobs, a broad choice of places to work and an environment that is friendly to entrepreneurs” and “walkable neighborhoods/downtown, bike lanes, public transit.” But those two answers were given by just 15.38 percent each of those taking the survey.

No one who took the survey said cost of living or “a vibrant community where people are healthy” was the most important thing to them.

“I don’t know if that was very surprising. At the meeting, people kept talking about how they wanted more places for performing arts or places to have dinner with family or with friends. They said they currently travel to Atlanta or Chattanooga for those things but would like to have them closer to home,” Stall said.

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