Former Guilford County Manager Marty Lawing is a long way from Guilford County – he’s now the city manager of Fort Myers, Florida.
However, Greensboro, High Point and the county he once ran are clearly still on his mind. Lawing recently gave a speech on the current state of Fort Myers and he referred to his old stomping grounds in comments picked up by southwest Florida’s “Gulf Shore Business” magazine,
In 2013, the conservative Lawing was hired by a Republican-majority Guilford County Board of Commissioners. However, after Democrats took control of the board in 2020, Lawing resigned right before Christmas – with some coaxing from that board.
Now, living 767 miles south of Greensboro, Lawing opened up a little about his time in Guilford County.
The article stated, “In Guilford, Marty Lawing said during almost seven years as the Guilford County manager in North Carolina, he saw both successes and failures.”
He also said that he was “hoping to learn from the missteps” in Guilford County as he works to improve life for residents in Fort Myers.
The former Guilford County manager also noted the importance of a thriving downtown – and that observation was followed by an interesting comment. The article’s author, presumably paraphrasing Lawing, wrote “In Guilford County, Lawing saw a privately-funded minor league baseball stadium work in downtown Greensboro, and a publicly-funded one not work as well in High Point.”
In Lawing’s last several years as Guilford County manager, he encountered a great deal of aggravation when trying to bang out the details of Guilford County government’s role in High Point’s baseball stadium project.
Lawing apparently used the tale of the two stadiums to make a point about no two cities being alike.
“I’ve seen a lot of successes, and I’ve seen a lot of failures,” Lawing was quoted as saying in the article. “What works well in one city might not work well in another.”
Everywhere Lawing has gone, he has made economic development a priority – and Fort Myers is no exception. That city is now looking to hire an economic development guru who will have the job of recruiting businesses to Fort Myers.
Yea Marty. Good for you. You deserved so much better than skip and his band of democrat stooges. Enjoy the Sunshine State
so go to that ballpark in our downtown when there isn’t a game – which is 8 ? months in offseason – & show me some increased economic activity in the area ! then go down to our civil rights museum which just doubled ? in size with OUR federal dollars & show me some economic vitality there ! what we need is another memorial to . . . toads that disappeared from that area – poisoned out of existence. how many businesses that suffered damage from our last ‘native’ uprising failed to reopen ? the long gone sears store had lots of business & PAID taxes instead of demanding them. thnx! i feel better now since voting means nothing