ATLANTA – Atlanta-based The Home Depot Inc. is launching a major warehousing expansion in the metro region, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday.
The hardware giant will build three new warehouses in DeKalb, Fulton and Henry counties, bringing about 1,000 new jobs to metro Atlanta.
The new facilities are part of a larger plan Home Depot unveiled in 2017 to invest $1.2 billion to expand its distribution network by adding 150 warehouses nationally, enough to provide same-day or next-day delivery to 90% of the country. Georgia is a hub for the company’s Southeast supply chain operations and national delivery strategy.
“We’re proud to employ more than 27,000 associates in our home state,” said Stephanie Smith, Home Depot’s senior vice president of supply chain development and delivery.
“The diverse workforce, cost of living, and location make [Georgia] the perfect place to continue to grow our business. We look forward to welcoming another 1,000 new associates in the Atlanta area who want to build a career with The Home Depot.”
“As The Home Depot continues to grow, I want to thank the entire company for not only making long-term investments in their home state, but also continuing to support our local communities through their various outreach programs,” Kemp added.
The new Home Depot warehouse in Henry County will be a 657,600-square-foot structure in Locust Grove.
The company is currently looking to fill 600 job openings for the new facility. Interested jobseekers should visit careers.homedepot.com for more information or text JOBS to 52270 for a link to apply to local positions.
In 2021, Home Depot will open a new 615,000-square-foot “flatbed delivery center” in the DeKalb County community of Stonecrest.
The company also will open a 650,000-square-foot order fulfillment center in the city of East Point in Fulton County.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development was represented by the Global Commerce Division’s logistics projects team in crafting the deal, in partnership with the Henry County Development Authority, the cities of Locust Grove and Stonecrest, Decide DeKalb, the City of East Point, Fulton County, and Georgia Power Co.
“I’m very grateful to all of our economic development partners who helped see each of these projects through,” Georgia Economic Development Commissioner Pat Wilson said. “We especially appreciate The Home Depot’s partnership and continued investments in their home state.”
ATLANTA – Georgians reluctant to patronize bars during the coronavirus pandemic will be able to have adult beverages delivered to their homes under legislation Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Monday.
House Bill 879, which cleared the General Assembly in June during the final week of this year’s legislative session, will let restaurants, supermarkets and liquor stores make home deliveries of beer, wine and distilled spirits in Georgia, subject to the approval of local voters. The bill also allows alcohol retailers to provide to-go services.
“This new law represents the balance of safe, convenient delivery while maintaining the rights for local governments to decide what is best for their community,” said Martin Smith, executive director of the Georgia Beer Wholesalers Association. “We want to thank Governor Kemp and the Georgia legislature for setting a high standard for the safe delivery of alcohol in our state.”
Throughout the debate on the bill, which was introduced by state Rep. Brett Harrell, R-Snellville, supporters argued legalizing home delivery of alcoholic beverages was particularly timely in the midst of a global pandemic that forced Georgians to shelter in their homes and, even after shelter-in-place orders were lifted, left many wary of venturing out to bars or restaurants.
“Without leaving their homes, Georgians can now safely purchase products from their favorite locally licensed retailers,” said KC Honeyman, executive director of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Georgia. “We are extremely excited for the opportunity that has been created for our local retailer partners to tap into the home delivery market supported by Georgia’s family-owned wholesalers.”
Harrell’s bill also broadens the so-called “Sunday brunch bill” the General Assembly passed two years ago allowing restaurants, hotels and wineries to serve alcohol on premises starting at 11 a.m. on Sundays. The new law allows sales of liquor by grocery stores for off-premises consumption as well.
House Bill 879 also expands the current state law allowing tastings of limited amounts of beer, wine and spirits from just wineries and distilleries to package stores.
When given the chance, Georgians have not hesitated to support easing traditional restrictions on the sale of alcoholic beverages. After the General Assembly passed legislation in 2011 legalizing Sunday sales of alcohol, voters in communities large and small across the state ratified Sunday sales by large margins.
ATLANTA – A new wave of coronavirus patients that began showing up at Georgia hospitals in early July has prompted shortages of staffing and bed space and strained supplies of sanitation items like disinfectant wipes.
But that’s only the most obvious manifestation of what the COVID-19 pandemic is doing to hospitals large and small across the Peach State.
Less obvious but equally if not more daunting is the long-term consequences on hospitals’ finances.
“In one word, it’s devastating,” said Ethan James, executive vice president for external affairs for the Georgia Hospital Association. “It’s scalable for the big hospitals that may have had a good amount of reserves before this started. … Smaller hospitals are going through their reserves quicker.”
The effect of the pandemic is having the most serious impact on rural hospitals.
In the most severe example, the Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center in Cuthbert recently announced plans to close its doors this fall. It will become the eighth rural hospital in Georgia to close in the last decade, although some have reopened with fewer services.
“There are probably a dozen [more] that are having a difficult time,” said Monty Veazey, president and CEO of the Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals. “They spent down their reserves. They don’t have a bottom line.”
As the number of hospital closures since 2010 indicates, financial struggles among rural hospitals pre-date COVID-19. Historically, they have been plagued by a shortage of paying patients.
“Their patient mix is high indigent, high Medicaid, high uninsured and underinsured,” Veazey said. “They’re living off cash flow and trying to make a weekly payroll.”
Jimmy Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health Care, which represents rural hospitals in Georgia, said his organization was called upon to help six cash-strapped hospitals make payroll back in February and early March, just before the coronavirus outbreak gained a grip on the state.
“When the pandemic hit, they quit doing elective surgery,” Lewis said. “The financial impact was immediate and awful.”
Hospitals’ financial straits eased somewhat when Gov. Brian Kemp partially reopened Georgia’s economy in late April. They resumed revenue-generating elective surgery and, at about the same time, a pipeline of federal assistance opened up when money from a coronavirus relief package Congress had passed in March began to flow.
“All of a sudden, the hospitals had cash,” Lewis said.
With the congressional relief measures helping to relieve hospitals’ financial concerns for the time being, the most serious problem has become coming to grips with the surge of COVID-19 patients streaming into hospitals since the pandemic took a turn for the worse in early July.
The increased demand is affecting large urban hospitals as well as their rural counterparts. Atlanta-based Emory University Hospital has seen more COVID-19 patients treated in intensive care in recent weeks than during the pandemic’s earlier peak in April, said Jonathan Lewin, president and CEO of Emory Healthcare.
“If this continues for a few months, it’s going to be concerning,” he said. “There are a lot of hospitals that are going to be in very, very financially challenged times.”
In some parts of the state, hospitals are short on bed space. Hospitals serving the regions surrounding Athens and Tifton have run out of beds dedicated to intensive care, forcing those hospitals to move beds normally dedicated to other patients into ICU units or transfer them to other facilities.
Lewis said the surge of COVID-19 patients also has made staffing a huge problem for the rural hospitals.
“We don’t have enough staff to handle all that’s coming,” he said.
While the federal money has been helpful, it’s not a long-term fix. For one thing, there’s no guarantee more will be forthcoming, with Republicans and Democrats in Congress far apart on a new relief package.
“It’s been a Band-Aid. That’s all,” Veazey said. “It’s propped up some [hospitals] a little while longer. It’s not going to be a solution.”
Veazey said a more reliable solution would be expanding Georgia’s Medicaid program. To date, 38 states have expanded Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act then-President Barack Obama pushed through a Democratic Congress a decade ago.
“We would need a Medicaid expansion to survive,” Veazey said. “[But] I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
Kemp and Republican leaders in the General Assembly have resisted expanding Medicaid based on the Obamacare model. Instead, the legislature has authorized the governor to seek a federal waiver to expand Medicaid through a more conservative approach than the Affordable Care Act offers.
The Georgia Hospital Association is doing its part to try to reduce the demand for hospital beds with a Mask Up campaign, encouraging Georgians to wear masks, practice social distancing and wash their hands frequently.
“We continue to ask people to do the right thing and act responsibly,” James said.
Lewis said unless something happens to ease the pressure on rural hospitals, they could start running out of money this fall. If that happens, they will be forced to look to the federal government for a bailout, he said.
“[Now,] we’re short of people,” he said. “We’re going to be short of cash. It’s an incredible mess.”
ATLANTA – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff has cut a new TV ad that – without naming names – slams President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Recorded at Ossoff’s home, where he is self-quarantining after his wife, Dr. Alisha Kramer, tested positive for COVID-19, he praises her work on the front lines of the pandemic as an ob-gyn at Emory University.
“Too many Americans are still getting sick,” a tieless Ossoff declares in the ad. “We need to listen to medical experts, coordinate the national testing strategy and stop politicizing masks. … Nurses and doctors like Alisha, they’re doing their job. It’s way past time politicians did theirs.”
Ossoff, who has tested negative for COVID-19, remains at home with his wife, who has been steadily improving.
The investigative journalist from Atlanta won the June Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., in November.
Perdue, who is seeking a second six-year term, ran unopposed for the Republican nomination.
Both sides have been waging an intense campaign on the airwaves, including TV ads funded by their campaigns as well as ads financed by the political parties and outside groups.
Ossoff has been playing up Perdue’s close ties to Trump, including an ad entitled “Echo” alternating sound bites from Perdue identical almost word for word to sound bites from Trump.
An ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee links Ossoff to Hollywood “liberals,” and suggests he is exaggerating his resume.
Coronavirus (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
ATLANTA – The Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta will reopen to receive coronavirus patients on Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday.
The facility, which has a capacity of 120 beds, will house 60 beds initially and increase based on need.
“These additional hospital beds will provide relief to surrounding health-care facilities while providing top notch care for patients,” Kemp said in a prepared statement. “My administration is laser-focused on expanding hospital surge capacity while working to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Georgia.”
This will mark the second time the convention center has been tapped to help with an overflow of coronavirus patients. A 200-bed alternative care facility there was activated back in April as COVID-19 cases soared and state officials rushed to boost emergency bed capacity.
Its operations were paused in late May as the governor moved to relax business restrictions and jump-start the state’s flagging economy.
But COVID-19 cases have been rising again since the beginning of July. As of Thursday afternoon, 18,303 Georgians suffering from coronavirus were hospitalized, including 3,354 patients in intensive care.
The number of confirmed cases in Georgia had risen to 182,286. The virus had killed 3,671 Georgians.
Grady Memorial Hospital will serve as the lead hospital for clinical oversight for the 120-bed facility at the Georgia World Congress Center.
The facility also will have the staffing and equipment necessary to treat a higher level of need in patients than the previous configuration during May and June, enabling hospitals to focus their staff and resources on the most critical patients in their own facilities.
