The Target Distribution Center in Tifton employs around 550 full-time staff.

TIFTON — Kindall Keyek grew up in Orlando, Fla., and spent a fair amount of time around amusement parks.

Keyek’s dream job is to work for Disney World, but while she attends college at Valdosta State University, she is working at Valdosta’s second largest employer: Wild Adventures Theme Park.

The theme park employs roughly 900-1,000 people throughout the year, according to the Valdosta Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce.

The SunLight Project team — representing newspapers in Tifton, Valdosta, Thomasville, Moultrie, Dalton, Milledgeville, Ga., and Live Oak, Fla. — took a look at a few of the largest private sector employers in each of the paper’s coverage areas.

While public entities, such as hospitals, universities and school systems, are the largest employers in many areas, private sector businesses also employ large numbers of people.

Typically arriving an hour and a half before guests, Keyek, an admissions team member, spends her time at Wild Adventures working directly with customers handling complaints, compliments and ensuring the park’s guests have the best possible experience.

Keyek is majoring in psychology at VSU and said her school work helps with her job performance.

“Sometimes people are upset, and knowing the things I know from school about how to calm people down and how to talk to people, it really helps with this job,” she said.

Before Keyek worked for a large employer, she worked for a daycare center and did odd jobs such as mowing grass. Now, Keyek said she loves her job and plans to work at Wild Adventures at least until she graduates from college.

“I think that Wild Adventures does a good job employing a lot of people as well as taking care of the individual employee,” she said. “Working in a preschool setting you’re working with children one-on-one, but here, it’s still one-on-one, but it’s a shorter time, so the memories count more. Your first impression matters more.”

Wild Adventures began as Liberty Farms Animal Park, a petting zoo, in the 1990s and was purchased by Herschend Family Entertainment in 2007, said Molly Deese, vice president and general manager of the park.

Because of the park’s size and wide range of jobs, it spends about $6 million on payroll each year, she said.

Wild Adventures continues to evolve and has grown into the area’s premier entertainment attraction, Deese said.

“As we look to the future, we will continue to provide a place where families come to make memories worth repeating, and we are incredibly excited about the growth and changes on the horizon,” she said.

Kaitlyn Redish, communications director, and Betty Morgan, vice president of business development, both of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, said larger employers are important to the overall health of the business community.

Redish said a community benefits from a large employer because it creates stability and attracts residents from other cities and towns.

“(Large employers are) likely going to bring people in,” Redish said. “It’s not only going to bring consumers in but bring in people to work.

“Sometimes we say small business is the backbone of our community, but that does not mean we should discount our larger businesses. We are glad to have them and we need to have them.”

Manufacturers  

Manufacturers are often some of the largest private employers in a community. The SunLight report shows a majority of top employers are manufacturers of some kind.

Four of Whitfield County’s top five private employers are manufacturers. They include Shaw Industries with 6,593 employees, Mohawk Industries with 4,100 employees, Engineered Floors/ J+J Flooring with 3,100 employees and the Beaulieu Group with 2,000 employees.

As membership development director for the Milledgeville/Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce, Kara Lassiter recruits new businesses to the chamber and provides resources to existing businesses within the community.

Lassiter said the importance of Baldwin County’s largest employers cannot be overstated.

“When the economy went bad several years ago, a lot of the county’s biggest employers ended up having to shut down,” she said. “Between Central State Hospital and the (indoor appliance manufacturer) Rheem plant drying up, a lot of the focus moved from manufacturing and health care to things like higher education. Our largest employers have done a great job picking up the slack and providing jobs to the community.”

In Colquitt County, the economy is hitting on all cylinders, according to officials, with an unemployment rate more than half a percent better than the state average and new growth throughout the community.

National Beef is one of the largest businesses in the county and it continues to grow. It is in the midst of a $32.5 million expansion. The Moultrie facility is expanding by 40,000 feet.

The meat-processing company is the second-largest private employer in the county. Expansion is expected to increase the local workforce.

When those employees are on board, National Beef will employ about 500 people, some 950 behind Sanderson Farms’ 1,450 workers at its Moultrie chicken-processing facility.

“National Beef should be finished by October,” said Darrell Moore, president of the Colquitt County Economic Development Authority.

National Beef had previously grown to 450 employees, but its numbers slipped after Walmart did not renew a contract with the company in 2013.

As the second largest employer in Thomas County, Cleaver-Brooks has more than 250 employees, including its Thomasville corporate office.

In 1929, John C. Cleaver started manufacturing small, portable boilers. Cleaver-Brooks was formed in 1931 after Cleaver and Raymond Brooks began manufacturing the world’s first packaged boiler in Thomas County.

Today, the company manufactures boiler room equipment for commercial, institutional and industrial markets.

The company develops hot water and steam-generation products aimed at integrating and optimizing the total boiler/burner/control/stack exhaust systems to maximize energy efficiency and reliability while minimizing emissions.

The 216,000-square-foot Cleaver-Brooks facility in Thomasville consists mainly of aftermarket products, fire tub boilers, electric and electrode boilers and integrated controls.

More than 250 employees, including the ones in the Thomasville manufacturing operation, work in corporate functions, including finance, marketing, executive teams, procurement, human resources and customer service.

“The economic impact of their commitment to Thomas County cannot be understated,” said Shelley Zorn, Thomasville Payroll Development Authority executive director.

“Those payroll dollars are spent in Thomas County daily at other Thomasville businesses. Those payroll dollars benefit us all,”  Zorn said.

Careers possible at the Thomasville plant include welders and fabricators, drafters and engineers, electrical control technicians and maintenance technicians.

In addition to Thomasville, Cleaver-Brooks operates manufacturing and warehouse facilities in eight locations worldwide — China, Canada, Mexico, and additional U.S. sites in Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Kelley Manufacturing is Tift County’s fifth largest employer with roughly 230 employees.

It builds equipment for “every phase of the farming process,” according to its website.

The company specializes in peanut harvesting, tillage and poultry cleanup equipment.

The Tifton site occupies 28 acres, with a 193,000-square-foot facility.

Heat Craft is the fourth largest employer in Tifton with about 550 employees.

At its 560,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, Heatcraft creates refrigeration products: Coolers, condensing units, condensers and fluid coolers, among others.

Systems range from the size of a briefcase to the size of a school bus.

Triumph Aerospace Engineering, Baldwin County’s top private employer, has roughly 650 employees manufacturing various aircraft parts for government contractors and other buyers from its 650,000-square-foot plant.

Mohawk Industries is the third largest employer in Baldwin County. Its Milledgeville plant employs nearly 300 people. It is a flooring manufacturer. Mohawk Industries is also one of the top employers in Whitfield County.

In Thomas County, other largest employers include manufacturers Hurst Boiler, with about 230 employees; TECT Power at 255 employees; and Oil-Dri, with 250 employees.

Call Centers

Founded in 1998, Convergys is a third party call center that acts as the first line of customer service for different businesses.

Employees at Convergys act as front line customer service representatives, said Brooke Beiting, senior specialist for communications.

“They take incoming calls from our clients’ clients,” she said. “They help answer questions ranging from billing to adding new services to general questions.”

Prior to April, the Valdosta branch employed around 380 people, but after losing a contract handled by the Valdosta branch, the company sent out a closure warning, Beiting said.

After the contract expired, the Valdosta branch maintained about 120 employees, but many of the employees who left were allowed to interview for work-at-home positions or other positions.

While Convergys won’t be able to bring back all of its former employees, it has confirmed that approximately one-third of the company’s former employees will be returning to work the new contracts, Beiting said.

The business is refreshing its current building to increase the number of people it can employ to about 400.

Before April, Convergys was the fifth biggest employer in Valdosta with 380 employees. With the new contract, Convergys plans to hire more than 200 people by the end of the year to, once again, secure its position as a top employer in Lowndes County.

Elead One/Fresh Beginnings is also a call center in Valdosta. It is the top private sector employer in Lowndes County with approximately 1,582 employees, according to the Valdosta-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce.

Private Hospitals

In Dalton, the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-20 drove home the need for a local hospital. At the time, the closest hospitals were in Chattanooga, Tenn., about 30 miles to the north.

Crown Cotton Mill, Elk Mills, local physicians and others donated land and money and Hamilton Memorial Hospital, named for Crown Cotton Mill founder George W. Hamilton Sr., was dedicated May 21, 1921 — on National Hospital Day.

Today, Hamilton Medical Center is a key part of Hamilton Health Care System which employs some 2,500 people.

In addition to Hamilton Medical Center, Hamilton operates several long-term care facilities, an assisted living facility, apartments for low-income senior citizens and Bradley Wellness Center, among other operations.

It has more than 700 unique job descriptions, but nurses make up the largest category of employees.

Nancy Cope has worked at Hamilton Medical Center for almost 13 years. About two years ago, she became a clinical resource nurse at the hospital, responsible for all the education on her ward.

“Right now, I work Monday through Friday, 8 to 5,” she said. “When I started my nursing career, I worked two years on the night shift. I prefer day shift just for my body’s sake. But I really liked the work on the night shift. There was a little more downtime, so you got to spend more time with your patients. It wasn’t as rushed.”

In her current job, she is responsible for new nurse orientation.

“Hamilton has a residency program for new nurses. We (clinical resource nurses) do that. We do monthly education, and we are also out on the floors helping the nurses with patient care, so it’s different every day, which I like,” she said. “Some days I don’t lay a hand on a patient. Other days, that’s all I do.”

She says technology has changed the job somewhat.

“When I first came into nursing, we were still paper charting. Now, it’s pretty much all electronic,” she said. “But the actual care we provide hasn’t changed that much.”

She said the winter months are usually the busiest at the hospital.

“We see a lot of pneumonia patients, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. That’s largely the elderly,” she said. “We also see more pediatric patients because of bronchiolitis and the flu. That’s the season for that. We usually see a drop in the summer, but over the past couple of summers, it doesn’t seem to have dropped as much as it used to.”

Cope said she knew from a young age she wanted to be a nurse.

“My grandfather suffered from emphysema,” she said. “I remember going into the hospital to visit him, and the smile those nurses put on his face. That made me want to do that.”

Turning Point Hospital, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center with 325 employees is the third largest employer in Colquitt County.

This is Part I of a two-part Sunlight Project. Part II can be read in the Wednesday, June 20 edition.

The SunLight Project team consists of reporters Jason A. Smith, Patti Dozier, Charles Oliver, Jessie R. Box, Will Woolever, Alan Mauldin, Stuart Taylor and Thomas Lynn. The SunLight Project is overseen and edited by Jim Zachary and Dean Poling. To contact the SunLight team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.

Largest Employers in SunLight Project areas:

Whitfield County

• Shaw Industries: 6,593.

• Mohawk Industries: 4,100.

• Engineered Floors/ J+J Flooring: 3,100.

• Hamilton Health Care System: 2,500.

• Beaulieu Group: 2,000.

Thomas County

• Flowers Foods: more than 500.

• Cleaver-Brooks: more than 250.

• Oil-Dri: 250.

• Hurst Boiler: about 230.

• TECT Power: 175 and 80 in the corporate office, according to PDA.

Baldwin County

 Aerospace Engineering: roughly 650.

• GEO Group: roughly 300.

• Mohawk Industries: nearly 300.

• Walmart and Kroger: roughly 200 employees each.

Colquitt County

• Sanderson Farms: 1,450.

• National Beef: 500.

• WalMart: 350.

• Turning Point Hospital: 325.

Tift County

• Target Distribution: 550.

• Heatcraft Refrigeration: around 550.

• American Textile: around 375.

• Kelley Manufacturing: 225.

• Orgill: nearly 300.

Lowndes County

 Elead One/Fresh Beginnings: 1,582.

• Wild Adventures: 900-1,000.

• Lowe’s Distribution Center: more than 900.

• Walmart Super Center: roughly 850.

• Convergys: 380 prior to April.