Leaders Of Fulton: Brad Broadwell

FULTON – Brad Broadwell, executive director of the Fulton Community Development Agency and a native of Fulton, has spent around 40 years around the country and the world honing his skills in economic development and policy, and has now brought that experience to his hometown in Fulton.

Broadwell took over as executive director at the Fulton CDA at the beginning of this year with the vision and goal to further develop the city’s strategy in growing its economy.

The Fulton CDA is an agency in the city meant to help residents with housing and economic development in Fulton. Broadwell said in the past, the agency’s main focus was housing and not enough strategic economic development.

Since Broadwell was offered the position, the CDA has updated and upgraded its website, its logo, created a handbook for its employees, its telecommunications system and its software.

“We had to take a look at how the agency is operated, the expectations of the agency, what it is that Fulton needed to direct its future,” Broadwell said. “We bought new software on the housing side to take us into the 21st century, and dealing with our HUD, our federal agencies, and our reporting and how to deal with clients on the housing side in a more appropriate 21st century manner, which means we could then do things through technology that we had to do hand.”

Although the city was awarded a $10 million grant for downtown revitalization, Broadwell said that is not enough, and those projects have to be tied together in an all encompassing sustainable vision for Fulton’s growth and future.

Other goal areas he plans to tackle include developing the former Nestle site, waterfront revitalization, add fiber optics and telecommunication capacity, tourism, and developing new business initiatives for the westside of the city.

“What’s equally as important to all of those things is working with our established businesses that continue to sustain our city,” Broadwell said.

Broadwell said cities typically redo their comprehensive plans every five to ten years. These plans reflect on the changing priorities of a city based on community feedback. He said between 330 and 350 city residents filled out a survey and four of the five top priorities they listed had to do with economic development.

“Now there were other responses like drug usage, roads, but they weren’t as high as the economic development and jobs aspect of their feedback,” Broadwell said.

He said tourism is an aspect of economic development and so the city must highlight its canal and Lake Neatahwanta. Another aspect is creating better paying jobs.

There will be a planned community discussion on the city’s comprehensive plan and when it is finalized, it will be a guiding document for all city departments and agencies to look back to when making decisions. The vision of the city painted in the document also helps to pinpoint priorities in seeking out grants and money for projects.

Although he could not discuss in detail, he did say the CDA has applied to several grants to add more programs at the agency and enhance the community’s economic development and will likely hear back in the fall.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Broadwell said the CDA took that time to discuss and develop plans while its employees worked from home and interacted via Zoom video calls.

“Today’s economy is completely different than yesterday’s economy, pre-COVID,” Broadwell said. “What people wanted two years ago is not what people want today; I can guarantee you that. Things have changed so much… That’s one of the components of leadership, to be able to be adaptable like that.”

Looking toward the future, Broadwell said he wants to look at where Fulton is now and get an objective that benefits everyone.

“I’d like to see the success of Fulton and its economy that they used to have in the 70s and 60s,” Broadwell said. “We’re going to have to have a new economy, a different economy, but we have that in us, we have that capacity, and that’s what I’d like to see.”

This article is the first in a Leaders of Fulton series highlighting Fultonians working toward making a change in the city.

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