PHOEBE COMMUNITY VISIONS
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QU's New Home
The Phoebe Foundation & Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital's land donation helps Quail Unlimited move National Headquarters to Albany, Georgia
With an opportunity to bring national recognition and
economic growth to Southwest Georgia, Quail Unlimited has decided to move
its national headquarters from Edgefield, South Carolina, to Albany,
Georgia.
Bowles said he was approached by Albany business leaders and
elected officials about moving the 29-year-old organization's headquarters
to Albany.
To make this move possible, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital's
Phoebe Foundation has donated eight acres of land on its historic Potter
Community Center property in Albany off Wildfair Road. While the one-story
building is under construction, Bowles said Phoebe is "giving us a building
on the campus of the hospital for up to two years." Phoebe CEO and President
Joel Wernick said the Potter Community Center was the first gift given to
the Phoebe Foundation in 1989.
Wernick estimated the property the
not-for-profit hospital was donating would be worth between
$50,000-$100,000.
"Albany is a logical choice for the capital of Quail
Unlimited and I've been to Potter's for many of my 20 years (as Phoebe
president). Our center is often the place for people to gather and use as a
meeting place. It's usually used by Quail Unlimited during its annual
celebrity quail hunt for at least one event," said Wernick, who grew up
quail hunting as a boy in Fort Smith, Arkansas. "It's steeped in quail
hunting and Southern quail hunting history, and it just makes sense to make
that the location."
"I understand the value of Quail Unlimited and its preservation
of the land and hunting," the CEO continued. "When I approached our board of
directors about making a recommendation for this Quail Unlimited
partnership, many of them who have grown up in this area, just saw the
rightness of this project."
Because Phoebe already donates some of its property
to Habitat for Humanity, the Boys & Girls Club, Boy Scouts of America, and
the Dougherty County School System, Wernick said donating land to Quail
Unlimited was "logical and easy to do."
Bowles said his initial discussions with Phoebe and
top local officials began late this summer and that the "conversations just
went from there."
"What Phoebe is doing is incredible," said Bowles.
"This
is just one of those great stories, and this is not just because Bill says
it's great, and I say that without any bias. However, I will certainly admit
that I love Southwest Georgia, and I love Albany. It is home. I
was born at Phoebe, my children were born at Phoebe, and my two
grandchildren were born at Phoebe. From the time I was born until I
went to college at Auburn University, I lived in the 900 block of Third
Avenue, the same street the hospital is on, and I delivered The Albany
Herald on Third and Second Avenue. Little did I know that I would
return home from college and manage a quail plantation, which I have had the
pleasure of doing for the past 21 years.
Wernick said he was first approached by Albany Mayor Willie
Adams about bringing Quail Unlimited's national headquarters to Albany.
"This is what I call a homerun," said Adams, elected
mayor in 2004. "We are known as the quail hunting capital of the world. We
are… overly excited about this, and we want to thank the leadership of Quail
Unlimited and Phoebe Putney for making this happen. It will bring attention
to the area, and possibly more jobs if people like our area and city."
In keeping with Quail Unlimited's continuing effort to keep its
operating expenses as low as possible, Bowles said the new Albany
headquarters will be three times smaller than the previous office building
in Edgefield.
"It will be a very functional building," said Bowles,
who was named QU's president in November 2009 after the organization
withstood financial struggles in 2008 and 2009 that nearly toppled it. "The
office building in Edgefield, South Carolina, which is north of Augusta, is
12,000 square feet, and the office building that we will build on this site
will be approximately 4,000 square feet. This organization is going to do
the right thing from now on."
Bowles said Quail Unlimited's new headquarters will be located
on the southeast corner of Potter Community Center's roughly 50-acre
complex. The "pretty open floor plan" will include an administrative
assistant's office, reception area and a receptionist's office, Bowles'
office, a break room and mail room, chapter and member services office, and
some warehouse and storage space.
"It's going to be forward of the screened-in pavilion, and the
building site is surrounded by beautiful live oaks and large pine trees," he
said. "It's a one story building, but there will be some office and storage
rooms upstairs. It has a high pitch on the roof line. We will utilize
everything under the roof, and there will be additional office and storage
space upstairs."
Being frugal with Quail Unlimited's spending isn't something
Bowles took lightly after being named to take over the organization after it
had a more than "six-figure problem" with its finances.
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