A new economic study conducted by 21st Century Coweta shows that many of the leaders are looking for economic development to save the county from being a victim of Atlanta's urban sprawl.

The study was undertaken to try and paint a blueprint for what the county will look like in 2020. Study consultant Otis White said the results are clear after listening to 40 leaders in different focus groups. White released results from the focus groups late last week.

"They truly love Coweta County, but they're worried about the rapidly evaporating quality of life," White said.

In the last decade, the county has been transformed from a quiet, semi-rural county to one of Atlanta's newest suburban counties and that worries a lot of the county's leaders, White said.

Everybody pointed to the small-town atmosphere of Newnan and other municipalities as part of the county's charm, but said the rapid growth poses a severe threat to the way many of the newer residents want to live, he added.

As White and his associates talked to different people about the county's future, he noticed that everybody was enthusiastic about trying to bolster the small town image. One of the ways to keep the charm is to create more of a self-contained community where the residents don't necessarily have to commute to Atlanta for jobs.

"We discovered that 50 percent of the residents leave the county every morning to work somewhere else," he said.

With residents spending the majority of there day elsewhere, White said the sense of community rapidly disappears.

"You become less of a community simply because people don't have time to get involved in local politics or other activities,' he said.

In order to create a more cohesive community, White said many suburban areas are using the "live, work and play" concept as a blueprint for their future plans on economic development.

The concept emphasizes keeping everybody in the county to do all of their business and focusing on the community as a whole rather than separate components.

Another bonus of attracting companies who bring jobs to the community is the tax advantage, he said. In countless studies around the nation, White said industrial companies pay the lion's share of the local tax dollars.

"Many people think they pay a lot of taxes, but homeowners don't pay as much in property taxes for the services they use," he said.

Large job-producing companies not only contribute to the sense of community, but also pay an enormous amount of property taxes for the services they use, White said.

With the leaders telling White they want to maintain a small-town atmosphere, the next step in the study process will be evaluating a list of goals and getting public input on implementing them. At the end of November, White will convene a leadership seminar with the county's leaders to work on the goals. After the goals are sketched out, a series of public hearings will be conducted to get public input on preserving the community and luring industry into the county.