IronMan bring economic development to Walker County

CHICKAMAUGA, GA (WDEF) — The bicycle portion of the IronMan triathlon takes competitors through Walker County, Georgia.

For some, this is just a minor traffic inconvenience, but for Walker County Government and local programs, it’s a huge economic boost.

Joe Legge, Walker County Director of communications and community development, tells us, “They’ve been a great community partner with us over the past decade. Not only do they bring a world class sporting event to Walker County, so that gives us a renowned event that we can kind of hang our hats on from the sports tourism field, but also they contribute to a lot of community groups in Walker County to the tune of about $280,000 over the last decade and these community groups are pretty varied. They’re school groups, they’re churches, our nonprofit organizations and they’re not just organizations that are along the Race path. They’re all throughout the county. Our current MOU right now dealt with the Chickamauga Battlefield connector trail, which we’re standing on right now. They made a $60,000 contribution to that that helped us with our local match that we needed to draw down about $500,000 from the Appalachian regional commission in order to build this trail.”

Mr. Legge says these events ultimately save the taxpayer quite a lot of money. “Because of tourism – and Iron Man is sports tourism – the Georgia Department of economic development has estimated that taxpayers in Walker County actually saved about $137 a year because of tourism in our community”