Fesperman Retirement Official In Lavonia

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

It’s official … Lavonia City Manager Gary Fesperman has retired.

On Monday, a reception was held for Fesperman at the historic Lavonia Train Depot.

Fesperman said he was touched by the response from the community to his departure and called his retirement bittersweet.

“You look back at what you did and where the City is now compared to where it was and what we have now, and it’s like night and day,” Fesperman said. “But it was a team effort. The City Council, Mayor and all of the folks in our area helped make it possible.”

Fesperman has served as Lavonia’s City Manager since 1999.

During that time, he has been instrumental in working to revitalize the downtown and grow the town’s economy.

Fesperman credited a large part of the town’s economic success with the institution of the Main Street program.

“Back in that day, you could shoot through downtown Lavonia at lunch with a shotgun and not hit a single car,” Fesperman remembered. “We had a 45-50% vacancy rate in all of our downtown stores. One of the best things we did was get affiliated with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ Better Hometown program, which is now Main Street. That’s what gave us a platform to do some really nice things downtown.”

Another program instituted during Fesperman’s tenure was the Certified Local Government program.

He said that allowed Lavonia to establish a Historic Preservation Commission and a Historic Preservation District.

“That really fostered a lot of improvement in how our buildings downtown were being renovated. That, coupled with Better Hometown, gave us a lot of potential to recruit new businesses downtown. A lot of towns are still running 35-40% vacancy rates downtown and Lavonia has been blessed through the years that we’ve been able to overcome that.”

Fesperman said another milestone over the past 17 years was the widening of the State Route 17 bridge over Interstate 85, which brought in a lot of new businesses and a lot of new interest.

“We had, for the first time, the opportunity to reconfigure a good portion of the interchange and it’s brought in a lot of new businesses,” he noted.

Meanwhile, probably one of the most notable milestones during Fesperman’s time as City Manager was the elimination of the Cafe’ Risque topless bar and its related signs along the Interstate, which he said hindered economic growth in Lavonia for many years.

“That’s what gave such a bad impression of Lavonia and Exit 173,” Fesperman said. “Those billboards were posted up and down the Interstate 100 miles in either direction. That was the one thing we wanted to get rid of the most – the idea that we actually had something like that in Lavonia.”

Fesperman is succeeded as the City Manager by former Franklin County Commissioner Charles Cawthon.