J. Mac Holladay stood beside the podium in the larger of the two auditoriums at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government in 2007. His demeanor seemed as casual as any motorist who might be standing next to a gas pump at a local service station in any small town in the American South. His right foot slipped comfortably in and out of his leather shoe as he leaned against the podium. He spoke slowly and deliberately about public policy issues, community development strategic planning, downtown revitalization, place-based economic development and community engagement. His audience was made up of close to 100 county and municipal employees and appointees representing local governments from Virginia to Alabama, who had gathered at UNC for the School of Government’s annual county and municipal administrative training course.
Mac began his career in economic and community development in 1972 in Memphis. He had been a Navy aviator. He served as the executive director of the South Carolina Development Board, the Mississippi Department of Community and Economic Development, and as the chief operating officer of the Georgia Governor’s Development Council. He founded Market Street Services in 1997. The company had grown to be the largest independent firm dedicated to economic and community development. Its clients were in 32 states and more than 150 communities and regions.
As an economic development director for a small North Carolina county, I sat in the audience, center left, and listened as Mac introduced himself and began to tell a story about a former South Carolina governor who had once commented to him that “with enough money, just about anything could be done in the name of economic development.” The cat was out of the bag.
The School of Government taught elected officials and project managers a fundamental truth about public policy toward development: “Always proceed at a rate slow enough that those who disagree with what’s happening have time to absorb their disappointment.” In the end, little else really mattered. Mac, however, reminded us that economic developers are not economists, and that, at times, conditions outside a local community’s control will drive projects. What happens in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, might have a direct impact on Tallahassee, and decisions made by the Appalachian Council of Governments could drive decisions locally in Daytona Beach. Sometimes, Mac pointed out, it could even be popular entertainment more than inter-jurisdictional policies and procedures that affected local economies.
In 1974, the full-time residents at Ponte Vedra Beach witnessed the beginning of a multi-year, real-world drop in the leisure economy of North Florida because of a book that had begun appearing on bookshelves. It was being passed from one group of students to another at PV/PV Elementary. Everyone seemed to be reading it. The first to be affected by the story it told were the subscribers to the Book of the Month Club.
A year later, a group of us piled into a friend’s parents’ station wagon on a PV Youth Group outing to the Regency Square Theaters, where we all waited in line for the ticket office to open. The smell of popcorn, by design, was being vented through air ducts and blowing down upon us from vents just above the ticket booth. A large movie poster nearby told us everything we needed to know about the movie in one image. None of us could have possibly understood the impact this film was going to have on the one thing we loved more than anything else in PV.
We sat in the theater, joking; some were throwing popcorn. We waited for the lights to dim and the film to start. We couldn’t have predicted what we were about to experience. It was “Jaws,” and Peter Benchley’s first novel was about to come alive in front of us. Almost immediately, the film began to have an impact on our minds and the economy of the Beaches.
It was all very exciting and emotionally terrifying. “It’s just a movie,” the youth director leaned forward to assure us, maybe even to reassure his own nervousness. This was not “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” I remember the drive home after the movie. We were all exhausted. The adrenaline roller coaster we had just been on had left us drained. It hit too close to home. The blue canvas beach rafts we loved to rent at the Surf Club were now shredded on the beach in our imagination.
In the weeks after, my brother Scott, David Bowers, and others would paddle out on their surfboards beyond the waves, sitting balanced on their knees, and they would talk about sharks. Body surfing took on additional layers of caution. Everything became chilling. The film touched some untapped nerves, and each of us were left to process the consequences of the encounter in our own unique ways. The movie was the first ever to gross more than $100 million.
In the months after, as the fame of the film spread, we noticed fewer visitors in PV, as fewer guests were showing up. The special effects had taken their toll. Someone even painted a large black fin on the Ponte Vedra Beach billboard that Mr. McCormick’s men helped clean off. The movie changed the way people perceived and interacted with the ocean. For several years, East Coast fishing surged in a “shark-hunting frenzy,” creating a well-documented ecological imbalance. We all suddenly felt less safe, but in time, the economy recovered.
Mac Holladay assured his audience of civil servants during his session at the School of Government that hyper-local economies will always trend toward recovery, even when outside influences seem far from local control. Place-based economic and community development will always persevere and can never fully be tamped down. Sharks in the water, especially when fueled by our imagination, are always more of a nuisance than actual threats. Leisure, as the basis of beach culture, will always prevail, no matter the temporary circumstances, in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach. Mac knows.
