‘Tidal wave’ of new warehouses pushes residents out, changes coastal Georgia landscape

Dennis Baxter spent two decades as the city manager of Pooler ushering the once-sleepy town of 2,500 residents into a new era of booming residential and commercial growth. 

Now, as mayor of Bloomingdale, he’s also encouraging development in this town where he’s lived for half a century. At least, up to a point.

He hit his limit of what’s good for business and the community this year when an industrial warehouse rose up across the street from his and his wife’s parents’ family homes. The land once home to one of the oldest operating farms in the county now is filled with concrete slabs and construction debris.