SMYRNA — What is Smyrna’s brand?

That question was posed to the newest members of the Smyrna City Council when they met this week with Community Development Department staff to get updated on the city’s economic development efforts.

Is Smyrna a service-sector hub, a center of technology jobs, a home for young professionals and/or a green city that appeals to environmentally conscious residents and businesses, asked Ken Suddreth, community development director, as he threw out some ideas during the informal meeting.

With a shrinking middle class base, mirroring the rest of America, an aging housing stock, and a population composed of a significant number of transient single residents (39 percent), according to city data, Smyrna will need to decide sooner than later on what direction it will stake its economic future on.

Council members Andrea Blustein, Ron Fennel and Susan Wilkinson, three of the four recently elected officials, were on hand Thursday at Brawner Hall to listen to the presentation given by Suddreth, and Andrea Hall, economic development director. Councilman Charles Welch did not attend.

Smyrna grew by 25 percent more than a decade to 51,271 residents, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Important to the city’s economic future is the ability to appeal to the Millennial Generation, or Generation Y, a population born in the 1980s and early 1990s that is as sizeable as their parents’ Baby Boomer generation, said Hall. Businesses, particularly retail companies, are drawn to the group.

Though the appearance of Smyrna’s commercial crown jewel, Market Village, which sits noticeably vacant off Atlanta Road, might indicate otherwise, the city’s retail space is just 10 percent vacant, according to the city. Market Village happens to be the exception, said Hall.

“The city has done some things for Market Village to encourage some things to happen,” said Hall, citing ordinance changes.

But Hall said the different ownerships of buildings in the mixed-used development and individual business plans for each of those buildings’ occupants, have stood in the way of a concerted plan for growth.

On the bright side of retail, the new Kroger is scheduled to open on Wednesday in the Crossings at Four Corners shopping center on South Cobb Drive at Concord Road in Smyrna. Earlier this week, the City Council pushed back a rezoning hearing for Jonquil Village to Feb. 20 to get new members up-to-date on the project. But Branch Properties is still going forward with its plans to redevelop the 14-acre site on Atlanta and Springs roads to include commercial space and apartments units.

Suddreth said the city’s economic development plan includes retaining existing companies, recruiting new businesses and redeveloping economically depressed areas.

“As to, ‘Well, you’re not doing this or you’re not doing that’ — the reality is we are doing that,” said Suddreth, who came to Smyrna five years ago from Duluth.

“The market is not letting things happen. We do talk to people, we have expanded our roles here, there have been internal adjustments in terms of structure, and things have been shifted from one department to another department.”

Building good relationships with the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, state Economic Development Department, Georgia Power, commercial brokers and developers, is critical to the city’s business recruitment efforts, said Hall.

The city is home to two large industrial office park corridors: Lake Park Drive and Highlands Parkway, where the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, UCB, IBM, National Envelope, Atlanta Bread Company and Glock are all located.

Presently, Lake Park Drive, which has 850,000-square-feet of total space, is 25 percent vacant, and Highlands Parkway, which has 3.5-million-square-feet of which the average available space is 40,000-square-feet, is 11 percent vacant.

However, there are limitations to which businesses the city can recruit to those and other areas, officials said.

“If somebody’s looking for a 200,000-square-foot building, Smyrna can’t help them,” Suddreth said. “We just don’t have them…we just don’t have that kind of inventory.”

To retain existing businesses, the city is working on introducing a second Opportunity Zone in Ward 3 in north Smyrna, said Suddreth. Under the program, any business within the Opportunity Zone that creates at least two new jobs would be entitled to state job tax credits.

Officials also said reassuring small business owners that the city government is available to assist them is equally as important.

Smyrna is home to approximately 2,200 businesses, including 148 restaurants, and 104 alcohol licenses (before the Sunday alcohol sales law), according to the city. At least 25 percent of businesses are based in the city. Its largest employers are IBM (566 employees), United Distributors (550), and Emory-Adventist Hospital (499).

The city’s redevelopment efforts include the old city-owned Hickory Lake Apartments complex currently under demolition at Windy Hill and Old Concord roads. The 48-care site has been renamed “Smyrna Grove,” and is being privately marketed for a variety of uses, including for health care, education, senior housing and a data center. But no formal offer has been made, said Hall.

To attract young families, the city, which once had 57 percent of its housing made up of rental property, has demolished many apartments to bring that number down to 42 percent. Razed apartment complexes such as Hickory Lakes and Smyrna Commons, which is now set to be the site of a new school, are two examples.

“There are a lot of families willing to move out here and buy a house,” said Blustein, a real estate broker. “But once they start having children, they leave.”

Quality housing options are needed for younger and older residents, both groups are increasingly choosing smaller residential lots, officials said.

“We are a business-friendly city, is what this is about,” said Fennel, as he contemplated aloud his idea of what Smyrna is.

“We’re close in, we’re connected, we’re a comfortable and kind of casual community; but we’re well-educated and we’re tied in to an awful lot of new and different industries.”