Monroe County’s new Conference Center director is a face that’s already familiar to many Monroe Countians.
Candice Baswell, a longtime resident of Forsyth, has been on the job for less than a month, and the Conference Center is already booked with events almost every weekend this summer.
Baswell said business has taken off at the Center, located at 475 Holiday Circle, since citizens have begun getting back out and enjoying themselves following a long COVID-19 hiatus.
“The weekends are getting slammed,” Baswell said. “I’ve been here for three weeks, and I’ve had so many people coming in booking weddings and birthday parties. We rent the Peach Room out all the time. It’s the perfect place for birthday parties.”
Baswell, who began work on May 31, came to Monroe County after a 25-year stint in the medical field, most recently with Macon’s Allen Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center as a medical assistant, medical transcriptionist, clinical coder and surgery assistant.
“You name it. I’ve done it,” Baswell said.
While Baswell said she loved the interaction with her colleagues and patients, she said she got burned out from the demands that COVID-19 placed on the medical field as well as the daily round-trip drive from Forsyth to Macon. Having a passion for organization and hosting events, she decided to apply for the county’s vacant Conference Center director position. Baswell said because of her lack of experience working with conference centers, she was surprised she got the job. In fact, Baswell said she’d never even been inside the Conference Center building prior to her hiring.
But once she began her new job, she said it has far exceeded even her greatest expectations for what is possible at the Center. Her first surprise was that the Center has more than 10,000 square feet of meeting space.
“When you look at this building, you have no idea how big that ballroom is,” Baswell said. “I would have never known that this place has this much to offer.”
In her first few weeks on the job, Baswell said talking about the Center with callers and showing the building off to visitors have been among her favorite things to do because she loves interacting with people, especially Monroe County neighbors she’s never gotten to know because she worked out of town.
“I’m a people person,” Baswell said. “I have so much fun with the people coming in here, showing them the building and just talking to them. It’s like I told my husband: ‘I’ve lived in Monroe County. I’ve been a part of this community for seven years, but I’ve never really gotten to interact with people.’ And so, it’s been fun just getting to meet everybody. . . I feel like part of the community now versus just living here.”
Baswell, who grew up in North Macon, actually has a deep connection to Monroe County. She attended Mary Persons High School for her junior and senior years, graduating from MP. Her husband of 12 years, Clay, is a Monroe County native, and the couple moved to Forsyth seven years ago so her stepdaughter Riley, now 21, and stepson Carter, now 18, could attend Monroe County Schools. Both Riley and Carter are MP alums with Carter graduating just last month.
“I love Monroe County,” Baswell said. “I didn’t know if I would because it’s so much smaller than Macon. But now, it’s like I don’t even want to drive to Macon.”
Because of Monroe County’s steady residential growth, Baswell said she sees great potential in the Conference Center as a popular spot for local and regional gatherings.
“A lot of people want something closer to home,” Baswell said. “They don’t want to go to Macon. Of course we will never be as big as the Macon Centreplex because we’re not as big as them. We can’t do concerts, but as far as holding events, weddings, banquets, reunions, different things like that, I think the Conference Center has a lot to offer.”
Baswell said the next marquee event on the Conference Center calendar is the National Wild Turkey Federation’s annual gathering at the Center in August. In the meantime, she said her biggest obstacle has been parking because often there are multiple events going on at the same time in different rooms of the Center. She also said it’s not uncommon for a party that has a designated number of attendees to get much bigger once word about it gets out on social media.
Baswell is also planning to make cosmetic improvements to upgrade the facility’s interior, including repairing a damaged ceiling in the foyer area and boosting the quality of the speaker system in the ballroom. She’s also considering taking up the carpet in the kitchen area since it gets stained and requires frequent steam cleaning.
Since starting her new job, Baswell has been impressed by her hard-working four-person staff, which includes one full-time staffer, Sandra Sego. Baswell said she lives close to the Center and is always willing to lend a helping hand no matter the time.
“We’re all a team, and it takes all of us to make this work,” Baswell said. “We’ve got a great staff here. Sandra is amazing. . . But it takes a village. This is our baby. We want to take pride in the setup. We want it to be perfect. And that’s our thing. If there’s anything we need to change or anything we can do better, we want people to tell us.”
To learn more about the Monroe County Conference Center or High Falls Legion Hall, visit the county’s website www.monroecoga.org/conference-center/ or like and follow “Monroe County GA Conference Center” on Facebook.
