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Members of the Bainbridge Rotary Club met at their usual meeting place, the Kirbo Center, for this week’s Rotary meeting. The guest speaker of the day was Jeremy Emmett, the entrepreneur behind the upcoming downtown Marriott hotel. Emmett gave a brief overview of how he got involved in the hotel business, having been involved with it his whole life, before going on to operate the Courtyard hotel in Thomasville. He described how he got interested in Bainbridge, and spoke on the philosophy of using the river as an asset to the city. “If you think about the river, it’s almost like the industrial park in a small town,” Emmett said, “it’s not designed to be looked at, back in the day, because you guys were an inland port… and so back then, people didn’t want to take the downtown and face it right over the river.” He continued, “And I think some folks in town had an idea that that was more of an amenity, an amenity that other towns don’t have, something that’s very special to Bainbridge, and they’ve started on this mission to turn your city around to face that river, which I think is gonna pay big dividends in the long run.” Emmett went on to show concept art of what the hotel’s interior and exterior is planned to look like, and concluded the presentation by taking questions from the club.