Tri-State Area’s Leaders Take Unified Approach to Economic Development
Published Feb 23, 2009
Economic development is occurring at a good clip in many parts of the region, especially the Tri-Cities.
All for one, one for all – that would be an appropriate motto of the Northeast Tennessee Valley region.
Business and government leaders here represent multiple organizations, numerous cities, 15 counties, even three different states, but when it comes to economic development, they’ve teamed up for a unified approach that benefits everyone involved.
“The whole theory behind a regional organization is that you’re pulling people in,” says Alicia Summers, executive director of the Northeast Tennessee Valley Regional Industrial Development Association, a 19-year-old coalition of power distributors within the Tennessee Valley Authority service area.
“It’s impressive that [the organization has] stayed together this long with the same vision: recruiting industry and putting people to work and getting capital investment into our region,” she says.
NETVRIDA’s advisory council, made up of developers, promotes the area’s assets to target industries, ranging from the automotive, plastics and chemical industries to high-tech data centers. In 2008, developers traveled to Germany for Automechanika Frankfurt – the world’s leading automotive trade show – and networked with site-selection consultants in Atlanta and Dallas.
“Our goal is to establish personal relationships,” Summers says, “so that [consultants] will feel comfortable calling us up and asking us demographic numbers or workforce numbers or if we have a building that may meet their clients’ needs.”
Emphasis on Infrastructure
Similarly, the Duffield, Va.-based LENOWISCO Planning District Commission, which covers the Virginia counties of Lee, Scott and Wise as well as the city of Norton, focuses on the electronics, education and energy sectors in its drive to recruit industry. The region’s attractions are many, and “number one is infrastructure,” says LENOWISCO Executive Director Glen “Skip” Skinner.
For example, a communications network on par with those found in major cities – featuring redundant fiber-optic cable – has attracted several data-center operations. Among them is Holston Medical Group’s $3 million Advanced Technology and Application Center in Duffield, the only certified Tier III electronic medical records storage facility in the United States. (Tier III is the highest designation of reliability as certified by the Uptime Institute.)
“Businesses can’t say they won’t come to Virginia because of a lack of bandwidth,” Skinner says.
Formula for Success
Furthermore, electricity rates throughout the tri-state region are about 25 percent below the national average, and in 2007 – for the eighth year in a row – TVA delivered power with 99.999 percent reliability. In addition, redundant power service ensures crucial industrial processes will not be interrupted.
Likewise, natural gas abounds, industrial chemicals and gases are at hand, and municipal water and sewer services are available to virtually all industrial sites in the region, NETVRIDA’s Summers notes.
Couple those advantages with an excellent location, comprehensive transportation network, skilled and eager workforce, low tax rates and incentive packages, and you have a formula for success, she adds.
And with the successful attraction of new industry has come retail growth, says Susan Reid, executive director of the First Tennessee Development District, an association of local governments that acts as a resource for community services and economic development.
Reid says retail sales have increased steadily in the Tri-Cities area (Bristol-Johnson City-Kingsport), as well as in some smaller communities such as Greeneville and Morristown.
Story by Carol Cowan
Photo by Ian Curcio
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