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- The economic impact of Bartlett, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by John Threadgill, who's president of the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you.

- Along with Harold Byrd, who is a business and civic leader in Bartlett, but here today as chairman of the Shelby Chamber Alliance, which is an alliance of all the suburban chambers.

Thanks for being here, Harold.

- Honored to be here.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk a bunch about Bartlett, and about, you know, there's a new mayor there, there's economic impact, and we'll talk also, kind of, about the relationship with Memphis and the other suburbs, and the county, and how all this fits together.

As we, you know, the greater Memphis area probably sees quite a bit of growth off the Blue Oval Ford plant that's going in not far from Bartlett, and what are some of the other dynamics going on in Bartlett right now.

But one thing that I wanted to start with is, I will do a couple facts and figures, which I don't usually do, but the Bartlett Chamber had me moderate a mayor's debate some weeks ago now, a month ago.

First new mayor in 20-something years with Keith McDonald retiring, and we will get the new mayor on sometime probably in the new year.

But Bartlett is bigger than I realized, and has a bigger economic impact that I realized as we were getting ready for that debate.

I mean, almost 60,000 people.

I believe it's the largest of the suburbs in Shelby County.

Twenty four percent of the jobs in the county are in Bartlett.

Thirty one percent of the property taxes paid into the county pool come from Bartlett.

And of the, sort of, what you all, the Chamber Alliance, put together, that there's some $17 billion in economic output just from the suburbs.

That's Arlington, Bartlett, Millington, Collierville, Lakeland, and Germantown.

eight billion of it comes from Bartlett.

- Yeah.

- So, all those things were, I kind of knew, but I mean, I'll be honest, and I covered this stuff about as closely as anybody, I didn't totally know.

And so, where does all that come from?

How did that happen, and what is the future with Bartlett?

- Well, Harold could probably give you a little bit more history than I could on how it got started, but I would say that the leadership of Bartlett back in the '80s is what really started this.

And that would've been with the previous mayor Flaherty back then, and the leaders back in the community then.

They had the foresight to go in, and develop an industrial park in Bartlett.

So, Bartlett Corporate Park is, and you know, I came from the Memphis Chamber, so when I came out to Bartlett, I had no idea what existed out in the park.

And I was really blown away by the number of locally-grown businesses that were in that park, and had literally many of 'em started in the dining room of, various individuals, and the garages and all that.

But the Bartlett Corporate Park has a very strong entrepreneurial basis.

Medical devices, we can talk about that a little bit, but you got other companies in there as well.

Memphis Record Pressing.

I know y'all have done some stories on that.

That's another example.

I mean, there's many, Brim Hall Snack Foods.

I mean, Bartlett has a strong cluster of mostly locally grown companies that have done extremely well.

- Harold, you've been there, you know, in Bartlett for many years now.

What have you seen change, what have been the drivers?

And then what we'll segue into, what are the challenges going forward, because that really rapid growth has slowed some, like it has in in other suburbs, it's not just Bartlett.

So, what caused it, and where does Bartlett go from here?

- I think we're going to see, instead of a slowing of growth, I think we're gonna see, again, a great energy coming from, not only, Ford Blue Oval, but the plant, even though it's not in Tennessee, Osceola, the Big River City Steel.

You're seeing so many things happen.

Georgia Pacific in Jackson, Tennessee.

But the historic cities of Arlington, Bartlett, Carville, Germantown, and Millington, they've been cities adjacent to Memphis since the 1860s, 1870s.

And you're talking about vibrant cities, people with great leadership.

Former Mayor Bobby Flaherty of Bartlett saw the need.

There was a young legislator, me, back during that time, and across the state there were a lot of, what was called, industrial development bonds financing parks.

I brought that to Bobby, and he said, "Hey, this could work."

And from that small seed, it's kind of an example of what I think we need to do, all of metro area of Shelby County, is we've gotta have the land.

We've gotta have the roads to accommodate what's gonna happen with Ford Blue Oval.

In my lifetime, I've never been more optimistic about the future of the metro area.

So, if you look at Arlington with 14,000 people, and same with Lakeland, the same with pretty much Millington around 10,000, but Bartlett, 60,000 people.

You're right, so few people know that.

And I think it speaks to the leadership that was there, and we're getting ready to see that happen again.

- Bring in, Bill.

- So all of the cities you mentioned, all of the historic cities, and Lakeland too, they all have long-term plans that tend to be really ironclad.

This is the way the city's gonna grow.

This is the way the city or town has grown for decades.

With the kind of growth that Blue Oval City represents, how radically do you change those plans?

How radically does something of the size of Blue Oval City change those plans?

- I think it changes it dramatically.

And I think John and I have seen that already in the number of people who are calling to locate in the metro area.

What really opened my eyes was that so often we're our own worst critic in saying about our workforce, about our education, but when the workforce study was done by Mark Herbison, and the people of the HTL, Haywood, Tipton, and Lauderdale, in concert with Memphis, it found that we ranked the best or the same as so many people around from Orlando to Huntsville, Alabama.

We had the correct number of people of workers for Ford Blue Oval, for SK Battery out of Korea.

But I think what you're seeing whether it's Mayor Jones of Millington, we'll have a new mayor, Josh Roman in Lakeland, Mike Wissman of Arlington, David Parsons of Bartlett, Stan Joyner of Collierville, all of them are poised, ready to do what's needed, Bill, to accommodate this great growth that's gonna come from Blue Oval, and from SK Battery.

- Mm hm.

John, what do you see in this, and does the prospect of that kind of change?

Do you have people who say, "Hey, wait a minute, "we moved out here, single family home outside of the city, this is not what we signed up for."

Is there some element of that?

- Oh, absolutely.

There always will be and always has been.

But I think that's the minority.

There's always those who are no growth people.

And, you know, I can sympathize with them to a large degree, but, you know, I'm an economic development guy.

I have been most of my life, and if you're not growing, you're dying.

That's pretty much the way I see it.

But there are challenges.

We have a lot of challenges.

These mayors that Harold talked about and the leadership, we have three new alderman also.

So, half of our Board of Alderman will be new.

Challenges that we're facing.

We have great opportunities, but unless we address infrastructure, for one, that is a huge impediment to future growth, in not just Memphis, Shelby County, but the entire area.

And the other one is real estate.

I mean the two go hand in hand, you know, and the economic development business, you can have the best workforce, the best transportation infrastructure, even all of that, but if you don't have the real estate combined with the infrastructure, nothing's gonna happen.

- And we tend to think of that as a Memphis thing, because we've seen economic development pursuits within Memphis, where you had to assemble a lot of parcels of land, and put them together and, it was hard.

And people understood that, I think, because of the city.

The suburbs, we maybe unjustly look at as being farmland, big swaths of land that are available, all in one piece.

That's not the case.

- That's not the case.

And that's what people, they look out, they see a big green field, they say, "Oh, that's nice, you know, let's build a big plant there."

You can't do it if there's no infrastructure.

And this county has not come to grips with what's needed to move into the future.

And our leadership is going to have to address that.

We're not in a position right now to take advantage of Blue Oval, unfortunately.

And there's gonna be some hard decisions made.

- Some facts for Blue Oval.

Ford expects to bring 5,800 jobs to the plant.

Ford and SK Innovation, the battery company.

But the state was projecting about a $3.5 billion increase in gross state product from the plant, about 27,000 jobs total with the suppliers, the OEM, all the surrounding things that could and should go in around the Ford plant.

And about 32,000 construction jobs.

All those are more on a temporary basis.

But when you say we're not ready to, we're not positioned to take advantage of what's happening out there.

Do you mean the county, do you mean Bartlett?

Do you mean- - Mean all of it.

- Yeah, and so, you can wave a magic wand, and you can do the three things you think need to be done.

What are those things to take advantage of Blue Oval?

[John laughing] - Well, you might put me on the spot here, but one is that we need, I think, a comprehensive broad approach to energy.

The Alliance has come out, and we're on the record for the support of an energy authority.

- Yeah.

- Because right now MLGW quite honestly is controlled by the City of Memphis, and its vision is on the City of Memphis.

And that's to be expected, I mean, they're the owners of it, and that's where they look.

But this county is where the growth is gonna take place.

And I think the folks in Memphis need to realize that the future of Memphis relies a lot on the suburban area of Shelby County.

I mean, we're in a very, very fortunate position, but I don't know if the leadership right now is willing to take advantage of it.

- Yeah, and that gets back to the question about TVA and will MLGW, you know, stay with TVA, which will talk to you about.

What else would you do?

- Well, I mean, the whole infrastructure issue has to be addressed.

So, I mean, there's energy, there's power, okay?

I'm on an advisory committee for MLGW Industrial Committee, and we're looking at some of the issues that private industry is facing, as far as, energy needs.

And there's a supply chain challenge.

I mean, it's not, MLGW's got its own issues, but there's also the issue of the supply chain.

And for, you know, example, of getting just transformers.

I mean, there's a backlog of maybe a year or so just to get a transformer.

So, if a business wants to expand, and they need that transformer in order to get connected to the grid, I mean they may have to wait a year before they can even get in, you know, get up and running.

- One of the big things- - Yeah.

John, and I talk about is sewer.

You gotta do the energy, you gotta do the sewer, as well.

Eric and Bill, you better do the transportation.

How are these young kids, black, brown, white, who are not college graduates, but who are gonna be going to these TCAT schools?

How are they gonna get to Blue Oval?

We need to, in the long run, you need mass transit to go, you know, we've talked about a deal between here and Nashville, but you've gotta address the sewer.

You gotta address the transportation, and the education, which we're taking care of with TCAT.

And I think all the different suburban municipalities, and I failed to include Germantown earlier with Mike Palazzola, who had their own individual school systems.

When the folks from Ford Blue Oval and particularly SK Battery people, they got up in a helicopter and TVA flew them over Germantown and Collierville, all the way out to Lauderdale County, and they said, "Does everybody have a swimming pool?"

And it was cute, unique, but I think, they're excited about, I think Memphians are excited about, I think our leadership is excited about that.

- Well, and you asked another question.

- Yeah.

- I mean, to answer that question about what else if I could wave that magic wand.

Something that I think we need to really address is publicly-owned industrial parks.

We talked about Bartlett and Mayor Flaherty, excuse me, back in the '80s, they had the vision to go out, and the city of Bartlett actually owned the real estate- - Right.

- To start an industrial park.

There hasn't been any publicly initiated industrial parks for decades now.

I mean, you look at, President's Island was probably one of the largest investments that the City of Memphis made toward industrial development.

You had Pigeon, but Pigeon has all types of issues.

The land and everything else.

There is no other publicly owned industrial park.

Now, you go around the southeast, you look at Jackson, Tennessee, you look at Birmingham, you look at Huntsville, you look at Chattanooga, Knoxville, all these cities and counties have publicly owned industrial parks.

We have none.

- And Blue Oval is built on, essentially, a publicly owned industrial- - Exactly.

mega site is a massive.

- Exactly.

- State owned.

- That's right.

- Yeah, and the infrastructure, I mean, what people say, that would've never happened, that Blue Oval would've never gone there, if they hadn't committed to, to finishing out all the infrastructure of the roads, the sewers, very much.

Which will come back to sewers in Bartlett, because it is, whether or not people wanna talk about it, it's a hugely important issue for all the suburbs- - Right.

- And for the city as well.

But let me get Bill in here.

- So, John, in talking about Memphis's relationship to this, specifically, and there were a lot of questions about this when Blue Oval announced this huge historic project, and that was okay, the suburbs are closest to the physical site, which is in Haywood County.

Is there an economic, a direct economic impact for Memphis in this, then?

Or is this all about the suburban towns and cities?

- No, Memphis is gonna benefit probably better than anyone, actually, because it's the hub city.

It is the commercial hub for this entire region.

So, yes, it's gonna benefit greatly.

I mean, all you have to do is look at Nashville.

You look at Nissan down in Smyrna, you look at the GM plant down in Spring Hill.

Nashville definitely benefited from that.

I mean, you look at that metropolitan area, you know, I just looked at the numbers just the other day.

Nashville metropolitan area is now 2 million people.

The Memphis metropolitan area is still stuck around 1.3, pushing 1.4.

That growth in the Nashville area has all taken place in the suburban areas in the outlying counties.

The outlying counties make up much more population than Nashville, Davidson County.

And it's all because of that, all the industries down in those areas.

I mean, Rutherford County, my goodness, you go down there, and I went to school at MTSU.

I mean, it's just... What Nissan and then all the suppliers coming in have done to that area is just incredible.

- Yeah, I mean the- going back, the population in Spring Hill went from 2000 people in 1985, when that first Saturn plant was built, to over 50,000 now.

- Yeah.

- And that happened all over.

And again, you know, Nashville, people also went to Nashville.

'Cause it's been an interesting thing, I'll hear people say, you know, I don't think this is gonna help Memphis.

I think it's gonna hurt Memphis, because it's just gonna drive people to go.

They're gonna live farther out of the city.

The jobs are gonna go east.

It's gonna, you know, the idea of people returning to the core of Memphis.

I mean, this is just my opinion, I don't know.

I think it's a little shortsighted, because, again, if you look at the pattern of what happened, if you look at Charleston, with the auto and now the Boeing plant around there, you look at Chattanooga with the Volkswagen plant, those things have this, kind of, halo effect back into the city.

- Well, you know, the data doesn't support that argument about, you know, this is gonna drain Memphis or whatever.

I mean, it's just the opposite.

I mean, you look at all metropolitan areas that are dynamic.

I mean, the core city, the core county, you may not have the type of growth you're having in the surrounding area, but that core city is still remaining very strong.

Memphis is definitely gonna benefit from them.

- Thoughts on that whole dynamic.

I mean, how much does Blue Oval help, or does it drain on Memphis?

- If you look at what happened with Nissan and Saturn, and all the other plants, they were not in Nashville.

They were a good long distance.

The same amount of distance that Ford Blue Oval is from Memphis.

Exactly what John Threadgill said, it's gonna do the exactly the opposite.

If you take what's happening with Ford Blue Oval now up in Haywood County, and Tipton, Lauderdale around it there, it is already, if you microwaved all those other ones after that, they've been there for 25, 35, 40 years.

Ford Blue Oval will be the same starting out as if you combine all those.

So, we have a magnificent opportunity.

And, no Kel Kearns, who works with Ford actually lives in downtown.

- Yeah.

- And from any place, if you start out in downtown Memphis, it's only a 35- to 40-minute drive.

fifteen-minute drive from Arlington, a 25-minute drive from Germantown, Collierville.

So, everyone is going to, you know, profit.

And then you look at the amount of development that's going on in Arlington, I know a local developer, Billy Orville, is doing tons of stuff.

They're all looking at this, and just, if you will, just smiling, and biting at the bit to get going.

- Yeah, Bill.

- So, Harold the six chambers of commerce that are part of the coalition that you're part of.

What is their position on Memphis Light, Gas and Water's relationship with TVA?

Have they all taken a position at this point?

And to John's point, because John seemed to say here that, you know, if Light, Gas, and Water stays with TVA, or it doesn't, Light, Gas, and Water needs to change regardless of that.

- And we're hoping with the new leadership with Doug from the City of Memphis coming over, that will change.

There's no representation on the MLG and W board for all of these cities.

And I think that should be looked at, and I think we should have a voice within their decisions.

Having said that, you know, we have a one for all, all for one.

Naturally there's gonna be competition, but Beverly Robertson and Ted Townsend, we work closely with them on all the different matters.

And I think with TVA, I think that all of the suburban municipality cities are for TVA to come in, and make this relationship with MLGW what it should be.

And with this caveat, we see a lot of huge buildings, skyscrapers down in Chattanooga.

Big buildings in Nashville with TVA.

We're their largest client, their largest customer.

We need TVA to continue investing in Memphis.

- So there's some room for discussions before anybody signs something, like a 20-year deal on the dotted line, right.

- I definitely think so, and I think we need input.

John and I have been very big proponents along with all the other chamber directors in having a good relationship with MLGW, but, again, the suburban municipalities make up 25% of the GDP, but yet we have no representation on the board.

- We have just five minutes left here.

We talked about Bartlett, and some of the issues when I did the mayor's debate a month ago.

One is this, and I had not thought about this, but, you know, Bartlett, like a lot of suburban areas has had a moratorium, or just not allowed apartment complexes for a long time.

It's been part of the growth.

The notion was, these are single family homes, that's what we do, and very few apartments.

There's a big mixed use, more density kind of project, The Union Depot project that was approved, it was approved, but it was not without some controversy, 'cause it's a different way, where people are living.

Where do you see the future of Bartlett in that sense, just in Bartlett and, you know, Germantown went through this with its growth plan.

A land lock community that had to get denser to continue to grow.

What are those challenges?

'Cause I think for some people who live in Memphis, they're like, boy, if you get a big mixed use development in an otherwise, you know, unpopulated area, that's fantastic.

But it wasn't necessarily welcome in Bartlett.

- Well, there was an opposition, obviously, because it's new.

I mean, Bartlett, a year ago you couldn't even have built a mixed use development like Union Depot.

So, Bartlett is, kind of, caught up to the times because that is the trend that you're seeing nationwide now.

I mean this is nothing new.

It's just that Bartlett is just now getting around to addressing this need, because the demographics has changed, your Baby Boomers are retiring, they don't want the type of yards, and big homes, and all that.

They're downsizing, so, mixed use offers another option for 'em.

- Yeah, and then with a couple minutes left.

The whole question of the sewer, so I'm gonna frame the challenge right now, that Bartlett has with sewers, and being tied into Memphis, and where it may go, and this is not unique to Bartlett.

There are other suburbs who have relationship with Memphis sewers that they're not quite sure where they're going.

- Yeah, well it's a complicated topic.

I mean there's a lot of facts that we don't have time to address.

But the bottom line is that the whole I-40 corridor in northeast Shelby County, which includes Bartlett, but it also includes the city of Memphis.

In fact, the city of Memphis is just as impacted by this, as say, Bartlett is.

But there is a moratorium on any new hookups in the Fletcher Creek drainage area.

So, Fletcher Creek is the sewer line that drains most of that I-40 corridor, not all of it, but Bartlett, for an example, our corporate park is dumping into that Fletcher Creek basin, and there's a moratorium on that.

So, we talk about creating new jobs, and luring new companies into the area.

We're hamstrung right now.

We can't do that because unless- Now there's been ways to get around it supposedly, but even that's a moving target.

I mean, there's the hold and release option that's been out there and has been used.

But it's, again, that's a moving target.

And when you got TDAC and the EPA breathing down your neck, which is the case with the city of Memphis, you know, it becomes an issue.

- You hear the same from the other, because of these other communities have the same limitations.

- Yes, what you're gonna have to see is investment from all the municipalities from Shelby County and Memphis to invest in infrastructure, and transportation, sewage, and healthcare education.

You're gonna see an I-40, in my opinion, if you microwave yourself out 10 years, hopefully you'll see three more lanes going all the way to the Tennessee River.

You'll see growth all the way from the Tennessee River back to the Mississippi River.

And again, it's gonna require, and you hate to say this, it's gonna take some taxes raised, some infrastructure improvement.

And gosh, isn't that a good problem to have in unbelievably exponential growth.

And it's gonna take a new bridge across the Mississippi River, and you're seeing the state coming- Many of us have fought this for years, that the state has not invested enough in Tennessee River all the way back to Mississippi.

You're gonna see that, and it's gonna be a new bridge.

It's gonna be an expanded I-40, and you're also seeing that in sports facilities.

- Well, and let's not forget, I-69 going up to Union City.

- Yes, sir.

- The state has just sat on that.

And we can get into a 30-minute discussion about that alone, but if you look at- - We have 10 seconds.

[all laughing] - Okay, so I won't go there.

But we can talk about that another time, but I mean, you think about the arteries that are leading outside of Memphis, and we talked about the growth that needs to occur in this outlining area, and yet the state of Tennessee has not done anything to address the north area of the county.

- We're blessed with great leadership.

All the municipalities.

- Okay, alright.

Thank you both for being here on this day after Thanksgiving.

I should have said, I hope everyone has a Thanksgiving.

Thank you, thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode wkno.org.

You can also download the audio from iTunes, Spotify, or wherever we get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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