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(inquisitive electronic music) - Hello, my name's Michelle Price.

I'm the editor for the Upper Cumberland Business Journal, and I'd like to welcome you to WCTE's "Interact," our local public affairs show.

Joining me today to talk about economic development is Amy New, who is the president and CEO of the Putnam County Cookwell Chamber.

I've got Nancy Williams, who is the director of the Tennessee Main Street Program, and Angela Regitko, who is the regional director for the State Department of Economic and Community Development.

Join us a little bit while we talk about economic development and what it really means.

Amy, can you tell us a little bit about what role the chamber plays in economic development?

- So our chamber in Putnam County is set up a little bit different than most chambers of commerce, but set up very uniquely and strategically for our area.

So within our chamber of commerce, we have something called the Highlands Economic Partnership, which is a program, it's a Ford County partnership, with Jackson, Overton, White, and Putnam, where we focus on everything from recruitment to retention of companies.

I'll tell you it's been a little bit different these days with what type of recruitment and retention we're doing.

I look at these ladies, 'cause they know all the things that we're going through.

Right now, a lot of our focus has been on making sure that we take care of our existing industry by making sure we prepare and have the workforce that they need, but also making sure that we stay in the game for economic development in doing recruitment and showcasing what all the Upper Cumberland region can handle as far as companies go.

- Angela, you actually work with the companies on helping them find which counties are best for them, don't you?

- I work within this Upper Cumberland region, which is our 14 county region, and a lot of times we get leads from TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or we also get leads within our project directors here in Nashville.

So whenever they send out information, we try to find, first of all, we try to find a site that's gonna work.

There's a lot of parameters that they look at is the number of acres or an existing building.

So we kind of have to figure out what they need and where it fits.

So we get to meet with those when they come in.

- What are businesses really looking for now?

- Well, you have to have inventory.

We work with this side of the economic development to help us make sure that we've got sites ready and inventory for them to be able to land.

And then of course now workforce is such a big issue.

So we're trying.

Everyone has workforce issues, but what communities are doing or regions are doing to be able to prepare that pipeline and the Upper Cumberland has got some really strong ideas.

As a region, I think we work really well together with Tennessee Tech, the TCATs, Nashville State, Motlow, and you know, there's a lot of education area out there that we work with to help create that pipeline.

- Is that where the site development program that the state has comes into play?

- There's actually two sides within the state of Tennessee, the Department of Economic and Community Development.

I work in the business development side, and then Nancy works in the rural side.

So they kinda work, don't mean to talk about your stuff, but they kinda work with the communities to help them be ready, and we work with the businesses to be able to bring them into the communities to help them find a place to land.

- Nancy, tell us a little bit about what you do in your role.

- So what I do in Tennessee Main Street is work on the downtown communities and the historic commercial areas.

We have a lot of great buildings left over from when, you know, everything centered around downtown.

So we try to find new uses and keep those buildings, you know, maintained and looking good, because like Angela and Amy know, anyone who's looking at investing in a community, they all cruise the square and the downtown, and that's just such a reflection on the whole county, you know, how that downtown is doing.

Also, we, you know, when we're attracting workforce, you wanna give them a place where they want to live.

So we want 'em to have, you know, amenities and good businesses.

And also we're seeing a big increase in entrepreneurship now.

People who wanna do their own thing, pursue that dream they've always had, and so, you know, we've got coffee shops and breweries and restaurants and all kinds of new businesses coming into our downtowns.

So Main Street and at ECD, we just try to encourage that and give people some assistance with it.

- People don't really think about your downtown eateries and, you know, the micro breweries and the pubs and the little shops as being economic development, but it plays a big role, doesn't it?

- Well, it does.

And, you know, small business actually generates most of the jobs in Tennessee.

So when you add 'em all up, you know, they are very important, both for, you know, economic development and for quality of life.

- Are little shops like that more important for the communities that are off the beaten path, the ones that are, you know, more than that, you know, 14 miles from the interstate?

- People are more, I think looking for the town where they can get as much as possible.

You know, that they need for just their daily needs.

And that really creates a healthy community.

- What about downtown living?

Does that play into the whole economic development aspect?

- Yeah, it's really funny.

It turns out that the millennials and the Zs and the boomers are both looking at downtowns to live in, because they wanna walk to as many things as possible.

And they're less interested in the big yard, you know, in the suburbs now.

So yeah, we're seeing a lot of interest in, we call it infield development, you know, where you just try to get that spot and people wanting to live above the store again.

So, and one of the things we do in our department is we offer grants for downtown buildings to try to bring 'em up to code and improve the appearance of them and just put 'em back into use the way they used to be.

- Amy, are you seeing a lot of downtown business locations as part of the chamber?

- So we do see a lot.

Right now just in Cookeville, we're at a hundred percent capacity as far as our vacancies, right?

We have zero vacancies.

And if you talk with our main street director here, because Cookeville is an accredited, a nationally accredited main street program through the cityscape program.

And so Holly Lane Freeman is the director here and she is constantly out on the path asking about whether we have any businesses or any buildings that we can put businesses in.

They're 0% in the west side vacancies.

Is that the right way to say that, that is right?

Zero vacancy.

- It's all full!

- Which it doesn't seem right, because for so long, I mean, even three or four years ago, we had probably, I would say almost half were vacant and needing that investment.

And so just in this area, it's zero.

So we're seeing a lot of that.

We're seeing a lot of the talk about the downtown living happening.

We're seeing some of our areas be rezoned so that it can have a hundred to 200 unit type developments happening just in the downtown.

I feel like we need to get to that point, because we're almost land logged in the city of Cookeville for real estate.

- So are you seeing the same things in the surrounding counties- - Oh my gosh.

- That you're seeing in Cookeville?

- The neighborhood developments happening in the other counties is unreal.

We're seeing a lot of it going west toward Baxter that are not necessarily downtown development, but more of the suburban areas as we see people moving in and I don't know how many we had in Baxter as far as actual rooftops, but we're seeing in Overton County too, in the Rigman area, the developments are 200 plus and same in White County.

There's a few new developments.

So we're seeing that sprawl go out as we're seeing also our egress, as we call it, for our commuting patterns is starting to increase coming into Putnam County, because we have so many people moving out and selling.

What we understand is selling a lot of their houses in the county to people from outside of the state of Tennessee, which is interesting.

- The Upper Cumberland seems to be becoming a Mecca for headquarters for companies.

And Angela, you were involved with a business expansion.

- Babynov.

- Yeah, Babynov.

- In Red Bowling.

- In Red Bowling Springs, in Macon County.

That was their first foreign direct investment.

So that's always a nice thing to see.

It's an organic baby food.

So I learned a lot on that project.

It was a really good project and a really good asset and a good community member for Macon County.

- What made them pick Macon County to come to of any place in the United States they could locate?

- Nestle had just vacated that building within the year.

So they were doing a national search trying to find a building, and because it was a food grade building, it actually filled the ticket.

So that was the first step and also the tax credits and all the incentives that the state of Tennessee offers, that we don't have an income tax.

That's a big draw.

When you were talking about people coming into the state, you know, you don't pay income tax.

That's a big deal not only for your corporate officers and things, but it's also whoever they're bringing here.

We're an extremely business friendly community and state.

So I think that's a lot of the reason.

That land cost, you know, you look at California and even in Nashville, there's a lot of companies that are saying, "we'd rather move to a more rural area.

We've got the interstates and access to all of that, we can move our product there."

And so I think that's why the Upper Cumberland's so attractive.

- You know, we've just had the first Bucky's in the state of Tennessee open in Crossville, and that's, you know, that's retail, but that's another first for the Upper Cumberland.

Why are we seeing retailers looking at this area?

- There's a lot of money spent in this area.

We're a big draw, we're right on I-40, so you look at, we're within a day's drive of 75% of the population of the United States.

So, you know, this is a great area to be in, and we're pretty friendly too.

So, you know, you have a Bucky's that lands there and looking at it from an economic development standpoint, you can't believe the number of people that are stopping there.

They may have never stopped in Crossville, Tennessee before in their lives, and they say, "this is a pretty great place."

So retail can really drive economic development.

They may never, they just drove down I-40, and for the first time they've ever stepped into that community, and they may wanna go to downtown and have a cup of coffee, and that's what we wanna do is to create those opportunities for the people to stay in the area.

When we bring companies in, they're gonna go around the square, you know, that's what they're gonna do.

They wanna see that.

They wanna see where their employees are gonna go.

- I think, you know, one thing that's led to that is in recent years, economic development has really looked at retail as part of the whole economic development package.

And so at ECD, you know, we've done retail academy for the communities and I worked with TVA and other partners where we just collect all the data on, you know, what their retail needs are and their demographics, and then you go out and you have a package to show the retailers.

Here's what the opportunity is.

Here's what this community needs.

And that's just been really effective.

- We've developed a different type of economic development in the Upper Cumberland with concerts, with, you know, festivals.

I was just with you up at the new, Old Gray Amphitheater.

- Beautiful.

Yeah, just taking advantage of those, I could say those God given assets, but this new venue in Monterey with the Old Gray is tremendous.

It's bringing people from all over, and just making sure that we get people to the area is tremendous.

But I love that.

I think it has a lot to do, we talked about retail academy and downtowns, and all of these programs the ECD's put together, but the asset-based planning program has really helped Monterey.

We went through that process of what do we need here?

What do we have that's an asset?

And the opportunity for Meadow Creek, Beatrock, and some other venues was one of the things they put on the list.

And so they're taking advantage of it.

- Well, and Marvin Bullock with the White County Chamber, his motto is "relocate where you recreate."

So he, you know, we have broadband, which has also been another big ECD program.

You know, if you've got broadband high speed internet, you've got the ability to have any company there and you can work anywhere.

So that's been a big, you know, a big pushing point for entrepreneurs and headquarters and things like that.

Plus all the natural beauty down there.

All the different waterfalls they have and the hiking trails and all of that stuff and our beauty is what helps draw companies to the Upper Cumberland.

- I know Twin Lakes has just introduced 10 gig internet.

So that's enabling people that live in the back part of, you know, the far edges of Fentress County, Picket County to be able to operate businesses from home in these remote areas.

And people don't think about that as being economic development, but it is!

- And the state's committed to that.

Even Clay County, they had looked at one time of creating a group where they were gonna do some customer service reps throughout some of their citizens for different companies AT&T and things like that they could be anywhere and work for those larger companies.

So there's a lot of good ideas out there.

- Some of our downtown areas that we were talking about earlier, like Jackson County.

You know, Jackson county is very rural, they don't have a lot of industry, but their downtown has, through your program, they've been able to revitalize that quite a bit, haven't they?

- Yes, and we're still working on it.

Of course, you know, the pub is there and now they're, you know, attracting more businesses.

In Gainesboro specifically, that whole town is on the national register of historic places, the whole downtown part, and we have new programs through our department to work specifically on certain buildings like buildings that used to be hotels and bigger things.

So up to $300,000 to tackle those projects, whereas typically we will take about a hundred or $150,000 and spread it around the square and fixing up awnings and things and trying to give the whole thing a face lift, but as of last year, we were able to start going in and pairing with a federal tax credit for those buildings and really tackling the tougher projects.

And Gainesboro is a place that's just really well suited for that.

We've also done a lot of work in Salina and Jamestown recently, and Smithville and Alexandria is a new community to that program, brand new, just starting right now, so, and Livingston also, and speaking of, I mean, a place where entertainment and events and activities has been such a draw to that downtown, and that just gives people such an opportunity to discover it and kind of fall in love with it, you know, and maybe consider it for relocation.

- So is tourism a really big part of economic development?

- I feel like you can't have economic development without community development first.

And sometimes people think that you get the jobs there, then everything else will follow.

You won't get the jobs there if you don't have a beautiful quality of place, things for them to do, the downtown, but tourism really helps us there.

We hear often that some of the CEOs of companies or their spouses have been to an event that has been hosted in one of these downtowns or these communities, and that's what brought them back, because they felt like they were part of a community.

They fell in love with it.

And so regardless if you have the inventory or not sometimes if you have a spouse of a CEO who loves this community so much, I can almost guarantee they'll probably end up, they'll find a way to get here.

- Also not every community is close to an interstate or a rail line, or, you know, but they, all up in this part of Tennessee, they all have beautiful scenery and assets and some, you know, quality of life features.

So tourism can really fill in, I think.

- The lakes.

I mean, you look at Dale Hall Lake and Center Hill lake.

It's a huge draw.

I mean, people wanna enjoy where they live and where they work.

We struggle sometimes, our beauty is, you know, it's beautiful and wonderful, and that throws a few kinks in our topography when we're trying to find those level sites, but we can make it work.

The site development grant is there to help, and there's also a property evaluation program, which is so helpful to small community, well to all communities.

And that's basically where the state has contracted with a site consultant, who that's all they do all day long, and they come in and we pick eight or 10 sites in the community and they go say, "this site is not so good, even though you may think it's a great site."

So they help help the communities know where to spend their money instead of going out and just blindly picking a spot that may have wetlands or it may have different things like that.

So it's a real asset that they have.

- I know some people think, you know, that their community has like an old factory building that's sitting there vacant.

You know, why can't we bring industry in just to fill that?

What is the problem with the old buildings?

- A lot of times when you're looking at a lot of the garment industries that left, a lot of times their ceilings are low.

And so when you've got manufacturing, and that's primarily what we work with is manufacturing, warehousing, we deal with headquarters, some of the headquarters, that will work, but a lot of times we're seeing the headquarters want to be where the action is.

They want to be downtown.

So like SAIC here, that's where they wanted to be.

They didn't want to be out in a business park somewhere.

They wanted to be there.

Now you have other manufacturing companies that the manufacturing areas out make sense.

So each industry has their own needs and wants, and so what we try to do is find the best site for them.

- And we're looking for other things to do with those old factory buildings too.

- Yeah.

- Oh wonderful.

So Angela, why aren't they able to use a lot of the existing garment factory buildings?

- You know, they're great buildings, but they've got the low ceilings.

They're just not really perfect for the industrial manufacturing piece.

- Well, we're seeing a lot of those former garment buildings turn into other new things like workforce housing, popup retail, different things, and other communities.

- If we could add one new thing to the Upper Cumberland to make us even more appealing, what would it be?

- Well, from my perspective, it'd be inventory.

You know, you've gotta have a place for them to land.

That's the first thing.

So if we could have some, of course, they're not making new land any day, so, but we're just trying to find the right spots to be able to get them available to have the option to those businesses coming here.

I'm sure you all have different- - Most communities I work with would like more lodging, you know, they would like some lodging income, you know, that comes with the nice bed tax, but also so they could host more visitors and, you know, more housing as well.

- Yeah, I would say mine, inventory would be one, but also just in general more workforce would be great.

And for us right now in the Upper Cumberland, we're seeing workforce housing as a major issue for us.

One that it's kind of like the big elephant in the room that they don't know how to even start on this to how to fix this issue, but I would say that workforce housing or affordable housing would be great, but also more of a workforce.

- People really don't think about affordable housing playing into economic development.

Is it making a big difference across the region, across the central Tennessee area?

- You know, your workers have to have an affordable place to live and it has to match up with the prevailing wages, right?

And the housing cost has just gone up so much.

- You know, what we're trying to do is improve the quality of life for these citizens in the community.

So at ECD, what we look at is we look at the number of jobs that they're gonna be creating in the community, we look at the capital investment that they're making in the community, and then the wages.

We wanna make sure that those wages are in excess of the median wage, because that's what we're trying to do.

- Do you know what the median wage is for the region?

- Well, we have it, we get those.

So whenever we're working with the business, we go through and see what their wages are and make sure that they're at the median or above and more and more that we're getting, we've got a lot of high wage companies and existing businesses that we're looking at expansions that are upping that because they have to.

- So for each county, it's different.

- Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

- Okay.

I think people tend to think about it generically when they don't realize that things are different in Jamestown than they are in McMinville.

And the same thing with, you know, Carthage and Crossville, you know, there's such vastly different places.

- Yeah.

There are, and we have those, I think it's all the way to Nashville.

Something that pays $20 an hour in Nashville may not get the look, but they may get here in the Upper Cumberland.

So we try to make sure that those jobs and our project managers, you know, they say this is a really good fit for Cumberland County, or it's a really good fit for Jackson County, because they understand those median wages.

- Slightly different, are there any big threats to ongoing economic development in the Upper Cumberland?

- Well workforce, you know, that's, but I'm really very positive about it.

I think that in our region, we really do have some people that are committed to helping us create that pipeline.

You can't fix workforce overnight, but as long as you've got it on your radar and you know that we're creating that pipeline and we can show that that's what we're doing, I mean, that shows a company that you're doing your best.

I mean, you know, all of the inflation and all of that's scary, I think, but that's anywhere right now, so.

But I think we fare better than most.

- And people in the Upper Cumberland aren't afraid to drive for a job.

- It's true.

We'd just like 'em to stay here.

(laughs) - One of the biggest threats in the more rural communities is the age of the, you know, buildings, the commercial buildings, vacancy, and owners being, you know, they've moved away, lost interest in it, and then if they're not maintained, you know, they will be lost and you lose a big piece of a community's history.

So when we work with the smaller communities, that's usually one of the, what they consider to be one of the biggest threats is we're losing our town.

Also, they worry about losing, you know, their younger people that they will go off to find bigger jobs, go to the big city.

So that's another reason why we really want to make that hometown appealing to them, so they'll come back.

- I love that note.

So you made me think of something too, with threats.

Really, we're seeing, they call it the silver tsunami, but we're seeing so many of our, just the people that you can't lose in an industry.

I mean, I talk about Tutco and Fleet Guard and Cummins who they've had people in these roles for 30 and 40 years who they know everything and they're retiring out, and so we're seeing this like wave of people retiring, and we're trying to figure out who is that next generation to go into that.

So workforce, there's so many things, the brain drain keeping people here, but also those retirees.

How do we make sure that we put people in those roles that are committed, that will be loyal like their predecessors?

And so that's somewhat of a threat too, in this area.

- Sounds like we've got a lot to do still in economic development.

- Nothing we can't handle!

- But things are going so well, so we- - Yeah, they are going well.

- Thank you for joining us today on "Interact," WCTE's local public affairs show.

(calming music) Tune in next time, but thank you to all of our guests.

Please keep talking about economic development with your friends and neighbors.

We're gonna keep talking about it here.

Thank you.

See you next time.

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