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New Carpet, New Color
Orange-carpet tours and Rural Opportunity Initiative shine spotlight on growth opportunities in rural Tennessee

ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber and Gov. Phil Bredesen

After four years of success attracting hundreds of new companies to Tennessee, the state’s economic developers face a challenge: how to expand that job creation success across a broader range of Tennessee communities, both urban and rural? The answer may lie in a series of new initiatives under way in Tennessee focusing on rural job growth.

Patterned after a series of highly successful “red-carpet tours” for site selection consultants, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development is launching a series of companion “orange-carpet tours” for rural communities – the idea being once corporate site locators know what the state’s smaller cities and towns have to offer, they’ll more readily recommend them to their corporate clients.

“What we envision is that we’ll take a handful of site selection consultants around the state, maybe to see what the University of Tennessee at Martin is doing, or to Cates Landing near Tiptonville to see the Tennessee Regional Port Authority’s project, which will be a slack water port on the Mississippi River associated with an industrial park, or to Paris and Benton County to see the successful recruitment of new industry that’s taking place,” says Matt Kisber, commissioner of economic development. “The idea is to hub around a major point of interest and, over the course of two or three days, get out into different parts of the region to see what kinds of opportunities could be best suited for those communities.”

The tours are part of a larger strategy Kisber is calling ROI, or the Rural Opportunity Initiative. It includes setting different levels of assistance for rural counties based on poverty levels and historic unemployment, among other factors. The greater the jobless rate, for example, the more extensive the Jobs Tax Credits the state will be willing to offer companies who create new jobs in affected counties.

“The governor’s economic development vision really hits on four areas of emphasis,” Kisber says. “The first is a more skilled workforce. In conversations with every prospective industry and with existing ones, that’s the No. 1 issue. As we compete for knowledge-based jobs and those that are more highly skilled, we have to assure companies that we’re going to have the public-education system that can supply the type of skilled workforce they need.”

Kisber wants the consultants who tour Tennessee’s rural communities to provide written feedback, so that the communities themselves will have a “real world” view of their strengths and weaknesses.

“Companies today don’t have the lead times they’ve had in the past, so we’re hoping to help our local communities be better prepared with ready sites, ready infrastructure and to provide job creation opportunities and capital investments for those companies looking to locate within the state,” Kisber says. “We also want to foster innovation, and the governor feels very strongly that it is incumbent on this administration to plant the seed that will become the leadership areas for our economy in the next generation.”

For his part, the governor says that Tennessee’s mix of small and large population centers is a strength to which the state should be playing.

“This combination of urban and rural areas is one of the things that makes us such a great place to live,” Bredesen says. “And we’re not going to be able to keep that unless we pay some real attention to how we recruit and retain business in some of the smaller communities across the state.”

Bredesen says that success stories in Nashville, Knoxville and other cities have shown that the state’s recruiting template is working, but that it can be expanded.

“A lot of our individual communities can’t go out and spend the money to recruit people,” he says. “But maybe the state can be an intermediary here, getting those relocation specialists, real estate specialists, in to take a look. [We] have done a good job at ramping up our recruiting; I just want to make sure that we’re recruiting for all communities. This program will make sure that we get outside the usual suspects for relocation and show people our more rural areas. And even if that company doesn’t come here, the feedback the local people get about their strengths, or what they’re lacking, helps them to better hone their presentations and offers for the next time.”

Story by Joe Morris