Comment on this story

by Barry Henderson

An odd thing happened last week in Chattanooga. The Times Free Press had a front page story that extolled Knoxville’s progress in attracting new jobs last year. We’re used to reading—and even writing—stories published here that praise Chattanooga’s progress on a variety of urban fronts and, inevitably, comparing Knoxville unfavorably.

It’s been the same with Asheville, and Lexington, and Nashville and so on. We never seemed to measure up to the competition in whatever comparison we were making.

So, in the wake of the negatives unleashed in a hail of pollution studies that rained down on us the weeks before, it was really encouraging to see how Knoxville’s positive aspects were being raised.

It wasn’t just the jobs picture, where our Jobs Now! program was being credited for making Knoxville’s jobs growth rate tops among Tennessee’s metropolitan centers last year. There was also word from the U.S. Census Bureau that Knox County’s population growth for the first three years of the 2000s outpaced that of the other three major metro centers—Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga—even though the city of Knoxville’s population continued to decline slightly.

The Knox County growth rate of 2.9 percent more than tripled those of Shelby and Hamilton Counties, and Davidson actually lost a few people, probably to its suburban counties of Rutherford and Williamson, the only two counties in the state that added more people than Knox in the 2000-2003 period.

There were lots of factors cited in the growth in Knox County, as its eight contiguous counties also showed population pluses, paced by Blount County’s 5.4 percent rate.

Quality of life and cost of living figured prominently in the speculation about this area’s steady growth. The scenic beauty of the nearby mountains, foothills and lakes was cited. So was the University of Tennessee’s main campus, the area’s other educational opportunities, the amenities such as the symphony, the opera and ballet companies and the art and history museums, plus, importantly, the transportation options and the relative ease in getting around this area by motor vehicle.

We’ve heard all that before, and we’ve concluded that this is a great place to live, work, play and retire, but the numbers didn’t always reflect that the appeal of this area was working to attract more people than the rest of the state’s regions. About 30,000 people found the nine-county area more attractive than where they were living before 2000, in net numbers, and about 11,000 of those moved into Knox County itself, bringing the county’s population near 400,000 for the first time and taking the metro area’s total to well above 750,000 people.

That’s impressive growth and posits Knoxville as a metropolitan center of even more national significance than it has enjoyed since the 1982 World’s Fair.

On the jobs front, a substantial part of the credit for the Knoxville metropolitan area’s increase of 2.1 percent in employment goes to Jobs Now!, a $10.75 million campaign to stimulate investment in the community. The initiative was patterned in part after one Chattanooga was also undertaking, but Knoxville clearly scored higher in meeting its goals in its first year, according to a recently published study of statewide economic growth done by Younger Associates, a Jackson-based market research firm.

Goals over the five years since Jobs Now!’s 2003 establishment are to create 35,000 new jobs and $2.5 billion in new, nonresidential capital investment and increase per capita income by $6,470 and Gross Metro Product by $5.75 billion.

The Knoxville metro area’s employment growth rate, as a net total of 7,300 jobs were added to the local mix, was tops among the metro areas in the state, and its $525 million in new and expanded business investment accounted for almost a quarter of the state’s new investment total in 2003. How does that compute? In a locality with very low unemployment, still less than 3 percent, that represents almost astonishing success.

Statewide last year, per capita income grew at a 3.1 percent annual rate to about $28,000, compared with a national average growth rate of 2.2 percent, painting a pretty good picture for continued expansion of the state’s economy as the national economy continues slowly to recover from its late 1990s downturn. Local figures weren’t immediately accessible on per capita income, but with jobs growth showing the way, Knoxville’s income levels are likely increasing as well.

I don’t want to suggest that everything’s turning up roses around here. We can’t forget the environmental challenges that have been posed in connection with our grievous air and water pollution and by the myriad problems facing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But we can find in the economic and population figures reason to be optimistic about our community’s potential for future growth.

We desperately need to get a handle on the pressing environmental issues; otherwise, the promise held out by the economic data and the census projections will ultimately go for naught. If we can’t secure clean water and clean air, those growth patterns will go by the board. Nobody wants to live where the air and water are threats to their health and well-being.

May 6, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 19 © 2004 Metro Pulse