This idea could provide a potential candidate with an excellent foundation for a campaign platform! Brand it as "Small Business Development" and dare conservatives to oppose it.

In my opinion, all Edwards knows how to do is acquire land and build strip shopping centers and negotiate leases with drugstores, Fashion Bug, Subway,Sally's, GameStop, and the UPS store, people that have literally hundreds of locations across the country.

When Loews Hotels came to town, in my opinion, Edwards was in way over his head, the prospective employer had it down to Nashville and Knoxville, lunch at Long's and a trip to a couple of empty strip shopping centers really didn't create much momentum for Knoxville and local people who have contacts within the Loews and Tisch businesses were told to get out of the way.

If you want to understand the problems with real live economic development in Knoxville, look no further than the people who are paid rather handsomely to function as the economic development guru and the deplorable track record over the past 10 years of relocating for profit business and industry to Knox County and the abundance of excuses and spins on why it can't be done.

lisa, maybe you should run for mayor ... or, even governor.

what we need is smart development.

for example: flenniken could be developed (or should i say redeveloped) as workforce housing, providing healthy, affordable, close-in housing to some of those kids (and their families) working at the tomato heads, costas and downtown breweries.

not only would that help low-wage earners, but help the neighborhood as well.

That makes no sense, admit it. If the workforce needs housing they can go across to street to Taliwa Square and rent a 2 BR apartment for $475/mo. It doesn't get more affordable than that.

I like Lisa's idea, especially if it could be geared with subsidizing the creation of the content delivery systems for e-learning. Those products could then be exported to other school districts and jobs created here.

We have a lot of good small businesses and people with good ideas, but it's hard to get started in this economy- rent, telecommunications (phone/internet), and health insurance being a cost that affects any startup. Tech 2020's incubators offer cheap rent, but amazingly they backed off of a facility that could offer telecommunications infrastructure (they wouldn't fund it, and they hated doing the bill-back is what I heard...but VOIP phone is insanely cheap now, they could throw it into the rent).

Health care... well, that's another debate and a more national problem. Which doesn't mean you can't have a local solution.

And Tech 2020 is limited to new product / high tech, but the idea could be expanded to other types of businesses within reason.

Our county, TVA, DOE, UT, and major businesses should be strongly encouraged, perhaps through local tax policy, to do business locally. Perhaps a 3-year abatement of sales taxes for products and services bought locally for businesses.

And we don't have to pay someone $17 million to administer the plan.

I think in today's economy the best way to attract business to your community is to make it a more interesting, sustainable and convenient place to live. So many high paying industries can locate wherever they want. Its the amenities and long term vision of a place that draw them.

Interesting: Downtown's renaissance has taken us a long way towards being more interesting. Way further than all our business parks combined. The South Knox Waterfront would take downtown to the next level of interesting.

Sustainability: We have a long way to go here. Look at places like Portland Oregon and all the amazing sustainability initiatives they have. Now look at how fast Portland is growing, primarily because people feel it is a interesting and sustainable place to live.

Convenient: Knoxville is plenty convenient...if you want to drive everywhere. We need more walkability to really be convenient. To do that we need more attention to residential development around pedestrian friendly nodes of development that also have mass transit.
Downtown is a node as is Fountain City.
The malls could be too.
Bearden, Happy Valley are emerging nodes.
Burlington could once again be a node.
Broadway shopping center is already a node, but a kind of down and out one that could use attention from MPC and TDC.
Downtown west could be another node as could Turkey Creek.
Can you think of any other nodes of walkability that could also provide a base for expanded transit?

But Downtown is our main node and hub. Its also the one most likely to attract high paying jobs. Hence TDC should be focusing on jobs in the downtown area, not business parks.

Excellent point about the nodes. Youg high pike at Chapman has stores, banks, restaurants, library, post office, & park with a range of housing choices nearby. What it desperately needs is walkability & street trees/aesthetics. Why not spend some of the midway money there and at the other nodes.

There's room for an office complex next to the post office. Plus the old Food city can be repurposed.

I hardly think that all these ideas about how we can have nice, clean aesthetic industry is going to work.

While Anderson Co. gets an expanding auto parts manufacturing plant and a solar panel plant, Knoxville's citizens keep coming up with some magical ideas that they think will turn Knoxville into some kind of EPCOT.

Mayberry was a Hollywood set.

Deal with it.