Everywhere I go people complain about the Knoxville Chamber. Who is holding these people accountable? While every chamber in the country is focusing on home-grown development, entrepreneurship and supporting local businesses, the chamber keeps swinging for the fences and missing. They are out of touch with reality. A bunch of fat cats lining their own pockets with some of the stupidest programs imaginable.

Amazon orders are all routed through Seattle, I believe. The distribution center is a different animal, I believe.

Is the Knoxville Chamber supported by any public funding? If so I would suggest a strong push to redirect the public money into some other entity. The Chamber of Commerce does not as an organization represent working people.

No business is going to want to relocate to an area in which the company will have to fight the area's residents in order to just do business in the area. Knoxville will continue to lose economic opportunities if these groups continue to fight against economic development, especially if those groups then grouse about missing economic development opportunities like an Amazon distribution center. It is no surprise that Knoxville was again ignored in favor of its more welcoming neighbors and this trend will continue so long as activists remain the vocal opponents they are to responsible and reasonable economic progress. I have no intention of arguing with anyone, I just wanted to say my piece. Thank you for allowing me to do that.

amazon has a large distribution center near lexington, ky, so the decision may be based solely on geographic location.

I don't know about issues with the Chambers in either city, but that location in Chattanooga is heaven for distribution centers. Chattanooga has always been a major transportation gateway and hub due to geography alone, an asset which is hard to match by competing cities in the region for this type of business. It's doubtful the Knoxville chamber ever had a chance for Amazon.

Knoxville probably never had a chance for a couple of reasons. First, we are still under EPA non-attainment for air quality. Secondly, this truly is a situation where interstate access would matter for a company. And if you read the Chattanooga story, they needed two sites with 80 acres. And geographic location also played a factor I'm sure.

And before it starts, let me point out that the Midway property couldn't be used for distribution according to restrictions in the proposed sector plan, and secondly there wouldn't be any 80 acre plots. If it were to be developed, Midway would have more of the same type of inventory we already have - 20 and 30 acre (maybe) plots because of having to work around all the sinkholes and slopes.

On the other hand, if TDC were working in conjunction with Roane County to bring the distribution center to their business park, which does have hundreds of acres of flat land with all utilities on the interstate, who knows if we might have prevailed? The TN legislature made a new law a few years back that would enable sharing tax revenue for this very type of cooperation, and it sounds like Chattanooga took advantage of regional cooperation. If you read the story, multiple entities cooperated to bring Amazon there - Hamilton County, Bradley County and the City of Chattanooga.

One other point about this - I'm happy for Chattanooga that they are getting these jobs and don't think we should be snarking that just because we're not. It reminds me of the unattractive way certain people are going on about the Carter school situation, attacking the community for asking for a new school. I know this is being encouraged by some people who should know better than to pit one community against another.

I do think there are legitimate criticisms of the Chamber and the Development Corporation, but failing to win the Amazon project probably isn't one of them.

This is what we get for paying Mike Edwards over $250,000 a year:

(link...)

Knoxville is number 47 of of 50.

So why are Knox County taxpayers still paying Mike Edwards a quarter of a million dollars a year? Don't the taxpayers pay the Knox Chamber $400,000 a year? So what are we getting for our money? And where is the Knoxville News Sentinel on this story? Protecting Mike Edwards and the Chamber. Thanks loads.

Yes this will add tax to TN orders. I order from Newegg all the time and they have centers in NJ, CA and TN. We have to pay sales tax. It kinda sucks but they're still cheaper than most other PC parts suppliers.

From CNN/Money

Chattanooga, Tenn.

The important part, McManus said, is building community. "We tried to continually stir the pot around entrepreneurship - to make it fashionable to be an entrepreneur in the city," he said. "And rather than leaning back on us like with many traditional economic development organizations, the folks in the class lean on each other."

article
(link...)

Knoxville seems to have in some respects an old school approach. Industrial Parks, Business Parks, manufacturing, roadbuilding, shopping centers, etc

The evolution of the digital savvy world makes much of that kind of approach obsolete. And it
is going to go in that direction more. You just don't need that stuff near as much for business development.

The whole TDC etc. approach is sort of outdated.

I don't get why Chattanooga is better for distribution. Two of the most heavily traveled interstates in the U.S. intersect downtown. (A different problem for a different day.)

We are within 500 miles of 70% or more of the U.S. population. We border eight other states, equaled only by Missouri.

We have a fairly nice regional airport. In fact, TYS should have been the southern passenger hub instead of Atlanta. We have a major league air cargo setup already serviced by Fedex and UPS with plenty of room to expand.

We have barge and rail service.

We are truck friendly, thanks to Pilot.

So what's not to like for a distribution operation?

Governor Bredesen, Commissioner Kisber Confirm Discussions With Amazon.Com

It is worth remembering that the reason that Chattanooga got Volkswagen is that they had a huge parcel of land that they had developed and had waiting for a company to use.

I think having some of every approach is smart in economic development.

And I salute Chattanooga and Tennessee for landing Amazon.

Chattanooga envy is a wicked thing.

Knox County not in running for proposed Amazon.com sites:

"Amazon actually never considered the Knoxville area," said Knoxville Chamber Executive Vice President Rhonda Rice. "We do not have property in Knox County that would be suitable for their needs. They needed a minimum of 75 to 80 acres of flat property ready to go." Rice said it was simply the matter of available land that is the right size.

Big Sea Ray facility on the market | Property Scope | knoxnews.com:

A pair of buildings totaling more than 241,000 square feet of space are on the market in the Forks of the River Industrial Park. Sea Ray's Riverview Plant has 202,128 square feet of space and sits on 54 acres, while a related logistics building has 39,286 square feet and sits on eight acres

The State of Tennessee is providing $4 million for grading to level the site out and the engineer's assessment of the proposed site is "it's quite a hilly site with a 60 foot change in elevation"

(link...)

In my opinion, somebody needs to show Edwards and Rice the door to better employment and let the economic development be managed by people who are in the loop on a much, much larger scale and can actually do something besides make excuses and spin away their own rampant wholesale failures all the way around.

as well as last year and didn't drop a dime in Jimmy Duncan's coffers, nor Lamar's, so why is Edwards putting money in Bob Corker's pocket? and Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia, economic development opportunity in West Virginia?

Chattanooga has 3 interstates and has both NS and CSX. They have an airport with plenty of space for additional cargo flights, are 100 miles from ATL and have two huge trucking companies based there (usx and covenant) - the latter of which already services amazon.

All of this on top of the fastest fiber internet in the nation.

I think there were plenty of reasons they chose chatt instead of us.

All of this points to the fact that Chattanooga has a much more comprehensive strategy of attracting business than does TDC. This frees them from becoming too dependent on "greenfield" sites for industrial parks like Midway, which are an increasing bone of contention not just with locals near the park, but with all taxpayers that fund TDC.

The first year of Mike Edward's employment leading the Knoxville Chamber were very telling about his leadership skills. I was paying attention as a leader of our Administrative Professionals Organization at that time.
The first action he took was to fire his Secretary to "save money"; within months his 2nd personnel action was to promote himself a raise.
Back then I also attended many of the Chamber's "meet and greet" meetings representing several businesses. Those meetings did not offer any help or resources to area small businesses. That situation became so obvious that several small business owners formed their own network to provide help and resources to their category of business.
And like someone else said here, he hasn't shown much evidence that his accomplishments for this area even come close to his salary. He should be made accountable by some government entity...City, County, somebody!

what percentage of the chamber's budget is dedicated to the ever increasing salary component of the "business". It's really sad that local businesses that buy into the Chamber's spin think that the chamber is actually doing something, but in reality, all it does is give these bums exhorbitant salaries, perks, benefits, car allowances, 401(k)s, bonsues, as they think they work in the private sector, but they don't.

On any given day, less than 15 percent of the chamber's budget is dedicated to identifying, recruiting, and relocating businesses to Knox County.

The city has already eliminated its contribution I think and the county would be well served to do the same.

Once local business figures out what a useless organization the Super Chamber really is, hopefully they'll stop funding the organization as well and it will just go away.

Knox Chamber Partnership 2008 IRS report...

Revenue: $1.9 million
Salaries/benefits: $1.2 million

Edwards: $280,592
Rice: $172,443

Hamilton County has things we should emulate. And yet when you are down there, they wish they had much of what we had.

Some data to consider:

Knox Hamilton TN

Unemployment 7.0 7.8 9.4

Population
growth
since 2000 14.1 9.5 10.7

Percent HS
grads 82.5 80.7 75.9

Percent
bach degree
or higher 29 23.9 19.6

Hamilton is higher on media hosuehold income, $47,574 to $45,922 against a state average of $43,610.

There are things they do well in Chattanooga. I love the place. But to look at Hamilton and think they are light years ahead of us is crazy. I guarentee you they look here and wish they could have much of what we have accomplished. We have the lowest unemployment rate of any metropolitan area in the state. That hardly happens in spite of our economic development efforts.

I wish we could all get past "they rock and we suck and need to get rid of people" attitude and realize both communities have a lot going for them. Lets figure out how we can get better from them, and them from us.

Interestingly if you read the comments on the TFP story that kicked off all this there are comments from people about the overpaid fatcats at their Chamber.

Do any municipalities that run these type development corps do so on an incentive basis?

If it’s the job of Mayors to sell a community’s vision, let the municipally funded “sales” organizations have better than normal access, but leave the “vision” job where it is.

Take away the perks and lavish salary and make the compensation of selling Knox County land commission based.

If you are able to sell, there would be opportunity for great return. If not, then it would become clear the position wasn’t warranted in the first place.

If real estate firms operated like the TDC and Chamber – paying huge salaries with no regard to results – all would be bankrupt. I have no clue as to who is good or bad in the current model, only that it’s obvious the model is bad.

Actually any work Ackermann did for TDC was before I joined the company a little over 6 years ago.

There is no business connection between Ackermann and TDC. To be honest, I didn't know they were a former client or I would have noted it.