Nashville, Tennessee

Economic Development Strategy

Dubbed “Music City USA,” Nashville has leveraged its original roots in country music to become a city with a broad range of assets that go beyond the music and entertainment industry. Its success in attracting a number of prominent headquarters, as well as logistics and manufacturing firms, launched Nashville to the top of Expansion Management Magazine’s “America’s 50 Hottest Cities” for business relocation and expansion in early 2005.

In May 2005, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce retained Market Street to update its Economic Development Strategy for the next five years of the Chamber’s economic development initiative, called Partnership 2010. Market Street analyzed the Nashville region’s demographic and economic trends as well as business competitiveness, and found that to continue the region’s strong economic growth, education and workforce development, innovation, and certain quality of life elements needed to be addressed. Specific issues included:

• The need for more widespread pre-K education.
• Significant challenges for the Metro Nashville Public School system.
• Lack of sufficient support at the two-year degree level.
• Lagging measures of innovation.
• Concerns about sprawl, air quality, and crime rates.
• The need for support for existing businesses and entrepreneurs.

Market Street also conducted a Target Business Analysis to review the Chamber’s economic development targets and revise them to focus on the most promising business sectors. The research phases of the project culminated in an Economic Development Strategy that included four goals in these areas:

• Goal 1: Diversified, Sustainable Economy
• Goal 2: Education and Workforce Development
• Goal 3: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Goal 4: Infrastructure Development

Under each of the goals were specific objectives that addressed the issue identified in the research and emphasized the key strategies for continued economic development success in the Nashville region. The Steering Committee and the Chamber Board adopted the Strategy that is now underway using the Implementation Plan framework that Market Street prepared. In February 2007, the Chamber hired its first chief education officer to focus on K-12 performance improvement.

The Nashville region has continued to score successes. In July 2005, it was at the top of the list of “The 20 Hot Headquarters Metros for the 21st Century” by Business Facilities, and in January 2006, Nashville was once again named “America’s Hottest City” by Expansion Management. One of the most high-profile recent announcements was Nissan’s decision in November 2005 to move its headquarters to Nashville from the Los Angeles area, resulting in a transfer of 1,300 jobs with average salaries of $80,000. In May 2006, Gateway, Inc. announced that it would open a computer assembly plant in Nashville, creating 300 jobs. Within weeks afterwards, Dell Computers planned to add 1,000 technical sales and support jobs to its existing call center in Nashville. The region’s economy is moving full steam ahead.

In keeping with the energy and dedication that defined the 2005 effort, the Chamber retained Market Street in August 2008 to review its progress on implementation efforts. Through a combination of benchmark analysis and stakeholder interviews conducted by CEO J. Mac Holladay, Market Street developed a mid-term update for the Chamber. The update revealed five key focus areas to guide the Chamber’s program of work during the remainder of the five year strategy years:

• Business Retention and Expansion
• Schools
• Infrastructure
• Downtown Redevelopment
• Retention and Attraction of Young Professionals

The mid-course review set the stage for the Chamber’s next five-year strategic process, Partnership 2020. The Chamber again retained Market Street in 2009 to guide the process, which built upon the successes of Partnership 2010 while maximizing future opportunities by applying the most current approaches and expertise to existing challenges.

This process produced new research and strategic documents for Nashville, including a Competitive Assessment, a Target Cluster Review, and an updated Strategy. The Competitive Assessment confirmed that Nashville’s positive momentum is continuing to build; yet, challenges remain, and the following issues emerged as key to Nashville’s prosperity:

• The quality of metro schools and their influence over individuals’ and families’ location decisions
• Finding the balance between continued economic growth and aversion to becoming “the next Atlanta,” a sprawled, congested, mega-city
• The need to rapidly accelerate its competitive assets for New Economy jobs and talent, such as educational attainment, venture capital capacity, and technology commercialization.

The Target Cluster Review examined the performance of existing targets and provided a refined set of new targets. These two research phases provided the foundation for the updated Strategy, which established four new goal areas for the region’s economic development leaders to pursue:

• Economic Diversity
• Talent Development
• Quality of Place/Livability
• Effective Regionalism

These goal areas encompassed objectives and action steps that address issues identified in the Competitive Assessment and provided strategies for growing the region’s economy through the targets identified in the Target Cluster Review. This Strategy contained a multitude of key strategies necessary to enhance the region’s competitive position as a place to do business, live, work, and visit. It will serve as the foundation of the Nashville Chamber’s Partnership 2020 campaign. Effective implementation can ensure that the region continues to direct its own future and improve the prospects of many generations to come.

For more information, please see the project website: www.nashvilleareapartnership2020.com.