Knoxville-Oak Ridge Third In US For Best Metro for Business and Expansion (Maryville: insurance, new home)

[LauraC]

Thought you would be interested in this:

Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley Joins List of Nation's Economic Elite

The article names other honors the area has received recently.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by LauraC

Thought you would be interested in this:

Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley Joins List of Nation's Economic Elite

The article names other honors the area has received recently.

That's not quite accurate. Leave it to Oak Ridge to try to weasel its way into some good economic news for Knoxville. The study at Expansion Management lists the entire Knoxville MSA as the 3rd best medium-sized area in the country for business expansion, not the "Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley". While Oak Ridge is part of the Knoxville MSA, so are Maryville, Alcoa, Farragut, Clinton, Lenoir City, and others. The Knoxville MSA includes Knox, Anderson, Blount, Loudon, and Union counties.

The list straight from the source (it's a PDF file):
http://www.expansionmanagement.com/s...e%20Metros.pdf

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by JMT

That's not quite accurate. Leave it to Oak Ridge to try to weasel its way into some good economic news for Knoxville. The study at Expansion Management lists the entire Knoxville MSA as the 3rd best medium-sized area in the country for business expansion. While Oak Ridge is part of the Knoxville MSA, so are Maryville, Alcoa, Farragut, Clinton, Lenoir City, and others.

The list straight from the source (it's a PDF file):
http://www.expansionmanagement.com/s...e%20Metros.pdf

While part of the Knoxville MSA, I don't think of Clinton and Lenoir City, for example, as Innovation Valley. Do you?

"The presence of the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory further supported Knoxville's ranking."

Since UT and ORNL are probably biggest employers in the area, I'm thinking it's why Oak Ridge is singled out and not someplace like Clinton, Maryville or Lenoir City.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by LauraC

While part of the Knoxville MSA, I don't think of Clinton and Lenoir City, for example, as Innovation Valley. Do you?

"The presence of the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory further supported Knoxville's ranking."

Since UT and ORNL are probably biggest employers in the area, I'm thinking it's why Oak Ridge is singled out and not someplace like Clinton, Maryville or Lenoir City.

Your source was the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, so of course they were going to insist that the Innovation Valley had something to do with Knoxville's ranking.

And looking at current large employers (ORNL and UT) isn't the point of this study. It's a study for NEW businesses and business relocation. Having a large, stagnant federal agency in Oak Ridge is probably the opposite of what this study is looking for. Just ask Boeing how business-friendly Oak Ridge is.

If you look at the original study at Expansion Management, there is no mention whatsoever of an "Oak Ridge Innovation Valley." Rather, the entire Knoxville MSA was included in the study, and the entire Knoxville MSA ranked high in logistics infrastructure and reputation among national business relocation consultants. If anything, Oak Ridge's logistical isolation and its lack of developable land is probably a drag on the rest of the region.

As far as new businesses and business relocation (the point of the study), Maryville and West Knox outstrip stagnant, heavily regulated Oak Ridge by a landslide.

By the way, I think the Pellissippi Pkwy is a lesson in economic development: Oak Ridge is largely controlled by the federal government, and it hasn't grown in 30 years. Maryville, on the other end of the parkway, is more free-wheeling and is experiencing an economic boom and massive population growth.

[inave]

JMT,

Give LauraC a break. She's a newcomer to Oak Ridge, It's taken me 18 months to kick myself for not settling somewhere else, preferably Blount or Sevier counties!

[JMT]

Originally Posted by inave

JMT,

Give LauraC a break. She's a newcomer to Oak Ridge, It's taken me 18 months to kick myself for not settling somewhere else, preferably Blount or Sevier counties!

haha Yeah maybe she's just really, really happy to be out of high-tax Maryland which is totally understandable. Newcomers are often the biggest cheerleaders of their new hometowns. But I can see why people like Oak Ridge so much even though as a professor at U.T. I do get a little tired of the perceived arrogance from students who were educated in Oak Ridge and consider themselves sooo much better prepared for college than everyone else (even though it's usually true).

Why do you want to leave for Blount or Sevier?

I have to admit that if I were looking at moving to the Knoxville area for the first time and didn't want to live right in the city (I am a city dweller and love living in the middle of a big city) I would probably choose Maryville, too. I just like the way they do things in Blount County. I like that Maryville has an actual downtown (unlike Oak Ridge or Farragut), it's next to the mountains, it's growing but still affordable, and its schools are very, very good.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by JMT

haha Yeah maybe she's just really, really happy to be out of high-tax Maryland which is totally understandable. Newcomers are often the biggest cheerleaders of their new hometowns. But I can see why people like Oak Ridge so much even though as a professor at U.T. I do get a little tired of the perceived arrogance from students who were educated in Oak Ridge and consider themselves sooo much better prepared for college than everyone else (even though it's usually true).

I have to admit that if I were looking at moving to the Knoxville area for the first time and didn't want to live right in the city (I am a city dweller and love living in the middle of a big city) I would probably choose Maryville, too. I just like the way they do things in Blount County. I like that Maryville has an actual downtown (unlike Oak Ridge or Farragut), it's next to the mountains, it's growing but still affordable, and its schools are very, very good.

I don't actually prize growth in a town. In fact, when I moved, I was looking for someplace that wasn't growing too fast having just witnessed the traffic and over crowded condition of Asheville, NC, a town in my opinion, that grew too fast as a retirement destination, was in the Top 10 just a few years ago, and now can't even crack the Top 100 List.

But, I'm not looking for a job.

And actually, the population of the town where I lived in MD and the population of the town where I lived in NY were both lower than the population where I live now in Tennessee and neither one of them had a central downtown area, either. In fact, the town in NY only had one traffic light when I lived there. I'm not a city person. I don't see myself ever going to downtown Knoxville to do anything unless visitors are involved or it's an organized trip. I even think there are too many people in West Knoxville.

And since I was government for 35 years, I'm perfectly happy to live in a government town because I just came from another government town (although everyone didn't work for the same agency like in Oak Ridge).

I had another newbie first, today. I went to a local doctor and I can't believe how lucky I was to get him. I'm actually thrilled with this doctor and my method of choosing him was no better than eenie meenie minee mo from a directory provided by my insurance company --- so I lucked out. Plus, it's another one of those scenarios where I make two turns from my home and I'm there.

Oak Ridge has too much drug related crime. To me, that's its flaw. I don't think anyone here likes to talk about it, either, as long as it isn't in their neighborhood and since the town sits on so much land, it's easy to not let it impact your daily life if you aren't living or working or playing or going to school in that neighborhood. It's like if you live in West Knoxville, do you care what happens in North/East Knoxville (not sure where your bad neighborhood is)?

For a town of our size (somewhere betweeen 27,300 and 28,000) to have an orchestra, band, chorus, symphony, playhouse, art center, arboretum, 2 public pools, science museum, a rowing venue, multiple parks and 2 or 3 golf courses and in my case, a school program for retirees is unbelievable. I can tell you I had no such things in either my MD or NY towns.

[inave]

Actually, my husband lived in Maryville for seven months before I moved here. We settled on Oak Ridge because he works in Clinton. Maryville just seems more alive to me than OR. It has more restaurants and shopping and is closer to the mountains. Actually, we spend very little time in OR. We go to the Target in Powell or M'ville. Sometimes go to the Food City on Middlebrook; Starbucks in M'ville or Kingston Pike and most dining out is done in M'ville, Kingston Pike or Clinton. About the only thing I do in OR is work and sleep!

And the arrogance you perceive is NOT perception, but reality!

[JMT]

Originally Posted by inave

Actually, my husband lived in Maryville for seven months before I moved here. We settled on Oak Ridge because he works in Clinton. Maryville just seems more alive to me than OR. It has more restaurants and shopping and is closer to the mountains. Actually, we spend very little time in OR. We go to the Target in Powell or M'ville. Sometimes go to the Food City on Middlebrook; Starbucks in M'ville or Kingston Pike and most dining out is done in M'ville, Kingston Pike or Clinton. About the only thing I do in OR is work and sleep!

And the arrogance you perceive is NOT perception, but reality!

On more than one occasion I've had students here at U.T. tell me that I should be glad they're in my class because they came from the best high school in the state. I couldn't believe the arrogance. I thought that maybe they were isolated cases, but the more students I have from Oak Ridge, the more I can see it. It's one thing to have civic pride--we all do that--but it's another thing to be elitist.

I really do like Maryville, and I agree with you that Maryville is much more alive than Oak Ridge. I'm like LauraC in that I don't like rapid growth, but there needs to be SOME growth or else a town will die. Oak Ridge is like a dying town which is the danger when just about everyone in town works for one company; in this case, the federal government. The city leaders of Oak Ridge are so desperate for new retail that they wanted to give Target $10 million to come to town. Maryville didn't have to do that, nor should they. Maryville is experiencing healthy growth that's able to keep the young kids in town for jobs and also keep the taxes low. Oak Ridge has an aging population that keeps raising their own taxes to keep their town "pure" and better than everyone else.

And the irony is that in their quest to keep Oak Ridge pure like a Stepford town, they don't see the drug problem which is infiltrating their perfect little town.

[Pimpy]

On more than one occasion I've had students here at U.T. tell me that I should be glad they're in my class because they came from the best high school in the state. I couldn't believe the arrogance. I thought that maybe they were isolated cases, but the more students I have from Oak Ridge, the more I can see it. It's one thing to have civic pride--we all do that--but it's another thing to be elitist.

Dude, it isn't bragging if it's the truth. Oak Ridge IS the best public high school in the state. The average kid from ORHS is better prepared for college than the average kid from anywhere else in the state, no argument possible. I went to a top-tier private college where many of the other students came from prep schools like Woodberry Forest, Episcopal, Hill, Choate, etc., and I made better grades with less effort than most of them.

Also, Oak Ridge isn't as stagnant as you make it out to be. Granted, they aren't experiencing the same unchecked growth as West Knoxville or Blount County, but the school enrollment has gone up every year for the past three years, and this year's increase was pretty significant. That tells me that young families are moving to OR, not just the "aging" population you describe.