Attracting Young Families the Only Way to Grow

You’ve heard it before; Carter County’s population is declining, and Elizabethton’s will likely follow suit by the time the next census rolls out in 2020. The real question is what’s happening? Why are people leaving Carter County and where are they going? Well, when we look at the numbers, they’re not leaving – they’re dying. According to the Tennessee Department of Health, 746 people died in Carter County during the year 2016. During the same year, only 488 babies were born. Statistically Carter County is losing citizens at an average rate of 3.3 people for every 1,000 people annually. That’s around 184 people per year!

Of course, it never sounds like a good thing when we mention a population loss, but what are the true implications of this? Fewer people means less need for housing within the County. Less housing demand means an increase in dilapidated and neglected properties to deal with. Less housing demand means housing prices will fall or not grow as fast as they do in the surrounding areas (which also means less wealth is created within the County). Less housing demand and lower home values means less money being collected in taxes by governments, which may mean the need to increase taxes on those still living there. Less population means fewer workers for companies and businesses to hire and making it more difficult to recruit new and retain existing businesses to the county. I could go on, but I think you get the point – there are huge implications of a declining population.

So, what can we do to even start addressing this problem? Well, first let me explain the factors affecting population growth. There are two ways communities and counties grow – natural growth (more births than deaths) and migration growth (people moving from somewhere else). Natural growth occurs best when you have a healthy population of females between the ages of 16 to 35 – essentially of birthing age. As we have already discussed, natural growth for Carter County is a no-go. We lack young families in Carter County and I suspect this would be evident if you looked at school enrollment over the past 5-10 years. This leaves us with migration growth as our only option.

Migration growth is a lot more difficult than natural growth, because we must sell our city and county to people who live elsewhere and convince them that our place is better. Thankfully, because of our proximity to Johnson City and Bristol, jobs don’t have to be the first priority (typically this is the hardest part). The average commute time for Carter, Unicoi, and Washington Counties is 21 minutes which easily puts the Tri-County Industrial Park and all the businesses in Johnson City easily within average commute times. In my opinion, the top priority for Elizabethton and Carter County is to make it attractive for young families. We have to start investing in ourselves to make our community and county attractive to an admittedly different, younger generation who look for different amenities where they live and place values on different ways of living than what we’ve seen in previous generations.

The next time your talk to your children, grandchildren, or just a young professional in their late 20s, ask them what they look for in their city and county when they’re deciding where to live. Their answers may be different and what you may even consider impossible to do here in Carter County but consider the alternative. The recent battle over the property tax increase in the County could very well be just the beginning of the County’s future if we don’t start working on making their desires our future. Let’s talk about it!

Steps to Creating a Revitalized Downtown

Downtown redevelopment/revitalization has been a hot topic in Elizabethton since I’ve been doing planning in Elizabethton – 9 years. I have talked extensively about the different aspects or steps we need to take, but not a lot about the big picture plan. How do we even get to the point of talking about creating housing for downtown, or recruiting new businesses when we don’t even have buildings ready to be renovated? Let’s look at that today.

One of the first steps we need to take is to develop a unified vision for downtown. Ideally this would be in the form of a plan, but simply writing some goals or characteristics down about the image we all have in our heads is enough to get started. As a part of this step, we must ensure that the City Council, Planning Commission, Business Owners, Property Owners, and our citizens all (or mostly) agree on what that image looks like so that we can move forward.

After we’ve developed the “picture” for downtown, we need to organize. Structure and groups of the different stakeholders need to be created or encouraged. There is a lot of work that will need to be done in the aesthetics, economy, and property development in downtown and it’s something that no one interest group can do solo.

Somewhat simultaneous with the previous action, all parties must work to save and improve the quality of our downtown buildings. It is hard to recruit a new business or start-up business to purchase or lease a building that has a leaky roof, old carpets, outdated electrical, etc. After all, downtown building owners are realistically competing against clean, newer, plain-vanilla-shell spaces on the west side of the city. This can be very expensive and will likely require incentives and assistance for building owners, but the payoff could be great.

The next two steps – pedestrian friendliness and placemaking – are somewhat the same. There is a saying used in the urban planning world that if you want a street to be friendly for pedestrians, design it so a 7-year-old or 70-year-old can comfortably walk across by themselves. Sure, it is not exactly a scientific formula, but we need to evaluate our roads in downtown against this concept. Would you allow your 7-year-old to cross the 3 lanes of Elk Avenue traffic by themselves in downtown? Placemaking similarly encourages pedestrians and people to congregate and often improve the aesthetics and usability of an area.

Lastly, successfully completing the previous steps will result in higher demand for businesses and ultimately housing. We need to ensure quality housing options are available in and immediately around the downtown area. This could include condos, townhouses, single-family homes, or apartments, but a good mix is optimal. This will help generate additional pedestrian activity in downtown and additional revenues for the businesses there.

The most important thing we need to keep in mind during all of this, is that revitalization won’t happen overnight, but over multiple years or even a decade. Asheville has been working on their downtown since the 70s, Jonesborough since the 80s, Greenville, SC since the 70s, Johnson City since the 90s. Small and sustainable incremental change, I believe, will prove to be best for downtown and best for the city overall. The important part is that we start. Let’s talk about it!

An Attractive Community Starts with Us

About 4 years ago, the Planning Department conducted a series of community visioning initiatives. These included public meetings at all the elementary schools and various surveys requesting feedback from the community. All this information what compiled and a master list of goals were created. The purpose of this initiative was to identify what the citizens and residence of Elizabethton desired in their community and what they wanted their community to look like in 10 to 20 years.

One of the goals that came out of this initiative was to improve building frontages and appearances throughout the city – essentially, people wanted a more attractive city. So, the question becomes how do we do this? How do we make a more attractive city and what will it cost? Well, unfortunately, this is going to be an unpopular answer but it is through regulation.

It is our citizens, residence, local businesses, and elected officials job to determine what we want our city to look and feel like. It is then up to our elected and appointed officials to ensure that we are working to create that look and feel in our community.

Many of the developers and businesses we see come into Elizabethton don’t live here. They come in, want to know the cheapest way they can build what they want to build, build it, then turn around and leave the community having a check from the business or development mailed to them. And, quite frankly, I don’t blame them! That’s part of their goal, to invest as little as possible and maximize how much money they make. But the point is that they don’t have to look at the development daily or live with a negative reputation in the community, because if they receive that check they’re not setting foot in our community.

When I first started there was one statement I made that I thought was extremely pivotal in how we think through a potential development. The statement is, “Do not give in on what your standards are just because you think a business or development won’t build here. The developer will be here today, collect their money, and be gone tomorrow, but you and your fellow citizens will have to live with that decision every day. Make sure it’s something you can live with.”

If we desire a more attractive community, we need to create regulations that require developers to make buildings that are more attractive. Maybe we require them to use traditional Appalachian building materials for the facades to make Elizabethton unique. Maybe we require more trees and less parking spaces. Maybe we require that they install a bike rack and sidewalks so that others without vehicles can easily visit their business, because that’s the type of community we desire. There are many things we can do, but our citizens must support and stand behind elected and appointed officials when we enforce these requirements. They must be willing to say to a developer, “If you don’t want to create something that will make our community attractive, then maybe our community isn’t for your business.” Let’s talk about it!

Public Art Makes the Community

The discussion of public art has been somewhat of a hot topic this past year, especially with the formation and activity of the new Elizabethton Arts and Cultural Alliance. In many cities throughout North America, public art has started to become a recognized necessity. Public art was an identity for many ancient cultures such as the Egyptians and Persians and old cities such as Rome, Athens, Florence, Vienna, and even (to a certain extent) New York.

One reason it was and is becoming popular again is because it was something one-of-a-kind. It was a public icon that was specifically tied to a particular community or city and, therefore, helped you easily identify where you were before there were town signs or water towers with community names on them. In a time before every street had a name, you could easily navigate a city based on building landmarks (such as church bell towers), a city’s public squares, and the city’s public art. During the middle of the Renaissance, public art began to even become a competition among cities – who could have the most public art and who could have the best public art.

As I eluded to earlier, many great places and many successful cities have public art. Rome and Florence and two cities well known for their public art, but cities like New York, Vienna, Paris, Seattle, Rio de Janeiro, and Chicago also have a lot of public art. These are fun cities to be in and their public art creates a little excitement every time to visit a park or turn a corner to see a unique piece. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga, Asheville, Huntsville, and Johnson City and Kingsport have great public art or have started programs to promote public art. Public art can inspire future artists, provide a sense of beauty, and give an identity to these cities.

Lastly, public art provides something for our local citizens to enjoy and something memorable for our visitors. As we work to increase tourism in Elizabethton, we want to create memorable icons and things for visitors to take pictures of and with. Public art should be something that reflects our local culture and community. Think of a time when you visited a new place and years later, as you recall the story or look through a photo album, you say, “Remember when saw that ______ in ______?” When you visit Chicago, you might think of the Cloud Gate; when you visit Wall Street in New York, you think of the Charging Bull sculpture; or when you visit Paris, you think of the Arc de Triumph or maybe the Eiffel Tower. These are all icon that help identify the city.

Just as you hang pictures or other forms of art on your walls at home, so must our community “decorate” to become a more attractive and unique place. What role do you think public art should play in our community? Let’s talk about it!