Helping Small Business Grow in Elizabethton through Co.Starters

Small businesses are the backbone of any community and our country. This statement, I’m sure, comes with little surprise to most people. As a matter of fact, over half of the business in Carter County have less than 5 employees and just over 75 percent have less than 10 employees. We also estimate that just under 1 of every 4 workers employed in Carter County work for a small business with less than 10 employees. Imagine the impact if ¼ of the jobs in the county disappeared!

This is the reason small business and entrepreneurship development is such an important objective for our Department. Recently, we have partnered with the Northeast Tennessee Regional Economic Partnership (NeTREP) to bring a new offering for small businesses and entrepreneurs to Elizabethton – Co.Starters.

Co.Starters is a 9-week class targeted to help entrepreneurs take their business ideas and turn them into reality. This is a great opportunity for those who have been thinking about starting a business to get in and learn more about the process and how to be successful. Having been through a portion of this class before, it is also very beneficial for existing small business owners who are looking to improve their business or add in another product to their business.

The course will cover identifying your customer, dealing with competition, developing your messaging/marketing, determining your revenue stream, and identifying your startup needs and costs. The course can be intensive with weekly assignments and a lot of material that will be covered in the 9-weeks. You will also hear from existing successful small businesses and get advisement from business professionals regarding starting your small business. The best part is, once you’ve completed the course, you have the formula and materials to go on and continue to develop and improve your business or start another business over-and-over again.

The classes will be 3-hours long every Tuesday evening for 9-weeks. The classes will start February 12^th, but the registration deadline is Wednesday, February 6^th. The cost for the course is $90 (which is $10 per class) and is open to anyone who lives in or is wanting to start a business in Elizabethton, Carter County, Johnson County, Unicoi County, and Washington County. The course is limited to 12 participants on a first-come-first-serve basis. To learn more or register, visit www.Elizabethton.org/CoStarters.

The development of small business is the future for our community. As those small businesses grow, their success will become the success of our community. And remember to do your part, support our local, small businesses. Let’s talk about it!

Littering Has an Impact on our Economy

I recently attended a Keep Carter County Beautiful (the former Carter County Proud) meeting and was astounded by the reports of the group on some of their street and highway cleanups. Milligan Highway, Old Bristol Highway, and other various roads around the county (including the city) which individuals had collected multiple full garbage bags worth of random trash just sitting in the ditch-lines. Both of these roads are secondary entrances into our county and, while not likely, very well may be used by tourists visiting us. But, logic would imply that if these roads are like this, our major entrances (think 19E and 321/Elk Avenue) very well may be worse.

Once a year, the Chamber of Commerce has sponsored a river clean up. Every year they pull bags worth of garbage, tires, larger plastic toys, and other household items from our rivers. Similar efforts occur at Watauga Lake and Wilbur Lake each year. If you’ve visited any of the little coves on Watauga or Wilbur lake via a boat or kayak, you know what I’m talking about -- plastic bottles, styrofoam cups, and random pieces of plastics from who knows what. Some of this comes from boats on the lake, while some of it flows into the lake through rivers and streams, but regardless of where it comes from it makes us look bad.

Imagine you plan a family vacation in the mountains out west. You’re looking for something affordable, yet relaxing with things to do nearby. When you arrive, however, you find fast-food bags thrown in the ditch lines, rubber tires trapped along the side of a river that you’ve paid to float down, or a plastic bottle floating beside you on the lake you're paddle boarding on. I don’t know about you, but that would probably be the last time I would visit that place! Sure, the scenery is great, but the trash just ruins that picturesque image of that place.

This could easily be Elizabethton and Carter County. As we work to improve the tourist economy in our county, we must keep in mind that we are opening our home to others. Surely you wouldn’t invite friends over and leave your house a mess. We need to do the same to our community. Save that fast-food bag in the car until you get home or your destination. Many businesses and restaurants have garbage cans right outside their entrance that you can use. Take advantage of our free, County operated recycling centers, return used fluorescent bulbs to Lowes, or plastic bags to Ingles or Food City. Help keep our home ready and prepared to accept visitors. After all, they’re helping us and our economy more than we’re helping them! Let’s talk about it!

New Incentive Policy Benefits Everyone

As reported in the Elizabethton Star, the Elizabethton City Council and the Carter County Commission have recently approved an incentives policy to promote the growth and recruitment of new industry and businesses to Elizabethton and Carter County. I’ve had a few people ask what the policy was all about and why do we even need an incentives policy, so I thought I was write about it.

The policy that the Council and the Commission passed, gives the authority for the respective Industrial Development Boards to give incentives to companies meeting certain requirements. These include things like hiring a minimum number of people and providing health care and a retirement plan for those people, building an addition to an existing facility, and expanding equipment at the facility. Additionally, this policy also gives these same incentives to tourism-based businesses – which is now unique only to Carter County in Tennessee.

Having this policy in places gives companies and economic development staff the assurance that incentives can be offered. Essentially, most companies don’t want their business aired in a public meeting – especially if they’re negotiating on an expansion – to help protect their stock-holders and prevent their competition from finding out. Without this policy in place, every time a company wanted an incentive they would have to go before City Council to negotiate one agreement and before the County Commission to negotiate another agreement which may be vastly different. This policy streamlines this process for the business.

It’s also beneficial for the government and tax payers in that we’ve developed the policy based on what the true return-on-investment of the business will be to the tax base. Unlike some incentives in the past, where we’ve arbitrarily given all the property taxes away with little to no consideration to the fiscal impact on the city and county, this policy takes those elements into consideration. It offers a workforce incentive based on existing ratios of workers living in Carter County, payroll to sales tax, and city to county sales tax. This looks at return-on-investment by ensuring what the city and county give in workforce incentives comes back in the form of sales tax revenues.

A similar analysis was done (albeit much easier to calculate) with real property and personal property taxes and in these incentives, we only incentivized the increase in the property taxes that would have been paid on the expanded building or new equipment – like tax increment financing. This helps ensure that the city and county will continue to receive the revenues they have always received from these businesses in order to pay for the public services that they still consume.

Lastly, to prevent the incentives from getting too out-of-hand, we have capped them at 40% of what the existing company already pays in taxes. Keep in mind, that an industry may pay $40,000-$100,000 in property taxes annually and when the city or county decide to fully abate their taxes the government lose all that money at once – which could easily be a 2-3 people’s salary and benefits. Capping the incentive at 40% of will ensure that the company will pay at least 60% of what they’ve always been paying in taxes while still giving them relief on any capital expenditures.

This policy was intentionally written to protect the tax-payers while incentivizing existing and new companies and its adoption serves as a win-win-win for the companies, governments, and tax-payers. Let’s talk about it!

Want New Shopping in Elizabethton? Shop Local Now.

I hear a lot from citizens who ask me to bring in a particular retailer or restaurant. Right after the ask comes this comment, “If I want to shop/eat at that type of establishment I have to go to Johnson City or Bristol!” Let me tell you, I understand! There are times that I find myself going to Johnson City to eat or shop verses a local business. Sometimes it’s due to convenience (I’m already over there for another reason) while other times it’s intentional (I really want a big steak from Texas Roadhouse).

The concerning part is that new retailers and restaurants look at and gather information about how much money is spent in a community before they locate there. For example, if we were recruiting a Ruby Tuesday’s or Cheddar’s and we met all of their site requirements (population size, household income, available property, average age, traffic counts, etc), they would ask some of the existing businesses like Applebee’s, Fatz, and Beef O’Brady’s how business was and how, say, the Elizabethton Applebee’s compared to the other Applebee’s in Northeast Tennessee (did they have more sales than most, how many customers did they have on average, what was the most popular food item, etc). If Applebee’s here responded saying they are below the average for sales compared to the rest of Northeast Tennessee and Fatz says the same thing, that would cause Ruby Tuesday’s or Cheddar’s to seriously reconsider whether they want to location here in Elizabethton.

This story became a reality when a little over a year ago when we were trying to recruit an off-price department store. They were interested in coming into Elizabethton and felt that it would be a good market for this particular brand. Upon my final contact with the real estate manager, she had some concerns regarding information she had received from Peebles and Burkes regarding their sales verses what they anticipated them to be. With the closing of the Rue21 in Elizabethton and with the company having a sister brand located in Johnson City, they ultimately decided not to locate in Elizabethton at this time. Hopefully they will give us another look in a year!

This is one known example. I know that Peebles and Burkes may not have everything we all want, but all I ask is that you give local businesses a first shot. After all, you likely have to drive near or right past downtown or the West Elk commercial area to get to Johnson City! The same goes for our local restaurants. It’s fine to go to Johnson City or Bristol to celebrate an anniversary or maybe a birthday, but if you’re just short on time one Friday evening try to go to Fatz, Jiggy Rays, or Primo’s rather than Smokey Bones, Main Street Pizza, or Olive Garden in Johnson City. The more we spend in Elizabethton, the more we help Elizabethton grow. Let’s talk about it!

It's Time to Bring Main Street back to Elizabethton

You may have read a month ago about a meeting with the National Main Street and Tennessee Main Street Directors here in Elizabethton. This was the first meeting of a group of folks comprised of downtown businesses and significant stakeholders. We currently have this small group looking at the benefits, ramifications, and costs associated with bringing Elizabethton back into the Main Street program (we were once members back in the 90s) to help make downtown more cohesive and attractive for new business.

For those who are unfamiliar with the program, the Main Street program is a nation-wide program that helps communities revitalize their downtowns and other commercial districts using a four-point approach -- economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization. A committee is assigned to each of these four "pillars" as they are called. The committee is charged with working within the district to promote and develop their specific pillar. Additionally, a Main Street Director (paid position) must also be appointed to oversee the organization and implement the four pillars within the downtown district. The best way to describe this program is to use the idea of a mall. A mall is essentially a commercial "district" comprising of many separate and privately-owned businesses. Just like a mall has a company that manages the design or look, economic balance, and promotion and public perception of the mall, so too is the role of the Main Street Director and the Main Street board.

The Main Street program is a proven model that has been used across the country by hundreds of city and communities. The best part is the same model is proven for both small cities such as Jonesborough and larger cities like Murfreesboro or Kingsport. Because of the hundreds of cities that utilize the program nation-wide, joining the Main Street program gives us access to all those communities to discover what works and what doesn't work without having to try and find out ourselves. A small benefit of becoming a Main Street community is being able to obtain additional grants for downtown programs.

For Elizabethton, becoming a Main Street community provides an outlet for interested citizens to get involved in the success of downtown, a point person for downtown businesses wanting to develop a new festival or promotional event, and a group solely dedicated to seeing downtown grow and succeed. Just as successful malls have great management companies, the same applies to great downtowns. As our group moves forward to consider bringing this program to Elizabethton, we ask for your support and your involvement. After all, it's your downtown. 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!