Tennessee First in Line

Believe it or not, at least one company is actually leaving Alabama, and taking up residence in Tennessee.
        Pharmaceutical services company Caremark Rx will relocate its corporate headquarters from Birmingham to Nashville, where more than 220 healthcare companies already reside. While real estate specifics are still being worked out, the move of just under 50 employees to office space downtown should be complete by the summer of 2004.
        "Nashville is widely recognized as a center of excellence for the healthcare industry and will offer our company and employees a high quality of life and a healthy business environment," said Mac Crawford, chairman and CEO of Caremark Rx. He added that the company would be looking to Nashville first as its needs for new facilities grow.
        The music capital is also welcoming a $7-million plant and distribution center from Quanta Computer, the Taiwan-based computer manufacturer. According to the state, the company will begin with just 50 employees, but plans to employ 500 in a scant three years. The company is also opening a facility in the Czech Republic. Company leaders said the logistics advantages of Nashville outweighed labor cost advantages elsewhere.

Spreading the Wealth

The Nashville outskirts are doing their part as well. To the west, Bridgestone APM is building a 170-employee plant in Dickson to make shock-absorbent pads and interior cushions for the automotive industry. To the south, Verizon announced it would be hiring 400 people by this fall to staff a new $24-million customer service center in Murfreesboro, where employment could rise as high as 1,250 by 2005. Verizon is receiving a 10-year, $2-million reduction in county property taxes. The company turned down an offer from Rutherford County officials to purchase $27 million in industrial bonds for use in obtaining a building and equipment. Instead, Verizon is leasing a 158,220-sq.-ft. (14,240-sq.-m.) former retail facility, and will invest $24 million in adapting it to its new use.
        A bit further south, in Shelbyville, Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Summit Polymers will locate its fifth North American manufacturing operation, employing 174 people in the production of interior automotive parts and panels.
        Halfway between Nashville and Knoxville, Italian firm GranitiFiandre is constructing a $50-million, 600,000-sq.-ft. (55,740-sq.-m.) tile manufacturing facility that will open in June 2004. Between 100 and 150 people will make porcelain stoneware slabs at the company's first U.S. plant.
        In 2005, a new $124-million engine block plant for St. Louis-based Toyota subsidiary Bodine Aluminum will hit the industrial and distribution mecca of Jackson, creating some 200 jobs and filling a crucial supply niche for Toyota's assembly plants in Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as Mexico.
        Well to the east, Chattanooga continues to perpetuate momentum, driven by a rejuvenation of both its waterfront and its industrial backbone. In a consolidation move, Appliance Controls Group will be bringing 200 jobs to a 124,000-sq.-ft. (11,520-sq.-m.) facility in the Bonnyshire Industrial Park to make gas range components under the name Harper-Wyman.
        Company President Walter E. Cisowski says an initial $3-million investment will be followed by investments of $1 million annually through 2007. After considering expansion in such locations as Mexico, Georgia, Alabama and other parts of Tennessee, he said, it was the regional concentration of appliance manufacturers that helped drive the Chattanooga choice.
        "These companies are our customers and being close to them increases our efficiency and gives us the opportunity to be even more responsive to their needs," he said, in an echo of motives cited by industrial executives across the entire Southeast.