All the Way to Jackson

Ninety minutes northeast of Memphis and two hours southeast of Nashville turns out to be quite an optimum location to grow a city – certainly that is what the City of Jackson has done over the past generation.
        "Jackson is a perfect example of a community which 25 to 30 years ago instituted a strong public-private partnership, and set strategies in place to become the kind of city they wished to become," says native son Matt Kisber, who represented the area for 20 years in the state legislature and who now serves as the state's commissioner of economic and community development. "I'll never forget my father being involved in 'Goals for Jackson.' It helped establish the framework, then in concert with local and state government, they developed a team to set about fulfilling them."
        With improvements to transport infrastructure, healthcare growth and progressive utility leadership came locations from corporations like Procter & Gamble, Delta International Machinery and Toyota. The latest project, though, comes from another native to the town – home décor retailer Kirkland's – which is planning to occupy a built-to-suit, 771,000-sq.-ft. (71,626-sq.-m.) distribution center sometime in mid-2004, to be built on 80 acres (32 hectares) in Airport Industrial Park by New York-based REIT Lexington Corporate Properties Trust and another Jackson homegrown success story, construction firm H+M Co., known for being on the cutting edge of distribution.

See the SITES Tennessee Dept. of Economic & Community Development www.state.tn.us/ecd Tennessee Valley Authority www.tva.gov Memphis Regional Chamber www.memphischamber.com J. M. Mullis, Inc. www.jmmullis.com ClientLogic www.clientlogic.com Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce www.chattanoogachamber.com Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce www.nashvillechamber.com NAI Saig Co. www.saigcompany.com

        "For several years, we have been providing our design and construction services to the direct-to-consumer, catalogue and e-commerce/fulfillment industry," says Roger Cook. "We have become very familiar with facilities that require special features such as ESFR, work platforms and mezzanines, MFL firewalls, and high-cube requirements."
        But the deal is not about being a homer. Like all the other facilities springing up in Jackson, it's founded on a solid bottom line. Backed by a locally driven payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) program, the company will sign a 15-year lease with two five-year options to renew, as well as the option to expand by another 400,000 sq. ft. (37,160 sq. m.). The facility will not only accommodate planned store growth over the next four years, but will immediately help the balance sheet by replacing three leased facilities for roughly the same amount of money – although the company is paying out $1.2 million in lease termination fees.
        "We have been pursuing a strategy of planned, incremental improvements in our distribution capabilities for several years now, and consolidating our distribution operations under one roof is an important step," said Robert E. Alderson, Kirkland's president and CEO. "We currently distribute approximately 75 percent of our goods through our facilities in Jackson, and the new facility will give us the capacity to further increase the volume and quality of shipments to our stores."
        Kisber says Jackson's textbook model for economic development has its Tennessee counterparts in all size categories: Chattanooga, Clarksville and Murfreesboro/Rutherford County, for example. Chattanooga's effort is on the largest scale, involving the dual marketing of both a downtown resurgence and its Enterprise South Industrial Park, with enough space for a "mega-site" occupier.
        All of these communities illustrate a lesson Kisber says former Gov. Ned McWherter (in office from 1987­1995) taught him as a young legislator: "Plan your work and work your plan."