Laying the Line

Tennessee answers a myriad of industry infrastructure needs

By Sharon H. Fitzgerald

When Canada-based MetriCan Stamping Corp. cast an eye toward Tennessee for its first U.S. tool and die operation, the new county-owned industrial park in Dickson looked to be an ideal location. Near Interstate 40 and with room to grow, the park offered the strategic location MetriCan needed to reach its customers, automotive suppliers such as Dana Corp., SKD Automotive Group and Magna Corp. Yet the fledgling park needed infrastructure improvements.

Enter Tennessee’s FastTrack Infrastructure Development Program. The community received $287,000 to extend water and sewer service, and the company received about $50,000 to help deal with drainage issues on the site, recalls David Hamilton, president of the Dickson County Chamber of Commerce. The result? A 55,000-square-foot MetriCan factory and 50 new jobs. Over the next five years, the company plans to expand the facility to 150,000 square feet and eventually employ more than 200 workers.

Hamilton says the FastTrack incentives helped turn the tide in Tennessee’s favor. “Basically, MetriCan was impressed with the fact that we could get back to them so quickly regarding incentives,” Hamilton recalls.

That’s the beauty of FastTrack, the state’s program to cut red tape when prospective business and industry come to call. An essential FastTrack component is ensuring the necessary infrastructure for new or expanding enterprises. ECD brings to the table up to $750,000 for infrastructure improvements and training for one project. Sewer and water lines, electrical services, fire rings, drainage enhancements and public roads are eligible for FastTrack funds. “We’ve even gone so far now as to do some fiber optics, because that’s part of infrastructure these days,” says Paul LaGrange, assistant commissioner of business development with the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber says redefining the word “infrastructure” makes Tennessee more competitive. “Infrastructure today is everything we have traditionally thought it to be – roads, electric lines and water lines – to the demands of the new technologies, including fiber optics and broadband Internet access and digital switches,” he says. “In our department, we’ve taken a much broader view of the infrastructure needed to support job creation.”

Thus Kisber hired Eric Cromwell, who helped launch the FedEx Institute of Technology in Memphis, as ECD’s new director of technology development. Cromwell says Tennessee’s smaller communities are recognizing that they are competing for jobs on a global scale. In partnership with the private sector, some are stepping up to the plate to secure the technology-based infrastructure today’s businesses need.

“More so today than at any other time, industry realizes that this is an information economy. It’s really all about the information,” Cromwell says. “We are moving into a services economy in this country, where a majority of U.S. gross domestic product is driven by services. Well, services is mostly about information, so we must have a communications infrastructure in place. It really doesn’t matter what you do, you have to be connected to your suppliers, your vendors, your customers and your partners, and you have to have that cyber infrastructure piece.”

Embracing that broad definition of infrastructure is helping keep Tennessee on the fast track.