SB&D's Ten Top 10s 2006

Ten Places in the South that have Undergone an Economic Transformation

By Mike Randle

Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Economic transformations can be good or bad, but they are never indifferent. Obviously, the economic transformation parts of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have undergone since the storms of 2005 cannot be viewed in a positive light right now. But the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, signed by President Bush in December, is a significant piece of economic development legislation. It will help rebuild the areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that were affected by Katrina and Rita and we hope it comes sooner than later.

But one thing that will help both the Mississippi Gulf Coast and South Louisiana, particularly New Orleans, is that a major storm can take away people and structures, but it cannot take away the fact that the areas surround the mouth of the Mississippi River. Commerce, in the form of huge ports and oil and gas production will return and flourish as they have for generations. In other words, South Louisiana and Mississippi are currently paying for where they are located on the Gulf Coast. Ironically, it's that same location that will bring both back economically.

Oklahoma City

Almost 11 years ago terrorists bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building. The tragedy shook the nation. While the bombing will forever be remembered as one of America's most visible tragedies, today it represents a period in time when Oklahoma City chose to move forward and transform itself economically into one of the South's most vibrant major markets.

The year after the bombing, Forward Oklahoma City -- The New Agenda -- was created, followed by Forward Oklahoma City I and II. The aggressive economic development campaign resulted in nearly 50,000 new jobs created in Oklahoma City in the ten-year period from 1996 to the end of 2005.

In 1998 several of nine major Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) were underway in the central business district of the city, including a new baseball stadium, the mile-long Bricktown Canal (similar to San Antonio's Riverwalk) and a new coliseum. The original MAPS initiative was funded by a temporary one-cent sales tax increase that was used for the construction of about $350 million in new downtown projects.

After a convincing win in the polls, MAPS was approved for an extension, ensuring the funding for more than a hundred proposed projects. Today, those projects MAPS targeted have helped economically transform the Oklahoma City metro area. Like many economic transformations, you can see the change, sort of a before and after verification that the people of Oklahoma's capital city decided to place their future into their own hands.

Alabama

The incredible performance of Alabama's economy over the last four years is just now receiving the recognition it deserves in the national and international press. We would like to take this opportunity to note that we named Alabama "State of the Year" for its economic performance in our annual SB&D 100 ranking three years ago. It has won "State of the Year" every year since.

Markets such as Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile are being cited for their economic diversity and job generating prowess. But the economic transformation in Alabama over the last several years is so complete that places in Alabama like the Shoals region, in the northwest portion of the state, Dothan in the southeast and Gadsden in the northeast have seen their unemployment rates drop by as much as ten percentage points in the last 10 years -- from 13 percent to three percent. We feel very comfortable writing that no state in the South, maybe in the entire nation, has had a more positive economic transformation than Alabama has in the last five years.

Memphis

I was driving through Memphis in 2002 and was blown away by the amount of redevelopment that was going on in the downtown area. I was informed by my guide that at the time about $2 billion worth of construction was underway. By looking at the scaffolding attached to many of the older buildings, it looked like more than $2 billion. It seemed every building we passed was having some kind of improvement done to it.

Go ahead, visit Memphis and check out its central business district. Like Oklahoma City, there are few places where you'll find a more impressive economic transformation.

Neshoba County, Miss.

This rural east Mississippi county has been transformed economically like no rural county in America and it wasn't accomplished in the traditional way. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians opened a casino in Pearl River, Miss., in 1994 and the Tribe now employs almost 10,000 people in the Magnolia State. Over the years the Choctaws have spent about $2 billion in a variety of enterprises in Mississippi, including the investment of industrial parks, joint ventures with businesses locating in those parks as well as retail establishments and golf courses, all in addition to its huge investment in the casino.

Baton Rouge

How can you not include Louisiana's capital city this year in a top 10 ranking of markets in the South that economically transformed themselves? Well, there could be an argument in the word "themselves." Leaders in Baton Rouge may not have transformed their community themselves. Rather, it was changed for them by the effects of Hurricane Katrina. But leaders in the city are doing what they can to make the best of the situation, where hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of people have moved to the city from the New Orleans region. Not unlike New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Baton Rouge's economy has been transformed like few others in the past year.

Chattanooga

Ok, this market has received plenty of ink for its transformation over the years. We've all heard it before. Chattanooga: an economic transformation in which it ditched its dirty, smokestack, manufacturing past for a clean, white-collar business future that doubles as a highly successful tourist destination. That rap is a decade old now. The transformation we are giving Chattanooga in this article has to do with its coming full circle with its manufacturing past. Officials in the River City want to tap into that past by luring an automaker to the area's Enterprise South industrial park. Don't be surprised if they pull it off.

Little Rock

The opening of the Clinton Library and an unbelievable redevelopment of its riverfront motivates us to put Little Rock on this list. Arkansas is a Southern state that's about to be discovered in a huge way and leading the way is the state's capitol and largest market.

Austin

The reason you are seeing so many surprising markets on this year's economically transformed list centers on two things: the hurricanes of 2005 and the fact that markets like Austin, Charlotte, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Orlando and Dallas/Fort Worth, among many other large Southern markets, economically transformed themselves years ago.

But in the case of Austin, which was the poster child of positive economic transformation in the late 1980s and all but one year of the 1990s, the Texas capital city had to relearn how to transform itself again. I made a phone call to someone at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce in 1999. That person told me, "Oh, we don't have to practice economic development here. It just comes."

Well, what comes can also go and that is exactly what happened to Austin from 1999 to 2003 as tens of thousands of jobs were lost in a variety of industries that dealt with computer programming, computer hardware and dotcoms. No market in the South took it on the chin harder than Austin in this last recession. Yet, today Austin has retransformed itself economically. Samsung is about to announce a huge new chip plant in the region and every other industry in "Hook 'em Horns" land seems to be growing and thriving.

Rural Virginia

Rural Virginia, particularly Southside and the Southwest regions, are undergoing a huge economic transformation. Money is being spent on some really impressive new infrastructure and the deals are beginning to pile up. Case in point: Russell County, located in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, recently landed CGI-AMS' information technology center. The deal includes a $6 million investment and the creation of 300 high-tech jobs. The state of Virginia, through its tobacco settlements, is pouring millions into rural Southside and Southwest Virginia. It's paying off and it makes up the final place in the South where an economy has been transformed.