Tag: Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development

New REI Distribution Center to Bring Nearly 300 Jobs to Lebanon

Morgan Nicole Veysey

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), and REI Co-op officials announced this week that REI will establish a new distribution center in Lebanon, Tennessee. The new location will create over 280 jobs and will serve as REI’s fourth distribution center in the country.

Governor Lee said,

REI is a respected brand that has been trusted by outdoor enthusiasts for over 80 years, and I’m proud the company has chosen Tennessee for its newest distribution center. Our state’s central location and unmatched quality of life make it the ideal destination for a company so committed to outdoor recreation, and I thank REI for its commitment and job creation in Lebanon.

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Parkway Products to Bring New Jobs to Tennessee

Morgan Nicole Veysey

Governor Bill Lee, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), and Parkway Products, LLC, announced this week the company would be investing $5.7 million to expand existing operations in Greenville, Tennessee. The company estimated an additional 160 jobs will be created over the next five years at the injection molding site. 

“Thank you to Parkway Products for creating 160 new high-quality manufacturing jobs in Greeneville,” Governor Bill Lee said about the expansion. “Tennessee’s advanced manufacturing job creation far exceeds national growth with employment concentration more than 30% higher than the national average. We look forward to seeing how the residents of Greene County will benefit from this new investment.”

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Yet Another Company Abandons California for Tennessee, Announces New Jobs for Volunteer State

Chris Butler

Officials at the California-based Gutterglove, Inc. announced Monday that they will relocate their company’s headquarters from Roseville, California to Franklin, Tennessee.

Gutterglove manufactures professional grade stainless steel gutter guards. Company officials will invest $720,800 and create 20 new jobs in Williamson County, according to an emailed Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development press release.

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Life Sciences Facility to Bring over One Thousand Jobs to Tennessee

The Center Square

Life sciences company Thermo Fisher Scientific announced Tuesday it is building a facility in Lebanon that will employ 1,400 people in Tennessee.

The technology assembly facility, which the company has invested more than $100 million in, will create 400 jobs initially and expand to 1,400 in “the next several years,” the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development said.

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Tennessee Doles Out $108.5 Million in Economic Development Grants in First Half of 2021

The Center Square

The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development awarded more than $108.5 million in FastTrack economic development grants between 51 businesses in the first half of 2021, according to a database from the department.

The largest was a $60 million grant to Ultium Cells for its $2.3 billion investment to create 1,300 jobs with its 2.8-million-square-foot plant in Spring Hill to build vehicle battery cells.

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Governor Lee Announces Amazon Expansion in East Tennessee

Corinne Murdock

Amazon will establish its eighth fulfillment center in East Tennessee, creating 800 full-time employees “to engage with advanced robotics.” Governor Bill Lee issued the announcement on Wednesday in a joint press release with Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) Commissioner Bob Rolfe, and Amazon spokespersons.

Located in the city of Alcoa, the distribution center will overtake property that was once a local golf course by Alcoa Highway and Pellissippi Parkway. According to a press release issued by the county’s development cooperative, Blount Partnership, employees will receive a starting wage of $15 an hour with full benefits and other perks, including 20 weeks of maternal and parental paid leave. 

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New Facebook Data Center Could Make Big Impact in Gallatin, Report Says

Chris Butler

A new report that describes how Facebook’s data centers have impacted surrounding areas could predict how a new one will impact Gallatin.

As The Tennessee Star reported in August, Facebook will invest $800 million to build a new state-of-the-art data center in Gallatin to create approximately 100 jobs. Gallatin officials said at the time that Facebook will hire locally.

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ECD Hands Out Corporate Welfare to Company Moving to Cleveland, Tennessee

Chris Butler

  The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development will reportedly bestow corporate welfare upon a new business in Cleveland, near Chattanooga. This, according to this week’s Cleveland Daily Banner. The reported recipient of this money is called Triumph Sheets LLC, an affiliate of Schwarz Partners. An unnamed representative of Schwarz Partners told The Tennessee Star Friday that no one at the company usually talks to the media. No one at the Tennessee ECD returned The Star’s repeated requests for comment Friday. “The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development will be providing grant funding through its FastTrack Infrastructure Development Program to assist the Industrial Development Board and the city of Cleveland with the costs of railroad infrastructure rehabilitation, Berry said,” according to The Cleveland Daily Banner. “As a result, the Cleveland/Bradley County Industrial Development Board, along with Bradley County and the City of Cleveland, will apply for a FastTrack grant for $500,000 from the state’s TDECD to assist with the infrastructure needs of the project.” In addition, according to the newspaper, “the state will provide $50,000 to offset training expenses, as well as some $2.5 million in job creation, enhanced jobs, industrial machinery and sales and use tax exemption…

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Two Men Allegedly Commit Fraud on Bledsoe County and the Tennessee Government

Chris Butler

  Two men took government money and promised to bring 1,000 jobs to Pikeville in Bledsoe County, but they ended up not fulfilling their end of the agreement, according to various news outlets. They ended up taking a sizable amount of money from the government they weren’t entitled to, according to news reports. “A federal seizure warrant says around June 2017, Karim Sadruddin and Rahim Sadruddin acted through one of their businesses, Textile Corporation of America, Inc. (TCA), to receive a $3 million economic development grant from Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD),” according to the Chattanooga-based WTVC. “The plan was for the Sadruddins to purchase and renovate a textile manufacturing facility in Pikeville, Bledsoe County, Tennessee. They joined then-governor Bill Haslam for a ribbon-cutting ceremony in July 2017.” According to The Daily Beast, TCA “fabricated evidence of work performed” in order to draw grants from the federally-owed Tennessee Valley Authority and the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development. “The FBI alleges that the company’s owners pocketed much of that money for personal use,” according to The Daily Beast. The Sadruddins provided fake invoices and fake wire transfer records as proof that they had already paid for the…

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New Memphis TV Show ‘Bluff City Law’ Wants Corporate Welfare

Chris Butler

Memphis officials want corporate welfare for a new fictionalized drama that could film regularly on location in the city and air on NBC, according to The Memphis Business Journal. The show’s working title — Bluff City Law. The website compares these potential incentives to what state officials gave the ABC and CMT drama Nashville. According to the Memphis-based WMC Action News 5, the show is about a father-daughter Memphis legal team who practice civil rights law. Jimmy Smits stars. Bluff City Law recently filmed its pilot in Memphis, but NBC has not yet committed to picking the show up, according to various news outlets. “City lobbyists and others hope to get up to $18 million in incentives included in the State of Tennessee’s proposed supplemental budget, which is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed budget that was released in March did not include any new money included for film and TV incentives,” The Memphis Business Journal reported. Linn Sitler, head of the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission, reportedly told the website the show could have “a powerful economic impact locally.” “However, there was no new state funding included in the…

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Tennessee’s Electrolux Disaster ‘The Worst Such Deal’ in State History, Financial Expert Says

Chris Butler

The decision to give away more than $100 million in corporate welfare to lure Electrolux to set up shop in Memphis was so bad it was “the worst such deal in Tennessee history,” according to Bloomberg.com. In an article released this week, the national financial news website held nothing back criticizing the deal. As The Tennessee Star reported last month, Electrolux officials announced they will shut down their Memphis plant sometime next year, despite taking all that money from Memphis, Shelby County, and the Tennessee governments eight years ago. The Memphis Electrolux plant employs about 530 people, all of whom will likely lose their jobs when the plant closes. Despite that, Bloomberg said this disaster still won’t stop other government entities from handing out even more subsidies in the future. Bloomberg opinion columnist Joe Nocera interviewed Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe for his piece. “When I mentioned to Rolfe the idea — much favored by academics and journalists — that perhaps communities should stop offering subsidies to lure (or keep) companies, he laughed,” Nocera wrote. “That would be unilateral disarmament,” Nocera quoted Rolfe as saying. Nocera then opined that “it’s foolish to think that subsidies…

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Companies Use Corporate Welfare to Pit Tennessee and Mississippi Against One Another

Chris Butler

One could argue corporations play the Tennessee and Mississippi state governments against one another to get the best corporate welfare deals possible — at the expense of taxpayers in both states. Here’s how it works. Companies wait for Tennessee and Mississippi to pony up their incentives. Company leaders can only accept one of those two deals, of course. Then they set up shop in the state that made the better offer. And sometimes these companies move from Tennessee to Mississippi and vice versa — even if they’re only moving as little as 20 miles away. This has already happened at least twice in the past two years. Two years ago, for instance, Memphis officials handed out $1.2 million in corporate welfare to lure a company, International Distributors USA, away from Olive Branch, Miss., right across the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. At the time, Memphis officials boasted about using public incentives to snag the company away from the Magnolia State, according to The Tennessee Watchdog. This month, something similar happened, but this time it was Mississippi that offered incentives to lure another company, Krone North America, away from Memphis. And Olive Branch, the same city that lost International Distributors USA two years…

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Tennessee, Nashville Officials Say All Is Well For Amazon to Open Operations Center With Up to $102 Million in Incentives

Jason M. Reynolds

Tennessee and Nashville officials say they do not expect Amazon’s brush-off of New York to affect the retail behemoth’s decision to open an operations center in Music City. Amazon last Thursday said it would not build its second headquarters in New York City, called HQ2, because of pushback there, The Tennessee Star reported last week. The retailer faced a battle from some politicians and others over nearly $3 billion in tax incentives, Breitbart said. Amazon was poised to bring 25,000 jobs to New York with a $2.5 billion investment in offices. Amazon said last week in a statement it would not reopen the HQ2 search. The company said it does plan to proceed with another headquarters site in Virginia. The company’s Music City plans have drawn criticism from some, including the Nashville Fraternal Order of Police, who said the city’s $15 million in incentives were “corporate welfare.” With the State of Tennessee offerings, the package is up to $102 million for 5,000 jobs for a $230 million operations center. Jennifer McEachern, communications director for the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, spoke to The Star via email about Amazon. The Star asked her if the state would re-examine the tax…

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Volkswagen Reportedly Demanded Things from Tennessee Officials Before Announcing Chattanooga Electric Car Plant

Chris Butler

Tennessee officials reportedly made concessions to Volkswagen to get the company to construct a new electric vehicle plant in Chattanooga, according to The Chattanooga Times Free Press. But, as the paper went on to say, state residents may not yet see a list of those concessions, which are apparently financial. For that, they will have to wait until new Republican Gov. Bill Lee presents his first proposed state budget in March, according to the paper. Tennessee Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe told the paper Lee will deliver that proposed budget March 4. “Rolfe’s comments came following his budget presentation to Lee in which he asked for a $126.2 million increase in departmental spending for the 2019-2020 budget, which would take effect July 1,” according to The Chattanooga Times Free Press. “The VW project wasn’t included. The commissioner said the amount was determined as part of the negotiations with the German auto manufacturer.” Rolfe told the paper that Volkswagen officials “wanted a definitive number before they made a commitment to expand in Tennessee.” “We are aware they (Volkswagen) had conversations with a couple of other states.” Rolfe told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. As The Tennessee Star reported, last…

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TV and Film Producers Who Cheat Tennessee Taxpayers Might Go to Jail

Chris Butler
tv film production

A federal appeals court just ruled that states that hand out TV and film credits — as Tennessee does — can prosecute people who lie or mislead to get those corporate welfare benefits. Tennessee gave out millions of dollars in incentives to the fictionalized TV drama “Nashville” and more than $300,000 in incentives to the Robin Williams film “Boulevard.” That movie, filmed in Nashville in 2013, was about a man who starts a relationship with a male prostitute. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled film and TV tax credits are property and thus subject to federal mail and wire fraud laws. That means states can better monitor fraud involving TV and film tax credits. The case, United States vs. Hoffman, involved film and TV tax credits in Louisiana. The court ruled “the fraudulent issuance of those credits would deplete the state treasury, meaning Louisiana had a property interest in the tax credits and could prosecute for fraud in relation thereto,” according to Bloomberg. Members of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based free market think tank, have spoken out against those tax credits for years. Beacon spokesman Mark Cunningham told The Tennessee Star…

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