Leaders learn what's made Nashville the booming city it is

Coming off a three-day whirlwind tour of Nashville, several Columbus leaders say among the most important lessons they learned were the power of effective planning and establishing a city’s “brand.”

In the 1990s, Nashville leaders banded together and decided to do something about the city’s decaying center and lack of growth. Since then, a series of five-year plans have resuscitated the city into one of the nation’s most vibrant, focusing on its brand as “Music City.” The city’s leadership is currently early into its sixth five-year plan, and the results are palpable, visitors say.

Among the almost 140 people who made the trip, the 22nd annual Inter-City Leadership Conference, CB&T President Billy Blanchard, Columbus Chamber of Commerce President Brian Anderson and Mayor Teresa Tomlinson. All three said effective planning, and bringing the plans to fruition, are the way for a city to move forward.

Blanchard said including as many people as possible in the early stages helps make people feel like they’re invested in it.

“One of the things that I noticed that they do real well in their planning process is they gather feedback from a very broad and diverse part of the community,” Blanchard said. “They go into different neighborhoods, they go to churches, they go to the people in the community, no matter what the race, religion and socio-economic status. They go to those people and they gather input and feedback. So when they get into the planning process, they have a plan that has a tremendous amount of input and support.”

Anderson said going out into smaller sections of the community is more effective than holding large meetings where the public is asked to attend in centralized locations.

“If you try to do just one meeting, you’re usually not going to be effective,” Anderson said. “But if you take it out to the community. You have 60 meetings instead of one, and you try to hit every segment of the population from young people to mature people, and all races. If you do that and get it to be part of your culture, then obviously you’re going to have better plans.”

Tomlinson said her sister lived in Nashville in the 1990s and it was a “do-nothing town” with most off the challenges larger cities face.

“So to see the metamorphosis of that community is amazing,” Tomlinson said. “And I’ll tell you what they relayed that really sunk in with me is something I think we’re beginning to see in Columbus, that is a broad consensus that we can do great things.”

For too long, political “nay-sayers” have managed to convince the public and some leaders that progressive, innovative projects can’t be part of Columbus’ plans, Tomlinson said. But that’s changing, she said.

“Now you see with each passing day, more and more people saying, ‘We can be a great city. We can do these things. We can address these challenges that we have.’” Tomlinson said. “I think we’re literally at a tipping point.

“All the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together. But what’s going to be the last piece is a broad can-do attitude from the citizens, where they demand something exceptional and they don’t believe that they’re a do-nothing, second-rate city.”

Another thing that has helped Nashville to become the vibrant, growing city it is was the decision to recognize how important the music industry is to the city and to embrace it, make it the city’s brand. In discussing how the branding process might help Columbus, Anderson, Blanchard and Tomlinson all used one common word: Authentic.

“One person on our trip said what was so impressive about Nashville is that it’s so authentic,” Anderson said. “They didn’t have to make it up. It’s ‘Music City.’ It’s the history of the community. They have built on that and gotten everybody in the community, all the different organizations, to buy into that brand.

“We need to go through the process and figure out what it is for Columbus that is very real, very authentic, is who we are, and then get everybody to buy into it.”

Tomlinson said that kind of authenticity is absolutely critical for branding the city to be effective.

“Branding is about what you are, not what you want to be,” Tomlinson said. “I think when you try to make your branding about what you want to be, you miss the mark. It’s your authenticity that you’re selling.

“It’s got to be authentic or people are going to think it’s just something that the marketing people made up for you. And you’re a wanna-be city.”

Another reason for Nashville’s success is that its leaders have been able to get the communities and counties that surround it to buy into the Nashville identity, so the entire metropolitan area is branded, presented and sold as Nashville.

“It all starts as Nashville, and that’s instructive to us. We can learn something from that and as a region probably be more successful,” Blanchard said. “This is Columbus primarily, and then when we get into the different counties, we can deal with the bodies that are there, but this (Columbus) is the primary attraction.”

Anderson said Columbus is already moving in the direction of working with the surrounding areas through the chamber’s Regional Prosperity Initiative and other cooperative programs, but there is room for improvement.

“It’s successful, but is it all we want it to be? Could it be better? Absolutely . But it takes continuous effort on those relationships,” Anderson said. “I think we take the foundation that is already here that has led to some success and we just continue to make it stronger.

“We need to be marketing the region collaboratively.”

Blanchard said the value of the inter-city trips is getting community leaders working and learning together, seeing how projects some people are pushing can dovetail with projects others are working on.

“You’ve got on the trip (Housing Authority CEO) Len Williams, who is driving a lot of projects, you’ve got Anne King with Midtown and Richard Bishop with Uptown, you’ve got Justin Kreig and Marquette McKnight who are working on the City Village, you’ve got the mayor and the city manager,” Blanchard said. “They’re all hearing the same things and they’re all talking to each other. And they start realizing how much strength comes from working together. There’s a tremendous amount of collaborative engagement on these trips.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2015 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Leaders learn what's made Nashville the booming city it is."