Columbus delegation ventures to sizzling hot Nashville
There's no doubt Music City has been sizzling with attention over the last decade -- a top city for job growth, a creative and livable community, and home of a vibrant music scene punctuated by its country roots.
But how hot is Nashville, the Tennessee capital that is firing on most economic development and redevelopment cylinders? Look no further than other communities traveling there to get an up-close look at what all the buzz is about.
"Over the last couple of years, there have been over 30 cities that have come here," said Ralph Schulz, president and chief executive officer of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.
On Wednesday, add Columbus to that growing list of community and city leaders making their way to Nashville to pick the brains of those making things happen there. Nearly 140 people from the area -- joined by leaders from Macon and Albany, Ga. -- will depart Columbus Airport for the visit, absorbing a dizzying amount of information before returning Friday afternoon.
This will be the 22nd Inter-City Leadership Conference from Columbus, an annual jaunt organized by the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce. The first trip in 1994 was to Charlotte, N.C., while the group ventured to Austin last year, exploring the dynamics of the Texas state capital. This is the local delegation's second journey to Nashville, having gone there in 1998.
"It's interesting for the Columbus crowd. You've got impeccable timing because of the differences between 1998 and now. That's where the real action has been," said Schulz, who relocated from Colorado to Nashville in 1996 to operate the youth-focused Adventure Science Center. He took the helm of the chamber in 2006.
"From 1990 to 1998 there was a lot of stage work taking place," he said of Nashville's positioning for growth and transformation. "But the real fruition has come since the year 2000. So the timing is good for that group to come here. They'll note the differences."
Amy Askew Bryan, executive vice president of Leadership and Community Development at the Columbus chamber, organized this year's Nashville trip with the assistance of consultant Tom Scott. She said this will be the largest group to participate in the local inter-city visit, and it wasn't a hard sell.
"These trips, I think, have just grown in popularity," she said. "We're seeing a younger group of folks attend, too, which is exciting. A lot of our Young Professionals members are going to be on the trip this year. I think people are just seeing the value in it and want to be a part of it."
The local group will travel via a private charter plane to Nashville. They will stay at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel adjacent to the Grand Ole Opry. Transportation, lodging, food, drinks, and a Thursday night high-rise reception overlooking downtown are included in the $2,150-per-person price tag. Three buses will move the group around the city as they visit various areas, venues and community leaders.
Topics and discussions will include economic and workforce development.
"They don't have a workforce issue," Bryan said. "Nashville is at the top of every young college graduates' list. They go there because the jobs are there, and they know that they're going to find one."
The Music City's educational system also will be part of the visit, as will its comprehensive city plan, the overall branding of the area and downtown development, to include greenways, parks and entertainment venues.
The city quite famously is known for its honky-tonk row on Broadway, with Ryman Auditorium and Tootsie's Orchid Lounge among its most famous and popular venues.
"Riverfront development is always a hot topic, and it will continue to be a hot topic for Columbus. They just built a brand new amphitheater in Nashville that's incredible," Bryan said of Ascend Amphitheater, a park facility adjacent to the Cumberland River that has the city's high-rise downtown as a backdrop.
It is owned by Nashville but operated by concert corporation Live Nation.
Bryan said the Columbus group will also explore an area of downtown called The Gulch, which is a redevelopment district with a mix of retail, restaurants, entertainment and housing, including affordable units.
In essence, the city partnered with private developers to turn a neglected part of downtown into a popular, livable area poised for growth. "There's about 14 different topics that we will discuss," Bryan said for the overall visit. "It's a lot of stuff. It's intense."
A veteran of the Inter-City Leadership Conference series is Peter Bowden, who joined the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau in 1995 and has missed only four or five trips since then. He did make the journey in 1998.
"The CVB goes for a lot of reasons," said Bowden, president and CEO of the Columbus bureau. "It's the networking. It's the educational aspect of it, the things that we can learn. We go to see how they do conventions, how they do meetings, signage, how they do things differently or better."
Bowden said he will be using his smartphone and iPad to take notes and pictures during the fast-paced trip, which sometimes includes peeling off from the main group to catch specialized conversations with the Nashville people.
Last year in Austin, he recalls, there was discussion about the need for a convention hotel in Columbus.
Austin is contemplating building a large convention center hotel there and explained to the Columbus group the complexity of making such a project a reality, including mistakes that could and should be avoided.
Bowden also explained the overall conference is about making friendships and connections with other people who might become "resources" later on if a project begins to take shape locally.
He also agreed with the sports analogy that visiting such a large city as Nashville -- with a regional population approaching 2 million -- is akin to playing against someone who is bigger, better and faster in order to improve your own skills.
"You're always trying to reach just beyond your grasp, and it helps you grow," he said. "And that's always been the CVB's philosophy. Can we be better tomorrow than we were today?"
Even Nashville sees plenty of room for improvement, Schulz said. That's why his city has been doing inter-city visits of its own, traveling to several cities out west in recent years.
"We go to cities where they're doing good stuff that we need to be doing," he said. "For the past two or three years, we've had a real transit emphasis because Nashville has been lagging on that, and we needed to go to places like Denver and Vancouver and Salt Lake City, that have really emphasized transit. So, usually, education and transit are big parts of our agenda when we go to other cities."
In fact, transportation issues are such a major focus of Nashville's leadership that it was a key element of the city's recent contentious mayoral campaign, which ended up with Councilwoman Megan Barry being elected mayor. Her inauguration was Friday, making her the city's first female mayor.
"They kept saying they don't want to become the next Atlanta," Bryan recalled of the political advertising she saw during pre-visits to Nashville to set up this week's trip.
Schulz boiled down Nashville's current popularity to the fact that city and state leaders took a progressive approach to growth and development through the Great Recession of 2007-2009. "We sort of mapped out Nashville's performance in previous recessions," he said.
"So we had forewarning that Nashville could pull out of it quickly if we did things right during the recession."
That meant moving forward with a convention center project, investing in education and workforce development, and establishing an Entrepreneur Center, which draws people with creativity, imagination and drive.
"There's a lot more people who consider entrepreneurship their path to prosperity when you're in recession," he said of the center, which has been a significant engine for Nashville.
"About 24 percent of our economy is created by entrepreneurs. That's about 8 percent higher than the norm. It's the creative people that are associated with the health care industry and the music industry that really fuel that entrepreneurship."
When it came to downtown Nashville redevelopment, with The Gulch a key component of that, Schulz said that has been accomplished by public-private partnerships.
But the key dynamic there was bringing in investors and developers who actually wanted to see the city and its downtown succeed, knowing that would ultimately lead to people returning to the area and spending money.
"When a developer like Market Street (Enterprises) undertakes development of The Gulch, part of what they're attempting to do is advance the community, to take a dead part of the community close to the center of the community and turn it into a place that's really valuable and prosperous," Schulz said.
"So a starting point for our developers is they believe in the value of creating more value in the community. It's not just about making a profit."
For Bryan, the Nashville trip is shaping up to be special also because of the helpful embrace and welcome they have received from the Tennessee city in planning and coordinating this week's event.
She has worked on seven trips thus far at the Columbus chamber, this being the third in which she has headed preparation.
Schulz said his city's welcoming mentality comes from the fact that Nashville itself has been doing its own inter-city visits elsewhere for 25 years and has found them productive, in essence helping to generate great ideas and make the region what it is today.
"When we go to other cities, they roll out the welcome mat and we hear the people who have made things happen in those cities, and we just feel an obligation to return the favor. It's like a pay-it-forward kind of an attitude," he said.
"There's no question that people walk away from Nashville with a positive impression. But the real reason we're happy to host these cities is because we've been hosted in other places and we know what a positive difference it made for us."
This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 10:11 PM with the headline "Columbus delegation ventures to sizzling hot Nashville ."