Partnership 2020 hopes to lure jobs in five main sectors

By Randy McClain, The Tennessean

When Mayor Karl Dean and Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce's top executives today unveil a new five-year plan to attract more jobs and help existing businesses expand, expect the words innovation, technology and regionalism to ripple through their report.

After several months of work that included comparing Nashville with peer cities such as Atlanta, Austin and Indianapolis, chamber officials will divulge a 16-page study designed to guide economic development in Middle Tennessee over the next several years.

The plan, dubbed Partnership 2020, targets five broad economic sectors for new jobs, including:

-Attracting national and regional headquarters, including major firms' information technology operations, data centers and call centers.

-Adding to Nashville's already vibrant health-care community by attracting new medical headquarters operations, hospital companies and research labs and trying to build drug and medical device manufacturing in the region. Another key focus will be getting a massive medical trade mart up and running on the site of the current Nashville Convention Center downtown.

-Luring more companies in advanced manufacturing, including firms tied to solar energy and other "green" jobs. Chamber officials say such high-tech manufacturers generally have strong pay and benefits and help boost an area's per-capita income quickly.

-Expanding the area's music industry and helping businesses in that sector make the tricky transition to greater digital delivery and marketing of music. Jobs that will be sought go far beyond songwriting and studio work, the chamber said, suggesting the evolving industry will have as much to do with computer software as with lyrics and guitar frets.

Supply chain management is another area of interest. Trucking, air cargo, warehouses and logistics management to move goods into and through the Nashville area will remain a solid job producer because of the city's location as the hub of several interstate highways.

Dean and Ralph Schulz, president of the chamber of commerce, said economic development must take a regional approach as the economy recovers over the next five years.

Innovation wanted

The mayor said greater emphasis on mass transit and improved education are two key areas of concern that the Partnership 2020 plan intends to address. "Nashville's vital core needs to be served more and more by transit," Schulz said.

Nurturing innovative companies and novel business ideas are other planks of the Partnership 2020 plan. Schulz and Dean said the plan calls for economic diversity, including creating an entrepreneur center here to help startup companies get off the ground by putting new business owners in touch with specialists in their field and with possible collaborators or investors.

Jim Wright, chairman and CEO of Tractor Supply, will join Dean as a co-chairman of the Partnership 2020 group.

Avenue Bank President Ron Samuels, who has been involved with the chamber over 20 years of economic development plans, said job-hunting tactics in the past have helped the Nashville area add nearly 234,000 jobs, attract more than 600 new companies and grow the local population by 60 percent over the past two decades.

Samuels said one area where he believes more could be done is with technology transfer from area universities into the business world, basically taking researchers' or professors' bright ideas and using them to build new products, companies and jobs.

Schulz said the chamber also plans to work with colleges to make sure degree programs are offered in sectors projected to create jobs over the next decade. "We want to think about what programs business will need on college campuses," he said.

Chamber officials said their economic development plan doesn't intend to focus only at the top end of the financial food chain.

"We'll also put some effort into anti-poverty initiatives; we want to work on both ends of the prosperity scale," Schulz said. "We're one of the few chambers in the country taking that approach, and we're very proud of it."