For the past 12 years, I have been proud to write the City Journal column for Memphis magazine, where I was given the opportunity to write about politics, race, economic development, talent, and more.
Beginning with its the recent issue, I am now a contributor to Inside Memphis Business, a sister publication to Memphis magazine under the banner of Contemporary Media, which also publishes The Memphis Flyer and Memphis Parent.
The company – headed by CEO Kenneth Neill – has an outstanding team of professionals working on magazines, and I am looking forward to working with the editor of Inside Memphis Business, the renaissance man, Jon W. Sparks.
For my inaugural column, I focused on how discussions in Memphis often turn more on personalities than policies, using the current debate about the future of EDGE as an example.
Here’s the column:
It is often the case that important discussions on critical issues break down around personalities rather than policies, and we’ve seen it again with the recent debate about economic development in Memphis and Shelby County.
There were some who immediately sided with Richard Smith, who is chairman of the Greater Memphis Chamber and scion of the FedEx founder. Others promptly supported EDGE and its president/CEO Reid Dulberger.
Many took sides before the discussion was seriously under way.
Visionary downtown developer Henry Turley once wryly said: “In Memphis, we pay people a lot of money to tell us what we want to hear.” That’s why Smith, as head of the Chamber, was an unexpected person to shatter the normal veneer of positive spin to roll out suggestions for attracting higher value economic development targets to our community and to question the ROI for EDGE, the city-county agency that has eliminated local taxes of about $500 million over its seven-year existence as incentives for new and retained jobs.
The controversy over Smith’s suggestions arose because of a feeling that they had arrived fully formed and were developed by a small group, which seemed to contribute to the unforced error of a proposal to change minority business from a mandate to an inducement in the PILOT program, an idea quickly abandoned because of an immediate firestorm of criticism.
In the past 15 years, our community has launched multiple economic development plans; we’ve chased magic bullets and big projects; we have wrestled time and time again to get workforce development right; we have created a public entity, EDGE, that was supposed to accelerate and improve our economic results; and the Greater Memphis Chamber formed the Chairman’s Circle with much the same goal.
Despite all this, for at least a decade, the regional economy has been underperforming when compared to peer cities that the Memphis region used to outpace on economic measurements that matter the most — jobs growth, GDP growth, income growth, and educational attainment.
To read more, click here.
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Have any of the leaders, whoever they are, taken the time to realize that Census Bureau estimates so far this decade have reflected that the entire nine-county Memphis metro area is losing large numbers of residents to domestic outmigration and that DeSoto County so far this decade has not been the growth rate leader among Mississippi’s counties as it was in 2000-2010? Have they noticed it but but have not wanted to deal with it publicly? Or have they simply not noticed it? Do they still believe that the only major local population problem is people moving out of Memphis? Do the census estimates indicate that the area faces deeper economic problems than the Memphis problems alone? jcov40
Jimmie, It should be no real surprise that people are choosing to leave both Memphis and the entire Mid South region. This part of the country is a highly undesirable place to live and work. Memphis the core and it’s huge problems have infected even the suburbs of Mississippi proving people just can’t run away from these issues. It’s unlikely to ever improve much as the problems are so severe. It’s a very sad scenario for those who call this area Home.
Anon: I would hardly blame Memphis as the core of the issues. There are simply more desirable places that people in the Midsouth are choosing to move too. For example, both Little Rock and Nashville have far more natural attractions (outdoor recreation) than Memphis. With less natural attractions, our city has less margin for building venues/attractions that don’t improve our quality of life. Our city is improving but must stay focused.