Another Good Week for Local Economy

It's almost getting to be old hat, but it should never be taken for granted when Clarksville makes a national ranking for excelling economically or otherwise.

The past week brought more evidence that the nation is noticing our rapid rate of resurgence from the U.S. recession.

Right now, there is no place I'd rather be in this land than northern Middle Tennessee.
To further prove our impact, CNNMoney.com recently ranked Clarksville as the fourth-best place to launch a business among all midsized cities in America.

That, on top of the forthcoming Hemlock Semiconductor LLC plant, an announcement from Trane that it is launching 17 new products ensuring greater stability for Clarksville's largest manufacturing employer, plus an uptick in new car sales, residential building permits and housing demand projections that exceed any other Middle Tennessee county, plus higher sales tax collections ... and much more.

The CNNMoney.com ranking follows a string of other rankings where Clarksville has compared favorably over the past several years.

In some other rankings we've reported, Clarksville has been No. 1.

Clarksville was the only Tennessee city to appear this time on CNNMoney.com's list of 50 best places for businesses. The list measures various small business indicators and is produced by CNN's Fortune Small Business magazine.

The method of determining who ranked was stringent.

Fortune rated cities based on per capita income, hourly wages, work force quality, crime rates, taxes, foreclosures and population size.

It also reviewed factors such as why entrepreneurs choose locations based on proximity to major cities, smaller, close-knit community size and intellectual/cultural factors.

Local officials note that Clarksville was ranked 22 on the list with a 57 percent increase in gross domestic product during the period — well before Dow Corning/Hemlock Semiconductor Inc. announced its $1.2 billion investment to build a polysilicon manufacturing plant.

Three key elements of our community — Fort Campbell, Austin Peay State University and soon-to-come HS LLC — are viewed by America as our major growth generators.

The news that we're a good place to start a business comes as key economic indicators show Clarksville has been rising out of the recession in recent months, through a combination of statistics for new car sales, local option sales tax collections, home sales and average home values, and more.

I'll allow that some of these numbers could be artificially high, because of major consumer incentives such as the Cash for Clunkers rebate, for example.

And, our local unemployment rate is still a little high, relatively speaking. It's currently 9.7 percent.

But the bottom line is the bottom line ... and ours is rising.

Along with it, our national star is rising as well.

Let's seize the momentum in this all-important fourth quarter, especially with about 3,000 Fort Campbell troops coming home.

We ought to feel good about where we are as a community, and where we're heading.

By Jimmy Settle (October 18, 2009)
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20091018/COLUMNISTS04/910180307/1067/BUSINESS