Attracting and retaining jobs

Bill Adams, TVA Economic Development target market specialist for automotive assembly site consultants, says, “My goal is to find the best location for a prospective industry’s needs while saving them time and money and reducing investment risk factors.”

Today’s economic-development world is fast-paced, competitive and global. Through TVAsites.com, a comprehensive GIS-based land and properties database, TVA offers businesses immediate access to information that can help them with expansion and relocation decisions.

Bill Adams displays TVAsites.com, which helps companies find the best locations.

TVA target market specialists are focusing recruitment efforts on key industries—automotive, plastics, life sciences, food, and distribution/warehousing—while nurturing businesses growing up in the Valley.

Steve Morrison (above, at control panel) started Uni-Tec Roll Inc. four years ago in the Bessemer (Ala.) Business Incubation System. He has expanded with help from TVA Economic Development loans and now has annual sales of $1 million.

TVA’s Economic Development staff works with our customers, communities and stakeholders to make life better in the Valley. In FY 2005, TVA’s economic-development efforts helped retain or attract some 57,000 Valley jobs. These include 650 jobs at a T-Mobile call center in Chattanooga; 860 at Jewelry Television’s distribution headquarters in Knoxville; 300 at Cullman Casting Corporation, an industrial manufacturing facility being built in Cullman, Alabama; 400 at Baldor, an electric-engine manufacturer in Columbus-Lowndes County, Mississippi; and 250 at a Benson International truck-and-trailer-body plant in Trigg County, Kentucky.