How will Nashville grow?

Nashville is expanding at an enormous rate, with expensive, new condo units being flung up all around the city, the Predators professional hockey time avoiding a sell-out to a Canadian millionaire, the proposal of the tallest building in the South, the relocation of several corporate headquarters and other accolades.

Why the sudden growth?

The U.S. population is re-aligning itself toward the South and Southwest, and with population growth comes progress — or at least that’s the idea. Favorable climate and low taxes (and zero income tax) help attract companies to the city, and there’s plenty of room for growth. A string of two exceptional, pro-growth mayors helped direct the tempo of the city’s expansion.

Mayor Phil Bredesen (who then became Tennessee’s multi-term governor) and Bill Purcell helped direct a solid course of economic development, but not one very reliant on economic incentives. Some saw the absence of tax breaks and benefits as a good precedent for economic development, while others disagreed. Nashville’s new mayor, Karl Dean, is left with the daunting task of continuing the work of Bredesen and Purcell.

The City Paper takes an intelligent look today on what we may expect from the Dean administration.

Many cities across the country play the incentive game. Nashville has been fortunate in a certain respect. Its economy has been so good that the lack of incentives offered to attract companies has been overshadowed by success in attracting companies.

While Purcell was mayor, Nashville proper landed Caremark Rx, LP and Asurion. The first two located downtown. Those wins as well as other headquarters coming to the region made top Expansion Management magazine’s list of hottest cities for relocating companies two years in a row.

…

In Dean’s office, there is an internal mantra regarding economic development – “We’re open for business but in a thoughtful and responsible way.”

Now, that might cause some people to cock their heads a bit, thinking, wait, “We saw eight years of that already.”

Read the full article in The City Paper here.