Rural King

Evansville is a nice and interesting city. It has a very nice downtown with a couple of mid-rise towers, but mainly low-rise buildings dominate. It has one of the more impressive courthouses in the state, but that's subjective, esp. in a state where it seems like every county has a pretty impressive stone courthouse of substantial architectural design. The city appears from what I read to have a pretty healthy economy, pretty fair city governance, and a impressive young and up-coming mayor. Interesting side note: The city has the 3rd oldest baseball stadium in continuous use in the country, Bosse Field. The Evansville Otters of the independent Frontier League play there, which is not affiliated with MLB.

I have probably been to over half the counties in the state, but the major cities and county seats I can recall off the top of my head are - Gary, Crown Point, Michigan City, Lafayette, South Bend, Elkhart, Indianapolis, Evansville, Terre Haute, Logansport, Monticello (went to Indiana Beach all the time as a kid), Winamac, Rensselaer, Rochester, Valparaiso, La Porte, Kentland, Newport, Williamsport, Fowler, Sullivan, Vincennes, Princeton, Nobelsville, Knox, LaGrange, Bloomington, New Albany, Anderson, Bedford, Kokomo, Richmond .........Quite a few more in southern and eastern Indiana I can not think of off the top of my head.

The fiance and I have been looking at Washington D.C., so it raises several questions about neighborhoods folks might be able to help me flesh out a little. What is the neighborhood/area around Walter Reed in the "District" like? This is an area of interest for us. Silver Springs and College Park are also two other areas that we are really starting to learn about, how do they compare in the scheme of things of living, working, and commuting in the city. Laurel is someplace else I have looked, albeit it further out. We are really just starting the process of looking, so any comments on these areas, or any other areas anyone would suggest looking at would be great. Pretty much we are just trying to learn about some neighborhoods for good starting points in our search for what might suit our needs/wants in a neighborhood best. Easy access to mass transit and an ability to walk to various types of amenities would be big pluses.

Absolutely fantastic pics. Of course I especially like those terrific trolley scene pics, although I find the fireman pic very compelling as a unique image of a moment in time in the life of the city. The lighting in all the pics added a lot IMO as well. Great job all around. Hope to see more from time to time.

Dyersburg receives 722,000 dollar grant for downtown urban renewel The Dyersburg State Gazette has reported that a Community Enhancement Grant has been awarded for the renovation of downtown Dyersburg. The $722,000 grant is part of a $2 million dollar plan to redevelop and enhance the downtown square around the historic Dyer County Courthouse. Plans include the burying of overhead electric, phone, and cable lines; along with new sidewalks, streetscaping, lighting, and benches. Dyersburg and Dyer county for their size are very progressive in their efforts to improve the quality of life via enhancement projects like this and their aggressive economic development policies. The Dyer Chamber Commerce plays a very big role in both of those aspects, and it would be probably hard to find a better COC in the state for a county of this size.

I heard ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber had been working on something for Clarksville but the Nashville Post article I saw referenced of course is for subscribers only.....so I figured it was only a matter of time before another media outlet would pick up the story and divulge it for free....thus leading it here. LOL This would be HUGE! I so hope Clarksville lands this chemical plant. The economic benefits such a plant and employment boost could have on the city could be staggering. The direct payroll and that from subsidary contract work for local businesses (tool & die, commercial supplies, etc) would tremedously boost the ability of the city draw in new retail, dining, and commercial businesses. Not to mention the shot in the arm to the residential construction in the city. The tax base of the city would of course also go up, which would hopefully enable the city to operate without raising taxes and still have extra funds for new enhancement and infrastructure projects.This simply would be great for Clarksville and the State of Tennessee. Matt Kisber for Governor if he pulls this off after landing VW - not the mention the countless other smaller plants and businesses that have come to or expanded in TN under his tenure as ECD Commissioner.

^ LOL Gotcha - I was thinking you were saying the city only had one Starbucks which seemed weird for the population, so I just chalked it up to different demographics. Maybe your Starbucks is the better one, thus the reason for the long lines .

4 Wal-Marts but only one Starbucks? Demographics are weird, we have 3 Starbucks in Jackson and only two Wally-Worlds - albeit the downtown Starbucks is getting the axe with the recent cut-back in stores by corporate.Over here we can also relate to the lack in grocery chains - 4 Krogers - 1 Food Giant owned Market Place - and one substantial independent "Camps" makes one want at least another option - Schnucks, Publix, etc. - even if all the Krogers are well-ran and offer great variety. As for thoughts. I think that moving forward with merging the city and county is something that should happen, but the benefits of consolidating governments will have to be sold and re-inforced to county residents for some time to come. As the city grows as the ever larger percentage of the county's population I think it will become easier to sell to the the county residents. I would wager that this growth will help re-inforce and maintain the seperate identity of Clarksville from Nashville.

I read in a couple of places that the Music Star overbooked for a 4th of July trip into the city for the fireworks show. Reports said the train left lots of folks at the stations along the route. Anyone know if this is true or know anything about the story?

^ Thanks for the links! Great to read about the progress of downtown BG. The city needs to keep up it's efforts in it's downtown redevelopment efforts and those of it's industrial recruitment. The city has a whole lot of potential to raise it's profile and image sigificantly in the coming years, and it needs to make sure it capitalizes on that potential while it's out there at it's peak.

I think "worst" or "best" lists have to be taken with a grain of salt. Some like business preferences for locating operations can be indicative of trends, albeit with a subjective slant fo those firms surveyed; while other lists that rank a place a good place to live can vary wildly on the subjective measures they use in their determinations. If a place is gaining/retaining jobs, gaining/retaining population, and overall has a stable and positive environment I think it's hard to say it's a particularly bad place to live and/or raise a family. The city is growing at a pretty quick rate, so at end of the day it appears for lots of people and businesses their own personal subjective views of the city are positive ones. So what a ranking says is fairly irrelevant if the facts on the ground say otherwise, no?

The possible relocation of a division of the Jackson National Life Insurance Company to either Cool Springs or the AT&T building without incentives sounds great. This is a very positive sign that the Nashville metro is becoming quite attractive business locale via its own synergy and merits, perhaps enough so that incentives will play a less important role in luring new businesses/industries during these slower economic times nationally.

The majority of the workforce in Clarksville, and in most of Tennessee, have skill sets that are more in line with manufacturing employment, so it makes sense to me that cities and the state try bring the most and best jobs in this category as possible. White collar jobs are not very useful if folks won't qualify for them or have the skill sets to tranistion into them. Cities of course still need to try to attract white collar jobs to diversify their labor-force and create new opportunties for younger more diversely trained workers entering the labor market, but when the majority of your workforce would benefit from blue collar manufacturing and/or service sector employment, then that's what you have to go after. My understanding and experience is that most Japanese and German manufacturers treat and pay their employees very well. Unfortunately the examples I can think off the top of my head that use "temps" in the fashion described are all U.S. based manufacturers, which is not to say it's exclusive. It also seems to be mainly the US auto makers, and esp. some of their subsidary supply firms, who are having to cut wages, use temps, etc. to stay competative against their better managed competitors who have not had not incurred "legacy" benefit liabilities from operating within the US labor market for decades. If Clarksville lands VW I think you will be pleasantly suprised at how good an employer and corporate citizen the city will have landed. I have never seen or heard of a city that has a foreign owned or domestic auto-maker who has not reaped substantial benefits for its local workforce and community. Look at Princeton, IN; Smyrna, TN, Bowling Green, KY; Canton, MS, Spartanburg, SC, etc. I doubt any of those cities would trade their plant for a white collar operation, as that is simply not the right demographic fit for those cities or their workforce at this point.

^ Without a doubt re-designing the project would add millions in costs and be more hurdles for the project. I think however if this project is to ever become reality in it's current scope it's probably going to have to re-designed to either include office space to draw a new sector that will commit funds to the project, or re-designed downwards. Either way I think most of us are probably at the point were we can agree this project is probably not going to move forward in it's current form anytime soon barring some unforseen event(s) altering the reality of the fundamentals. The only alternative thus seems to be more money being spent to design something substantial and profit making for the site, over sitting on millions in investment that may not have a return for years, or ever - resulting in a substantial loss in time and capital funds. I still think at the end of the day in a few years we will see a subtantial and bold project go up on this site, be called Signature Tower or named something else due a redesign. The city continues to see good helathy growth, so we just have to be patient. Good things come to those wait, even if those good things are not exactly how we originally invisioned them or hoped they would turn out.

Kentucky has had a similar falling off, both are states that have active established communities on other boards, it may just be those boards at this time continue to be the preferred venues. Basically all it would take would be 3 or 4 dedicated forumers in either state to get things going, but until we find those dedicated folks it may be slow going as more passive forumers tend to fall off if regular discussion is not taking place and content is not being driven. It will happen though, we just have to be patient with folks discovering UP and finding it a furtile ground to discuss their views and news on local developments.