Like Spokane, Johnson City Does Best It Can

Can you name the city?

Here are some clues:

Metro area population is about 450,000.

It’s a medical center, a retirement center and a small hub for federal and state government offices.

Pay is below the national average. So is cost of living.

It has a four-season climate, good parks system, no major league sports, and a council-manager city government.

Business and population growth have been steady, but slow. High-tech companies are lacking.

And it ranked at the bottom of Forbes magazine’s recent “Best Places for Business” listing.

While this may sound like Spokane, welcome, you all, to Johnson City, Tenn.

It’s the one place Spokane beat out. Forbes ranked Spokane 161st, to Johnson City’s 162nd and last.

But not dead last, said P.C. Snapp, director of the Economic Development Board for Johnson City and Washington County. The town is 500 miles east of Memphis and 285 miles east of Nashville.

Forbes ranked 162 metro areas of 100,000 or more, using two-year and five-year trends in wage and job growth, and, to a lesser extent, for technology growth and output.

The Forbes article caused no major local buzz in Johnson City, Snapp said. “Of course, we burned all the copies,” he added with a laugh.

Johnson City, as Garth Brooks might say, is Spokane’s friend in low places - at least this one rating. While the towns have similarities, there also are a lot of differences.

Johnson City is a city of just 53,000 in a county of 98,500, but it’s the hub of a tri-cities area with Kingsport and Bristol, each 20 miles away. Thus the larger metro population base.

Johnson City is home to East Tennessee State University’s 14,000 students and a medical school.

Though the area has only 4.4 percent unemployment, downsizings have slowed employment growth, Snapp said, citing cuts at Eastman Chemical in Kingsport and a closure of a Raytheon plant in Bristol.

Among their challenges to recruiting new business, Snapp said, is “no land, or high-dollar land. Our industrial park is full and we want some five- to 10-acre plots for small industries,” he said, adding that Washington County has acquired a 138-acre business park site.

Another challenge, Snapp said, is poor air connections. “We have a nice airport, but direct flights are limited to Chicago, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Charlotte, so we try to recruit firms from those areas that are just one-leg (flights) away.”

Another goal is to work with the university to help grow businesses, especially the program in 3-D computer animation for advanced imaging, which Snapp called “the premier site in the country” in that category. For that high-tech hope, he sees applications for video games, the medical industry and more.

Venture capital is available but a challenge, Snapp said, partly because “there is the perception that the Southeast is slower than other parts of the country.”

Will the Forbes ranking dampen recruiting? Snapp doubts it.

For one thing, he noted there are 329 metro areas in the country and Forbes ranked only 162, missing cities such as Knoxville, 100 miles west of Johnson City.

“We’ve been ranked number one in many other studies, including best places to retire,” Snapp said.

“We try to do the best we can. If nobody tells us we’re deprived, we don’t know it.”

Snapp has visited Seattle but not Spokane. Seattle ranked number one in the Forbes story.

Since the distance between 1st and 161st is only 300 miles, it was easy to do some comparison shopping last weekend on a family visit.

Much of what propels Seattle to the top echelon of “best places” lists was on display.

On a warm, sunny Sunday morning, even hazy Mount Rainier was visible - along with the Olympic range, an armada of watercraft and glimmering high rises - from Queen Anne Hill.

Downtown, a seven-story hotel was imploded to make way for new growth. Watching the debris being hauled away was lunchtime entertainment for the restaurant patrons atop Pacific Place, the glitzy new retail mecca where Tiffany’s and Cartier do battle to see what baubles they can sell to the casual-wear crowd of entrepreneurs and professionals.

Seattle’s prices rank higher, too, with $8 movie tickets ($5 economy hour) and $1.40 a gallon self-serve unleaded gasoline.

High-tech business “clusters” ranked highly in the Forbes analysis, along with access to top research institutions.

Those are things Spokane needs to continue to cultivate. When a Key Tronic, Packet Engines or Johnson-Matthey downsizes, we need more alternatives to attract and retain entrepreneurs and key workers in the high-tech sector.

On the other hand, judging by the very slow-moving, 25-mile westbound parade on I-90 returning to Seattle on Memorial Day, not everyone stayed home for the holiday.

Could it be that Eastern Washington has its share of attractions, too? Of course.

A few years back, Outside magazine ranked Spokane among the top 10 places to live and work.

Ratings are fickle. They are snapshots of cities using selected filters on the lenses. Not everyone sees the same picture. If it’s raining buckets of water and you are at a dead stop in miles of I-5 traffic, the view of Seattle is different than from pristine Queen Anne vistas.

But if nothing else, for Spokane and Johnson City, the Forbes piece can serve as a millenial wake-up call.

No time to panic about economic development assets, but certainly no time to snooze either.