More National Recognition for the Gig City

A lot has been made over the last few years of EPB and its offering to the Chattanooga area internet speeds much higher than the national norm. That's the topic of this Youtube video from HP Matter and Fast Company, part of a series on the tech industry in America. I won't lie, the national recognition is nice.

Chattanooga is getting an Innovation District

This article was originally posted on the Chattanooga Times Free Press website. Click here to see the original article and find out more information.

Economic promise spreads out like a bull's-eye on the city's grid of streets and buildings, over the start-ups and investors and the electric company that feeds superspeed Internet service to all of them.

The Innovation District -- its coming announced boldly last spring, its makings kept quiet until Tuesday -- will span a circular 140 acres, anchored by the Edney Building in downtown Chattanooga.

It will be the first innovation district for a midsized city, according to local officials, a place where new companies are born, talented creatives carve out compelling ideas and existing businesses expand.

As if to prove the point, Co.Lab, the nonprofit business accelerator that has juiced so many of the city's start-ups, expects to relocate to the building in April. It will be the anchor tenant.

"You've got to move fast," beamed Co.Lab Executive Director Mike Bradshaw, after Tuesday's announcement. "I'm moving ahead!"

The timeline to get things up and running is short: Private developers are expected to have ownership of the building by Feb. 24.

"It's ambitious," said Ken Hays, president of the Enterprise Center, the nonprofit organization that Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke in April 2014 charged with spearheading the project.

Indeed.

The Enterprise Center in November entered an agreement to buy the Edney Building from the Tennessee Valley Authority for $1.3 million. It's under contract now. On Monday, a request for proposals for the building went out; as soon as the Enterprise Center owns Edney, it will be sold to a private developer. Hays said several are interested. The minimum price must be $1.35 million to cover the cost of Enterprise's purchase and $50,000 in due diligence expenses.

Architects are working on the space. The 10-floor building at 1100 Market St., which was built around 1950, shouldn't need much work, Hays said.

For now the district is just the geographic area designated, which includes EPB, Society of Work, Lamp Post Group, Causeway and Coyote Logistics, to name a few. It also includes locations that are being redeveloped, among them the Fleetwood Building on 11th Street owned by SwiftWing Ventures and the Fidelity Trust buildings on Cherry Street.

A task force will form in coming weeks to determine whether additional elements, such as tax incentives, should be structured for the district to lure new businesses, Hays said.

Like Enterprise South, home to the Volkswagen plant and Amazon, the district should drive growth, Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said.

"It's another economy that we're really excited about," he said. "People will be able to come here and create jobs."

Photo by Angela Lewis/Times Free Press.

Of course, that's happening already with Chattanooga's start-ups. But putting an address on something clearly called an innovation district gives it heft, Co.Lab's Bradshaw and others said.

"I think sometimes you need a visible sign, a visible place," said Charlie Brock, CEO of Launch Tennessee, the public-private partnership dedicated to supporting high-growth entrepreneurs. Launch announced Tuesday that investments in early-stage companies throughout the state last year totaled $276 million, 31 percent more than in 2013. East Tennessee, including Chattanooga, accounted for about $28 million of that.

Having a hub also helps with serendipitous collisions, Brock said, people of like minds running into each other and encouraging one another.

Officials didn't offer projections for the number of jobs they aim for the district to create. Boston's innovation district says it added 200 new companies with 5,000 new jobs in its first three years.

Co.Lab plans to hold all of its events in the Edney Building, including GigTank. It also expects to offer short-term leases to start-ups, fledgling companies that aren't far enough along to be ready for the city's incubator.

For now, though, about 170 TVA employees and contractors work in the Edney Building and are being relocated to the main Chattanooga office complex. After the sale, TVA plans to lease a few floors on a short-term basis. TVA spokeswoman Gail Rymer said the sale of the building, which TVA has used for nearly 65 years, is part of its overall corporate downsizing as the agency cuts its annual operating costs by $500 million.

Staff writer Dave Flessner contributed to this report.

Contact staff writer Mitra Malek at mmalek@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6406. Follow her on Twitter @mitramalek

How Much Is Your Rent?

We're keeping it short and sweet this week. Here's a chart detailing the average rental prices for 2 bedroom apartments in various US metropolitan areas. Chattanooga isn't listed on here, but you can get an idea of what rent is like here by checking out other regional cities. We don't own this data, it originally came from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Rent Is Rising Fast in Chattanooga

A sobering reminder that explosive economic growth of the kind Chattanooga has been experiencing has its stumbling blocks. This article from the Chattanooga Times Free Press lays out the rental and leasing situation in the Chattanooga housing market.

Pictured: Not Chattanooga

Put simply, the rise in population, coupled with the increase in construction, has steadily driven prices up. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does tend to make things harder for lower-income and long-term residents who are not used to the higher cost of living.

Want to Start Your Own Business? Consider Chattanooga.

Nooga.com, a local web news site here in Chattanooga, recently posted an article

referencing another article. Track with me here. The original article came from a website called Wallet Hub, which is, in Nooga.com's words, a "personal finance social network."


No idea what that means, but it did rank Chattanooga #21 out of #150 on a list of the best US cities to start a business.

#21! While that may not seem like a fantastic spot, keep in mind that that puts Chattanooga ahead of places like Texas, New York, Atlanta, and most of Florida. This means that not only is Chattanooga a good place to start your business, but that it is also a good place to invest. With a growing population and plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship, investing

Click here to see the full article from Wallet Hub, complete with maps and more in-depth analysis of the process of compiling the list.

Why Real Estate Investment Is Better Than Stocks

Oldies, but the goodies.

Most people would probably agree that when it comes to longer term investments, the stock market will, 9/10, be more profitable than real estate. And probably less work to maintain and sell.

But is it? Or is the value of real estate investment simply understated or misunderstood? Mark Ferguson, real estate broker and blogger at BiggerPockets.com, disagrees.

Click here to read his list of 9 reasons why Real Estate is a worthwhile investment, and even better (he claims) than investing in the stock market.

Chattanooga's Making Headlines Again

Chattanooga was recently featured in a piece from CNBC. The article comments on the transformation of Chattanooga from a dirty town of crime and industrial decline to a vibrant, growing city full of life and business opportunity.

Highlighting the city's internet speeds, recently built manufacturing plants, and revitalization of downtown and the riverfront, the article has many positive things to say about the direction Chattanooga has taken over the last few decades.

Though not everything is peachy, and more than a few residents and small business owners worry about getting steamrolled as the city makes way for development and big business, on the whole the picture looks good, and the city is optimistic.

Not bad for a city that once had the distinction of being called "the dirtiest city in America" by Mr. Cronkite himself.

You can read the full article here.

News Flash: Chattanooga is an Awesome Place to Live

This article originally appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. You can find it here.

Livability.com has named Chattanooga to its Top 100 Best Places to Live.

A news release said Chattanooga scored high in education, amenities and health care.

"Great cities are more than just a check-list of bars, coffee shops and museums," Livability.com Editor Matt Carmichael said. "Our goal was to collect the best data available, from the best sources and the best partners to gauge the true measures of livability. Access was important, but so were utilization and affordability.

"By using data from the public sector, the private sector and nonprofits focused on these issues, we have compiled an Index that celebrates America's great cities and towns."

Livability.com describes itself as a website that ranks quality of life and travel amenities in small and mid-sized cities in America.

Check out Livability's Top 100 here.

Check it! Chattanooga also made it onto the Top 10 Downtowns, and the Top 10 Beer Cities lists.

1GB Internet for A LOT Less

The gig is going on sale — for 77 percent off. EPB cut the fee for its super-fast gigabit-per-second Internet connection from $300 to $69.99 a month on Tuesday and upgraded all residential customers with 100 and 250 megabit-per-second services to the gig.

That boosts the number of gig users in Chattanooga from 10 to 2,915.

"When we started, we weren't sure how to price a gig because nobody else had one," EPB CEO Harold DePriest said. "Over the last four years, we've expanded the number of customers, and we've found out just how strong our network is and what the costs are as we go to higher levels. So today we're comfortable taking the price down."

It's a move that supporters say will put Chattanooga at the front of the charge into the next generation of Internet usage -- and one that critics say sounds good but won't really affect the typical Internet user.

Widening the availability of gigabit-per-second Internet speed could lead to new technologies and applications that are unimaginable now, said Sheldon Grizzle, air traffic controller at the Co.Lab, a local business accelerator.

"Just like when electricity was invented, we didn't know how it would be used," he said. "It's a similar case here. We don't know how it's going to be used, but I guarantee we will find ways it will be used. It's a short-sighted view to say you can't use it right now."

He sees future applications in video conferencing, education, manufacturing -- just about any industry. At a demonstration last month, a dancer in The Public Library and a dancer across town in the Theatre Centre performed and interacted with each other via a live video stream made possible by the gig.

But immediately, most residential users won't notice much of a change in normal surfing speeds between 100 mbps and the gig, said John Kellar, vice president of solutions delivery at appendTo, a software development company. About 99 percent of EPB's new gig users are residential accounts.

"Is it awesome?" Kellar asked. "Yes. But for the average person, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. You'd be rocking at 100 mbps."

What will immediately impact Chattanooga's EPB customers is a string of upgrades and price reductions the city-owned utility started Tuesday. Besides bumping 100 and 250 mbps users up to the gig, all 50 mbps residential customers will be automatically upgraded to 100 mbps at no additional cost, and EPB no longer will offer 50 mbps service to residential customers.

Instead, from now on, EPB residential customers will have two choices for fiber-optics Internet: either 100 mbps for $57.99 or 1,000 mbps (that's a gigabit) for $69.99 per month.

Business customers will be automatically upgraded to at least 100 mbps, and will have the option to upgrade to the gig. The automatic transition to the higher speeds should be finished by Oct. 1.

EPB can afford to drop the price and increase speed because of improved network efficiencies and a renegotiation that lowered the price EPB pays for its Internet connection, said John Pless, spokesman for EPB.

City officials and leaders took the long-term view Tuesday, praising the wider availability and potential of the gig network.

"What I think we're seeing is an investment, a true investment in the future of our city and all that we can do," Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said. "That spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship is around us everywhere."

Still, local tech experts agreed that most Chattanoogans won't need or use gigabit speeds -- at least not yet. Mike Smith, an infrastructure engineer with IT firm Claris Networks, said he is on EPB's 50 mbps plan at home.

He's glad he'll be upgraded to 100 mbps, but he won't pay the extra $12 a month to get the gig.

"I'm not even using the 50 mbps personally," he said. "I'm budget conscious, and I'm not going to pay $70 for something I won't use."

But, he added, the potential of the gig is undeniable.

"As we move more and more into the cloud and away from traditional cable, it will become more important," he said. "It's overkill for now, but not for too many more years."

Right now, the city's gig Internet is limited by what servers it's connecting to, Kellar said. A website hosted on a server without a gigabit network won't run at a gigabit speed.

"It's like if you hook a fire hose up to a garden hose," he said. "If the garden hose is feeding the fire hose and you turn it on, you're still only going to get a garden hose amount of water in the fire hose."

But that's already starting to change, Grizzle said. Gigabit networks are popping up in New Zealand and Australia. Google fiber brought gigabit-per-second speeds -- at $70 a month -- to Kansas City, and plans to hook up Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, next.

"We are so far ahead of the curve that it's hard to wrap our minds around," Grizzle said. "And that's disconcerting at times because you're so far ahead. But I'd rather be way ahead than way behind."

He added that he'll pony up $70 a month to get the gig at his home. Kellar said he thinks the new price will draw new customers.

"It's just one of those things," he said. "Does the average person need a gigabit? No. Does the average person need a Ferrari? No. But if you offered me a Ferrari for $70, I'd buy it."

This article originally appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and can be found here. Contact staff writer for the Times Free Press Shelly Bradbury at 423-757-6525 or at sbradbury@timesfreepress.com.