"Gig City," as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest — and now one of the least expensive — high-speed Internet services in the United States. 

..."It created a catalytic moment here,” said Sheldon Grizzle, the founder of the Company Lab, which helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. “The Gig,” as the taxpayer-owned, fiber-optic network is known, "allowed us to attract capital and talent into this community that never would have been here otherwise."

After years of pushing the City and foundation leaders to think about digital infrastructure as a key to economic development, I find this story to be kinda depressing. The same location atop big internet pipelines that makes us appealing to data centers could be valuable for other connectivity options as well -- options that the Chattanooga model suggests work pretty well.

Sorry, dead horse, to whack you yet again, but...are our econ dev people looking at the right things and operating off a coherent, 21st Century plan?

We made a decent run at GoogleFi, and then...what?

Comments

[Billy Jones]

It's the point I've been making for years, Ed, all our economic development "gurus" do is develop real estate. They have no other talents, no other desires and no capacity to do anything else. Right now Zack Matheny is making a show of pointing his fingers at the Partnership when in fact every incentive package Zack has brought before council has been nothing more than a real estate deal. The pot calls the kettle black and no one calls him on it.

Until the Greensboro City Council takes the lead and reins in the real estate developers nothing will change as the developers can only think short term profits. They've cut their own throats and are too dumb to know they're bleeding us all to death-- themselves included.

Real estate development is and always will be an economic indicator, not the economic driver our "leaders" and economic development "gurus" make it out to be. It never brings the returns they claim and it never will. Take for example:

"Imagine an airplane landing at an airport and everyone gets out and gives each other a million bucks, then gets back on the plane. That's $200 million in economic activity, but it's not any benefit to the local economy."

Yes, the reference is to the Superbowl but the numbers game works the same way.

[Hugh]

Next year or two we'll see city council hopping on tour buses headed to Chattanooga to see how they "did it". Dejavu.

[Billy Jones]

There's no river in Greensboro, everybody back on the bus.

[Kim]

The river is in an alley on S. Elm.

[Billy Jones]

What? Nobody argues with me any more?

[Danny Thompson]

Ahh... One of the proudest moments working on Council - the fact we came up short should not be overshadowed by the example of how we can come together to build for the future. Kinda Makes me miss living in the City

[Billy Jones]

Danny Thompson, you were part of the problem when you voted against municipal owned broad band systems. And now you have the audacity to say you're proud. Did you even read the link Ed posted?

"It takes 33 seconds to download a two-hour, high-definition movie in Chattanooga, compared with 25 minutes for those with an average high-speed broadband connection in the rest of the country. Movie downloading, however, may be the network’s least important benefit.

“It created a catalytic moment here,” said Sheldon Grizzle, the founder of the Company Lab, which helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. “The Gig,” as the taxpayer-owned, fiber-optic network is known, “allowed us to attract capital and talent into this community that never would have been here otherwise.”

Since the fiber-optic network switched on four years ago, the signs of growth in Chattanooga are unmistakable. Former factory buildings on Main Street and Warehouse Row on Market Street have been converted to loft apartments, open-space offices, restaurants and shops. The city has welcomed a new population of computer programmers, entrepreneurs and investors"

Thank goodness you lost your bid for reelection.