Infrastructure Program Maps New Strategies
Published Apr 07, 2003
The Tennessee Industrial Infrastructure Program was founded in the 1980s to ensure that basic infrastructure was available for manufacturing companies seeking to locate or expand in Tennessee. The funds are available to public entities like municipalities, counties, industrial development boards and even state universities.
“In the 1980s, infrastructure was water lines, gas lines, sewer lines, rail spurs and access roads. Today, it’s all those things, but it’s fiber optics, it’s digital switches, it’s wet labs. It includes a number of features that no one would have conceived 20 years ago, and it will continue to change,” says Matt Kisber, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.
“As we look at job creation opportunities, we look at the type of infrastructure that is required to support that enterprise,” Kisber says. “What we are promoting within the department is that infrastructure is whatever an enterprise requires to support its basic activities. That calls for a much broader perspective.”
Kisber offers as an example the $500,000 TIIP grant to the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board in March, which resulted in an expansion of InsLogic in the community’s Commerce Park. InsLogic, a sales and service support center for the insurance industry, needed a digital network switch, which the grant made possible.
“The company needed this switch, but it will also be accessible to everybody else in the industrial park,” Kisber explains. “It became an investment that definitely retained this company, but could also recruit additional companies with that type of high-tech requirement.”
Photo by Tennessee State Photo Services
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