Former NFL Player Tackles Neighborhood Revival
Published Apr 07, 2004
LeRoy Thompson has always been a team player; today, his Knoxville-based firm, BDT Development & Management, works to rebuild economically depressed neighborhoods.
He may have left the NFL, but former football pro LeRoy Thompson is still making winning moves.
A former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, Thompson developed an interest in community service during his NFL years. When he returned to his hometown of Knoxville, he served as executive director of the Wesley House Community Center and was determined to establish a company that would help rebuild economically depressed neighborhoods. Today, he is doing just that.
“We want to grow to help our community grow and help minority businesses grow,” Thompson says with pride.
Thompson is now president and chief manager of BDT Development & Management LLC, a full-service firm that develops projects from pre-design to design, construction, management and leasing.
BDT is only in its second year of operation, but is already engaged in several major projects. Among them is a $9 million project to build a 60,000-square-foot medical facility for Cherokee Health Systems, a comprehensive health services organization based in East Tennessee.
“He’s bent over backwards to be helpful,” says Sandra Greear, vice president of community relations at Cherokee Health Systems. “We have a very good working relationship [with BDT].”
Another project under way is the $6.5 million redevelopment of Five Points, the area where Thompson grew up. Included in the plans are a grocery store, restaurant and other business venues. Additionally, the company is heading a $3 million project for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which is moving its corporate headquarters from Kentucky to Knoxville.
Tennessee State Representative Joe Armstrong (D-Knoxville) is one of Thompson’s strongest supporters and recently helped to connect him and Darwin Walker, a former NFL player for the Philadelphia Eagles and owner of a structural engineering firm, with other state legislators and staff at the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Thompson said he learned more about state contracts to minority businesses, how the state of Tennessee attracts businesses and the incentives that are available.
“I met LeRoy when his grandmother helped me in my first campaign for office in 1982,” Armstrong says. “These guys who come from humble beginnings have done well and are using their success to create jobs and opportunities in their communities.”
Thompson said his focus is to build a strong company that gives back and is a role model for other minority businesses.
“There is a shortage of African-American businesses in Knoxville,” Thompson says. “Black talent in Knoxville is leaving for Atlanta, Charlotte or Nashville because they don’t see opportunities here or people like themselves in positions of leadership. That is one reason why I wanted to base my company in Knoxville.”
In five years, Thompson says, he would like to see BDT branded in the marketplace as a small, quality project management and development firm. He hopes that companies interested in joint ventures in development construction or project management with a well-established minority-owned company would “need look no further.”
“We’re small, but we’re capable,” he says.
Story by Jennifer E. Harris
Photo by Harrison McClary
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