Business View Magazine - November 2016

112 Business View Magazine - November 2016 Gallatin, Tennessee Investing in itself “If a city doesn’t invest in itself, no one else is going to invest in it,” declares James Fenton, Executive Direc- tor of the Gallatin, Tennessee, Economic Development Agency (EDA), whose website is appropriately named: Gallatin Gets It. What Fenton, the EDA, and the City of Gallatin all “get,” is that in order to attract new busi- ness and maintain its standing as the employment hub for Summer County and the northeast quadrant of the Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area, this city of 34,000 on the Cumberland River needs to continually invest in itself by improving and updating its infrastruc- ture. And that is precisely what Gallatin does. “For the last 40 months, the city has seen about $220 million in capital investment,” says Fenton, who adds that 2,700 new jobs have been created over that pe- riod in the manufacturing, medical, and retail fields. “That’s been a great boon for us and it wouldn’t have been possible without the city investing in itself. And we continue to do that.” Nick Tuttle, Gallatin’s City Engineer talks about some of the recent city projects that have helped it increase its business activity, as well as its population: “Back in 2009, we finished the first phase of our downtown streetscape, right around our public square,” he be- gins. “We went in and took up streets and sidewalks from face-of-building to face-of-building. No work had