New economic development group laser-focused on nuclear energy
The brand new organization has adopted Lamar Alexander's term for the area known as the Oak Ridge Corridor.
There’s a new economic development group that has adopted the name that former Governor and later U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander has advocated for years is the region’s brand.
It’s the Oak Ridge Corridor Development Corporation (ORCDC), an entity initially focused on Oak Ridge and Anderson and Roane Counties which are home to residents of the city, but not overlooking the regional opportunities, particularly as they relate to advanced nuclear.
During a recent multi-person interview, we had a chance to hear the history of how the new organization evolved. Gerald Boyd, the longtime Department of Energy (DOE) administrator and now Chair of the ORCDC board, described it as the greatest example of “cooperation and collaboration” he has seen in his 23 years in the city.
That in itself is a pretty powerful statement, but it is backed up by comments from the elected officials, Mike Magill, the new President of the Development Corporation who grew-up in Anderson County, and Boyd. Together with 13 other members of the board, they have adopted a vision statement to “harness the innovative and creative capabilities of the Oak Ridge Corridor to establish this region as the largest nuclear energy hub in the world.”
That’s another bold statement, but again backed up by the Oak Ridge Corridor’s immediate assets that include Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee Valley Authority, the University of Tennessee, the Y-12 National Security Complex, and two community colleges – Pellissippi State and Roane State. Not too far away is a second nuclear degree program being launched by Tennessee Tech University.
Add to that Governor Bill Lee’s commitment to investments in the nuclear industry, and you have a recipe for success.
At a recent meeting of the East Tennessee Economic Council, five leaders of the new organization outlined how they plan to work together in the best interests of the region. We had a follow-up conversation with four of the five.
Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank, who has been in office since 2012, said that the catalytic event that led to the creation of the ORCDC came after Wade Creswell’s election as Roane County Executive and even before Sean Gleason, President and Chief Executive Officer of IB3 Global Solutions, was elected to the Oak Ridge City Council.
“It was their idea,” Boyd says of the organization that came from a first of its kind conversation in the Oak Ridge office of IB3 Global.
Soon thereafter, Oak Ridge hired a new City Manager. Randy Hemann came from North Carolina. With three relative newbies in their roles, although Creswell ran the Roane Alliance for four and one-half years and was Community Relations Manager at ORNL for a little more than three years, it was what Hallerin Hilton Hill calls a blank canvas.
Relative to that point, Gleason cites another contributing factor: the region’s dependence on DOE. He talks about the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission process which “startled Huntsville into doing something” to be much less dependent on a single federal agency. Today, Huntsville, AL is home to the Marshall Space Flight Center, F.B.I. offices, Army missile programs, and rocket research.
He asks simply, “What do we do if these facilities close?”
Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said in a recent interview about the layoffs of federal that published in The New York Times, “We’ve got a pretty good portfolio and it’s diverse. And it’s diverse enough that if one area goes down, another area goes up.”
For the Oak Ridge Corridor, new nuclear seems to be a good bet.
Frank talks about Oak Ridge and the two counties being “a community that is comfortable with nuclear. It is also a workforce message that sells,” adding that new nuclear and the renaissance is bipartisan in nature.
How deep is the support?
Frank notes that the Anderson and Roane County Commissions had a joint meeting as did the two county school boards.
How does a more aligned community pull ahead of others?
Creswell recalls Economic and Community Development Commissioner Stuart McWhorter noting at the final meeting of the East Tennessee Economic Council in 2022 that LG located in Montgomery County because “the community was aligned.”
To that end, Magill added that both the Roane Alliance and Anderson County Economic Development Association are represented on the ORCDC board.
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