Kingsport Spirit

Former Mayor Pat Shull has been after me for years to write a follow-up to Margaret Ripley Wolfe’s 1994 book, Kingsport, Tennessee: A Planned American City. That book was not a “Chamber of Commerce” piece that simply celebrated the good points. In many ways, it was a warning.

Wolfe captured Kingsport at a turning point. Eastman Chemical had just been spun off from Eastman Kodak and had become an independent, publicly traded company. The threat was not that Eastman was leaving. The threat was that Kingsport’s historic anchor employer was now operating under Wall Street expectations, global competition, automation, debt pressure, and shareholder accountability.

At the same time, broader forces like NAFTA, offshoring, manufacturing restructuring, Lean Six Sigma, and slower local population growth made it clear that Kingsport could no longer assume one dominant industrial employer would automatically sustain jobs, wages, tax base, philanthropy, and civic momentum.

The old company-town model had to evolve.

And Kingsport responded.

Rather than accept decline as inevitable, the community began asking harder questions about its future. The 1999 Economic Summit helped set in motion a new way of thinking. Eastman remained vital, but Kingsport began investing more deliberately in downtown, schools, healthcare, higher education, parks, the Greenbelt, Bays Mountain, the riverfront, housing, and quality of life as tools of economic development.

That is the larger story behind my conversation with Dustin Fletcher and Justin Lane on The Model City Rewind. They are Kingsport natives who spent more than a decade living elsewhere before deciding they wanted to come home. That gives the conversation a different kind of weight. It is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It is a serious discussion about what Kingsport was, what it became, and what it still has the potential to be.

We talk about the carousel and the downtown renaissance. We talk about the boutique hotel, annexation, growth pressures, newcomers, Riverwalk Park, and the long evolution from a city where almost everything was relatively new to a city that now requires intentional, strategic redevelopment. Kingsport’s original advantage was that it was planned. Its modern challenge is that it must now be replanned, reinvested in, and renewed without losing the character that made it special in the first place.

Today, Kingsport is larger, more diversified, more visitor- and retiree-friendly, and less dependent on a single employer to carry the whole community. The challenges are still real: aging demographics, poverty, infrastructure costs, school funding pressure, housing demand, and the need for stronger job growth. But Kingsport is more resilient than it was in 1994 because it has added more legs to the table: industry, healthcare, education, recreation, relocation, tourism, redevelopment, and a renewed sense of place.

In the podcast, we talk about the daunting task of “remodeling the Model City” — honoring the original plan without pretending yesterday’s assumptions still fit today’s realities. Each generation carries the baton for one leg of the race. My generation was born in the 1960s, raised in the 1970s, and began careers in the 1980s. Dustin and Justin were born in the 1980s, raised in the 1990s, and began their careers in the 2000s.

That difference matters. It brings memory and fresh eyes to the same table.

It is especially refreshing to hear this story through a fresh crop of Kingsport residents — podcasters, influencers, storytellers, and tech-savvy communicators — who are using modern tools to explore something timeless: the Kingsport Spirit. Dustin and Justin bring a different lens to the conversation. They are not simply looking backward with nostalgia. They are asking what the Kingsport Spirit means now, how it shows up in the next generation, and what it might look like in the future.

That is what makes this discussion worth hearing. It connects the city’s original DNA — planning, cooperation, mutual helpfulness, civic ambition, and belief in the greater good — with a new generation that knows how to tell the story in fresh ways.

This is not just a conversation about the past. It is a conversation about whether a younger generation can see a future here — not because Kingsport is perfect, but because it is worth working on. It is about the choices, investments, setbacks, and civic will that helped Kingsport move from uncertainty toward resilience.

Many of you have heard bits and pieces of my story through civic club presentations over the years, but it has never been recorded this way. It’s long, but I think it is worth the time. Throw on a set of headphones and listen at your desk, while you’re driving, or — like me — while you’re mowing.

Listen here: https://www.themodelcityrewind.com/