Kingsport Spirit

By Jeff Fleming

I was taught early in life that whenever I received a pay increase, I should invest a portion of it for the long term.

The advice was simple: if I never got accustomed to spending all of the increase, I wouldn’t miss the money. More importantly, the earlier I invested it, the more time it had to grow.

That was not always easy.

There were a lot of things I did without in those early years. When we bought our house in 1985, our mortgage rate was around 13 percent. Soon children came along. Money was tight, and it would have been easy to look at the immediate pressures and give up on long-term plans.

I’m glad I didn’t.

At this stage of life, I think about that advice a lot, and I am grateful I listened to the wise counselors who came before me.

After all, I’m a planner by training. It wouldn’t make much sense to spend a career planning for communities and fail to plan for my own family.

The principle they were teaching me was compound interest.

You earn a return not only on what you invest, but eventually on the returns themselves. The earlier you start, the more time compounding has to work.

Communities work much the same way.

I recently wrote an article titled “Sullivan County’s 25-Year Economic Reset.” Looking back over the quarter-century since the 1999 Economic Summit reinforced something I have long believed: community progress is better measured in quarter-centuries than in quarters.

That is what I mean when I call Kingsport a 25-year overnight success story.

Much of what looks like sudden momentum today was built slowly, one investment at a time, over decades.

Twenty-five years ago, manufacturing was changing, longtime employers were restructuring, jobs were being lost, and population growth had slowed. It would have been easy to pull back and begin managing decline.

Instead, we kept investing in Kingsport.

We invested in infrastructure, schools, downtown, neighborhoods, economic development, parks, tourism, small business, workforce development, playgrounds, and quality of life.

I grow weary of the term “game changer.” Not every investment was transformational, nor did it need to be. Many successes seemed small at the time: a new employer, an expansion, a restored building, a road improvement, a school investment, a new restaurant, a new attraction, a neighborhood improvement, a family choosing to move here.

Each was another deposit.

And success created confidence.

A business invested and another noticed. Someone restored an old building and the property next door looked more promising. Better infrastructure created new opportunities. Strong schools helped attract families and employers. Visitors supported restaurants, hotels, and shops. New residents created demand for housing, services, and retail.

One investment began producing returns that made the next investment more likely.

That is community compound interest.

Yesterday at lunchtime, I drove around downtown looking for a parking place. For a moment, it was frustrating.

Then I caught myself.

What a great problem to have.

Downtown was busy. Restaurants were full. Businesses were active. People were on the sidewalks. Years of investment in streetscapes, buildings, events, restaurants, housing, small businesses, and public spaces had produced a return I could see simply by trying to park my car.

The successes seem to be coming more frequently now, but they did not suddenly appear. They are the compounded return on decades of persistence, confidence, investment, and reinvestment.

In my own life, I am glad I did not give up on the future when the present was difficult.

Looking around Kingsport today, I think it is fair to say the same long-term approach has served our community well, too.