Category: economy
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The Mixed Messages of Appalachia
We took the granddaughters to see Toy Story 5 at Hilton Head this week. As we were watching the opening ads, a Mountain Dew trailer depicting a fictitious scene from Tennessee in 1948 popped up on the big screen. A theatre full of people saw a ‘hoedown’ with stereotypical images of Appalachia–bibbed overalls, banjos, and…
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What IRS Migration Data Says About Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia
Every year, the Internal Revenue Service releases migration data based on address changes reported on individual income tax returns. It is not perfect. It does not count every person, and it should not be confused with Census population estimates. But it is one of the best tools available for understanding where tax-filing households are moving…
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Roots and Renewal: Why Kingsport Needs Both Locals and Newcomers
In retirement, I’ve spent a lot of time working on the landscaping around my 55-year-old house. The house sits beneath towering oaks that were there long before the first footing was poured. They give the place shade, structure, and character. The foundation plantings came later, when the house was built. Over time, some of them…
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Kingsport’s Housing Market Is Punching Above Its Weight
People vote with their feet, but they also invest where they see value. The latest housing numbers give us a useful look at the first four months of 2026. Taken together, they show that home sales remain healthy across the Tri-Cities and the Northeast Tennessee-Southwest Virginia market. They also show something worth noting for Kingsport:…
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Kingsport Is Not Just a Place to Work. It Is a Place to Live.
For generations, Kingsport has been known as an industrial city. This is a place built by blue-collar workers, managers, supervisors, engineers, executives, and working families — people who changed clothes before and after work, carried lunch boxes, worked rotating shifts, parked at plant gates, punched time clocks, and helped make products that reached far beyond…
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Kingsport and Maryville: Two Strong Tennessee Communities
Recently, I was asked to compare Maryville and Kingsport. I gave what I believed was a fair answer, but it was worth checking the facts. Make no mistake: my job is to advocate for Kingsport. But I also want to preserve a reputation for candor, accuracy, and truth. Maryville (population 32,553) has earned its place…
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Move to Kingsport: Grounded Growth
Sullivan County Mayor-Elect Zane Vanover coined the term “grounded growth” in his campaign. To my knowledge, he didn’t specify exactly what that meant, but I think I have an idea. The April 2026 Move to Kingsport numbers show a program that has cooled from its post-pandemic peak, but is still producing steady results. For many…
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The Tri-Cities: Inside the Perimeter
Sometimes a map can say what a thousand words cannot. For example, I recently created a map superimposing Atlanta onto the Tri-Cities, TN+VA region. It takes the familiar geography of Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol, Greeneville, Elizabethton, Abingdon, Blountville, Jonesborough, and the surrounding communities and places it over a region most people already understand as a…
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Blair Court
“Blair Court” is one of the new streets in Kingsport’s Brickyard Village, named after Blair & Company. But who were they? To answer that, we have to begin not in Kingsport, but in New York City — in the world of late 19th- and early 20th-century finance, when Wall Street banking houses helped build railroads,…
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The Model City Rewind
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.…
Kingsport Spirit 