Photo above: Dr. Brian Ratliff speaks during the roundtable discussion at Food City corporate headquarters. By Scott Robertson Virginia Education Secretary Atif Qarni, a former civics teacher from Prince William County, made his first foray into Southwest Virginia in March, meeting with educators and business leaders. “We want to focus on literacy in general, but on financial literacy – a couple of years ag ...

Photo above: The 30-acre portion of Partnership Park II in Bristol slated for grading work is highlighted in this rendering, courtesy NETWORKS Sullivan Partnership. By Scott Robertson After hosting presentations from NETWORKS Sullivan Partnership and the Northeast Tennessee Regional Economic Partnership (NeTREP) , the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development announced in March it will awar ...

By Scott Robertson Mission Health, which operates six hospitals and health facilities in Western North Carolina and competes for medical professionals and patients with Northeast Tennessee-based Ballad Health, has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to merge with Nashville-based HCA. Ballad Chairman and CEO Alan Levine said the day after the announcement he does not anticipate significant changes in the competi ...

By Scott Robertson US News & World Report (USN&WR) ran an article recently about Johnson City, Tennessee. The thrust of the piece was that even though the city has high availability of quality health care, it does not crack the list of top 500 healthiest cities in the nation. The same statement could be made in general terms for the entire region. Health care is available, but the population is less ...

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Welcome to the second edition of Market Facts, the younger sibling of The Business Journal’s Book of Lists. In the following pages, you’ll find facts that define our region, from demographics to wage data to housing and retail information. New this year is a section on data gathered from a 50-mile radius of Tri-Cities Airport, the center of the Tri-Cities region. We often preach that economic developers don ...

The hole and the hill. Dirt from the hill that rises above the runway must be moved into the hundred-foot valley next to it. Photo by Scott Robertson By Scott Robertson The Tri-Cities Airport Authority moved forward in February with plans to spend the money necessary to begin site work for the next phase of Aerospace Park, even as a state legislator sought to take over the process. At its Feb. 22 meeting, t ...

KIRES Professors Alexander Brumlik and Sam Evans. Photo by Scott Robertson By Scott Robertson A pair of reports issued last month by the King Institute for Regional Economic Studies (KIRES) show the interconnectedness of the two topics in the regional economy. The reports, released around the 10th anniversary of the Great Recession, give room for guarded optimism. Immediately following the recession, there ...

Alan Levine, Ballad chairman and CEO. Photo by Scott Robertson By Scott Robertson When Ballad Health Chairman and CEO Alan Levine met with The Business Journal in late February, he probably would rather the conversation had centered on plans for a new pediatric trauma center, or a residential addiction treatment facility, or pediatric emergency departments in Kingsport and Bristol. Instead, he opened the co ...

By Scott Robertson At some point in the last five to ten years, workforce became the most important factor in business site selection, outpacing location, available infrastructure and incentives. At some point in the last two to three years, opioid-related issues became the most important factor in workforce disqualification, outdistancing education. The effort to stem the opioid crisis, until recently only ...