Recently released numbers from U.S. Travel Association show tourism in Tennessee hit a record $23 billion in domestic and international travel spending in 2019, marking a decade of consecutive growth. Locally, all eight counties of in northeast Tennessee generated more than $911 million economic impact to the region from domestic travel, up more than $33 million from the previous year. The counties of Carte ...

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia used a town hall in Abingdon Tuesday to express disappointment that the senate had not passed more aid for small businesses before adjourning for vacation, saying CARES Act funding was not meant to last this long. “Nobody expected this to last six months,” Warner told reporters after the meeting. “We need to come back and put additional money into small business support, ...

Bristol, Tenn., Mayor Mahlon Luttrell and Bristol, Va., Mayor Bill Hartley Bristol, Tenn., Mayor Mahlon Luttrell and Bristol, Va., Mayor Bill Hartley took to the Internet Wednesday to take part in the first virtual State of the Cities event. The Bristol Chamber of Commerce has held a live State of the Cities event for the last seven years at the train station, but was forced into the BTES television studios ...

Ballad Health today announced fourth-quarter and year-end results from its 2020 fiscal year, and that report illustrates the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the healthcare provider. During the fourth quarter of the 2020 fiscal year, net patient revenue fell $139.1 million, a 26.8 percent decline from the same period during the previous year. Some of those losses were mitigated by $82.5 million in in ...

The ETSU Foundation will lease space at the Model Mill Development that will become the new home for the Office of University Advancement at East Tennessee State University as well as the ETSU National Alumni Association. ETSU anticipates relocating the offices to the Model Mill Development sometime in October of this year. “The restoration of the Mill has been a long anticipated project for this region and ...

HMG Clinical Research hasannounced plans to participate as study sites for, and begin enrolling participants into, the Phase 2/3 global study sponsored by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE of an investigational vaccine, BNT162b2, against SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the current global pandemic. Holston Medical Group study site is one of more than 120 clinical investigational sites around the world that will coll ...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has announced that the Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is investing $4.4 million in the state of Tennessee to build critical infrastructure needed to support business growth.  The EDA grants, to be matched with more than $2 million in other federal or local funds, are expected to help create or retain nearly 900 jobs and generate $222.2 ...

Two loans totaling $330,000 to the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority (SRRA) were converted into grants recently by the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA). The promissory notes for a $220,000 loan to SRRA for the Coal Canyon trail system in Buchanan County and a $100,000 loan for the Original Pocahontas (OP) trail in Tazewell County were forgiven and converted to g ...

To employ 160 making recycled linerboard by 2023 By Scott Robertson Domtar announced August 7 it will cease freesheet production operations at its Kingsport, Tenn., mill and refit the facility to produce linerboard, the material used to make the boxes in which products sold via ecommerce are shipped. The move is part of a company-wide cost reduction strategy aimed at creating annualized savings of $200 mill ...

by Scott Robertson “I’m 71 years old and I’ve never lived through anything like the last six months,” says Jim Fisher, a small business owner in Jonesborough, Tenn. Fisher and his wife Lynnea were at their wits’ end earlier this year. Their commercial greenhouse, Linnaea Gardens, rents decorative plants to businesses and maintains those plants at various locations throughout the region. When you see a ficus ...