Larry Jensen Recognized in Business Tennessee

Congratulations to Larry Jensen for his recent recognition as Commercial Real Estate's 101 most influential people. Click here http://businesstn.com/content/200909/2009-cre-101 to read the full list.

More Colleague Achievements

Congratulations to Commercial Alliance President Kemp Conrad! Kemp just received his Society for Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR) designation.

Community Assets

Downtown Memphis
Take a challenge....show me about another Central Business District (CBD) in the southeastern United States which can boast a resident population of 28,000 with growth plans for 50,000 persons, an entertainment district which is the most visited tourist attraction in Tennessee with more than 5,000,000 visitors each year, two state-of-the-art sports and entertainment venues, and a business environment which includes headquarters for AutoZone, Regions Morgan Keegan, St. Jude Childrens' Research Hospital, First Horizon Corporation, and Guardsmark.

When people consider a community for relocation or investment, they often look at the CBD for an indication of the health and vitality of a region. No doubt, the Memphis CBD cup is more than half full and projected plans suggest continued growth and success.

Aerotropolis

Aero-What?
For the past couple of years, the buzzword around Memphis has been Aerotropolis. There have been committees formed, articles written, logos drawn, and meetings held, all because of this one idea. So what does the term “Aerotropolis” mean exactly and what does it have to do with Memphis?

An Aerotropolis is a city that has centered its economy around its airport. Airport cities serve as, “regional multimodal surface transportation nodes and magnets for
business location, commercial transactions, information exchange and leisure activities.” (Kasarda, 2008) Dallas Fort Worth, Detroit and Dubai are cities attempting to recast the local and regional economy and claim the designation. However, Dr. Jack Kasarda holds the Kennan Chair at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill insists only one regional economy is currently an Aerotropolis………you guessed it - Memphis!

The number one reason why Memphis meets this criteria is the FedEx World Hub and the demand it creates for businesses desiring to locate around it. (should we go on? # of packages, shipping times etc.)

New Age of Trade
Cushman & Wakefield has recently designated four cities in the United States as global inland ports where the combination of transportation modes creates a robust global access node.

Along with the Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas regions, Memphis ranks among the top four ports in the origination of, termination of, and value of freight.

Memphis, in particular, has a quadramodal transportation network and global access system with the availability of the four R's of transportation:

River
Rail
Roads
Runways

Memphis has worked to expand and enhance the Quadramodal transportation infrastructure giving Memphis a decided competitive advantage in a global marketplace driven by efficiencies in time to market.


















Memphis International/Top Cargo Airports
Memphis International Airport is the closest America has to an aerotropolis.
With a $28.5 billion economic impact on Memphis it has a higher per-capita impact of any airport in the nation. For example - Atlanta Hartsfield has a $19.8 billion economic impact.
“This century will be characterized by the ‘survival of the fastest.’ That is what you have here: Speed, agility and connectivity."

For the seventeenth consecutive year, Memphis has remained the world's leading airport for air cargo volume. Hong Kong continues to pursue with a strong second place and Los Angeles is the closest domestic airport for air cargo. With FedEx focusing its global market access through Memphis, Paris, and Guang Jo in China, the Memphis airport continues to grow in its leadership role in the Aerotropolis initiative and will soon finish its 20-year strategic planning process.
In addition to FedEx operations UPS operates a Memphis hub and the Department of Defense has just opened a C5A Galaxy base on the airport grounds.

Delta/Northwest merger-Richard Anderson, CEO of the new Delta, proclaimed the Memphis airport as an 'integral' part of the first truly global airline. With low costs of daily operations and landing fees, the airport expects to grow in the next few years including the possibility of additional international non-stops. Average runway taxi times in Atlanta, for example, are approximately 27 minutes while the runway taxi times in Memphis are less than seven minutes.
















Check out this article about Memphis' Aerotropolis from the MemphisDaily News http://www.memphisdailynews.com/editorial/Article.aspx?id=45350

The Memphis Region

The Memphis Region is larger than you think. When you look at this graphic, you see an outer ring at 80 miles from downtown Memphis with Tupelo, Jackson, Jonesboro and other cities at that edge. Inside the circle is a geographic area comprising the Memphis competitive economic unit which competes on the national and global marketplace. From the outside looking in that is Memphis! This is the globally competitive three state, citi-state similar to the Nashville, Atlanta or Indianapolis regions. Within that ring, more than 2.5 million live, work, and play. How do you define and determine the borders and boundaries of an economic region? Consider the answers to these questions:
1) Air travel-where do you go?
2) Medical care, especially trauma or specialties-where do you go?
3) Television-what stations do you watch?
4) Newspaper-what is the major circulation daily?
5) Pro sports, live entertainment, Broadway shows-where do you go?
6) Shopping – where is the concentration of stores?
For political leaders, this a very difficult concept to grasp and encourage, especially across city and state lines that go well beyond their particular political jurisdictions. However, for business decision makers looking to relocate and create new jobs, this is an every day reality. Decision makers expect to find collaborative leadership in regional context working together to create a competitive, progressive and business friendly citi-state. Therefore, we must encourage our political leaders to work together and weigh their own individual agendas against the opportunities for the region as a whole.

The Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area
Within the larger competitive economic citi-state there is a federal government defined metropolitan statistical area (MSA). In the case of 'Memphis' MSA that area includes eight counties (Shelby, Tipton, Fayette, DeSoto, Marshall, Tate, Tunica and Crittenden) in three states (Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas) with a population of approximately 1.3 million people. Interestingly in both the larger competitive economic unit and the MSA, six United States Senators, three Governors and six Congressmen have a vested interested in the well-being of the area. To date, minimal effort to coalesce those leaders to adopt a commission for the greater good of the region has been attempted. Political jurisdictions are an impedence to a common vision for jobs’ creation. When Nissan relocated its US headquarters to Nashville, they actually chose Cool Springs (located in Franklin, just south of Nashville in Williamson County), which would be equivalent to Nissan choosing Hernando, MS. Yet, in the Nashville mindset, Nissan chose Nashville. When will we have the maturity to understand that on both sides of the Tennessee-Mississippi line?

A Comparison to Atlanta
You are looking at a map of the cit-state known as Atlanta. At the center of the picture below is a yellow area. If you divide the yellow area in half, the top half is the political jurisdiction called the City of Atlanta. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin is elected by the 450,000 voters that live in that small area in the center of a mega-region called Atlanta, which covers 28 counties. The population of Atlanta is ten times (4.5 million people) that of the City of Atlanta. Yet, Mayor Franklin, instead of simply being concerned with her own political boundaries, leads that citi-state region as mayor - especially for economic development. For instance in a 2006 letter to her constituents, Mayor Franklin committed to bring in 60,000 new jobs by 2009. Her designated role as leader of economic development for Atlanta far exceeds her political jurisdictional authority and boundaries and catapults her to a globally important leadership position. This leadership reality is repeated over and over across the US. Leaders that grasp these truths can guide their geographic area to become competitive in a national and global economy. To think and act otherwise is immature, parochial, and counter-productive.

Colleague Achievements

Recently two of our colleagues were recognized for their expertise in commercial real estate.

• Associate Broker Matt Weathersby was designated a Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM). To learn more about the CCIM Institute, click here.
  

• The Memphis Area Association of Realtors' Commercial Council named CA Senior Vice President Wyatt Aiken president for 2010. Click here to read more.

Congratulations to both Matt and Wyatt for their outstanding accomplishments!