Hardy, Parker

              
ORAL HISTORY OF PARKER HARDY
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
July 28, 2017
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is July the 28th, 2017. And I'm at my studio here in Oak Ridge. And today I'm talking about Parker Hardy. Parker, thank you for coming by and talking to me. MR. HARDY: Thank you, Keith. MR. MCDANIEL: As I do with everybody, I think it's important to know something about somebody's history. So let's start at your beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family. MR. HARDY: Oh, I'm the child of an Air Force Warrant Officer, so though I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by the time I was 11, we had lived in several states, as well as Japan. Ultimately, I spent my high school years in eastern North Carolina. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? Okay. MR. HARDY: Went from there to, ultimately wound up in the Chamber of Commerce business in North Carolina and Virginia, Georgia, and now Tennessee. MR. MCDANIEL: So you grew up in eastern North Carolina, where? MR. HARDY: Grew up in Kinston, North Carolina, and then went to school at Western Carolina University, looking for the university where I could get farthest away from Kinston, and still get in-state tuition. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I'm sure that was it. Did you know what you were interested in? I mean, did you know what you wanted to do with your life? MR. HARDY: Oh, I began as an English teacher. I taught English, seventh and eighth grade English, back in Kinston again. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MR. HARDY: For three years. And then, 11th and 12th. Ultimately, I spent a short time as an executive with the Boy Scouts, where one of the volunteers we worked with ran the local Chamber of Commerce. He said, "You know, this is something you might be good at." The next thing I knew, I was the executive of a Chamber of Commerce, back in Kinston, North Carolina. MR. MCDANIEL: It was there, where you grew up. MR. HARDY: Yep. MR. MCDANIEL: How old were you then, when that happened? MR. HARDY: I was 25, 26, probably one of the youngest chamber executives in North Carolina. Now, at 63, I'm one of the oldest chamber executives in Tennessee. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. So, but you started out as a teacher and just kind of fell into the chamber work. What was that first job like for you? I mean, the chamber position? MR. HARDY: Well, I think most people believe that a Chamber of Commerce is the place you go to get a free map. I mean, the fact of the matter is, we'll give you a map sometimes, because it's easier to give you one than to explain why we don't have one. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? MR. HARDY: And a lot of people think that the chamber is a community's information bureau, and as a result of that, we somewhat fall into that and become that. But most good chambers in America today, and Oak Ridge is no example, is a good example, rather, focus on building the local economy. If you can build a strong business climate where business can prosper, jobs consequently are created. You give a business a climate where they can prosper and free enterprise will flourish. So that's the basis of what chamber's today do, at least in America. So it's sort of like a trade association. It's a little politics. It's a little bit economic development. It's a lot of fundraising. But it's one of the few careers I can think of that allows you to actually make a difference in the place where you decide to live. So that first chamber in the town where I grew up was a little odd, in that it was a place, quite honestly, growing up, I did not appreciate. Did not like it. Tried my best to escape from it, until I found myself running their chamber, and suddenly that was a connection. MR. MCDANIEL: How many people lived there? MR. HARDY: About 25,000 at the time. It was little smaller than Oak Ridge. But then, when you're more in the inside, you really see what makes a community tick. And I got an entirely new appreciation for that, and ran larger chambers before ultimately coming to Oak Ridge after a short period of working for the Olympic Games. But I decided if I was going to get back in the chamber business, I wanted to do it back in a small market. And Oak Ridge fit the bill. MR. MCDANIEL: Before we get you to Oak Ridge, let's talk about, in your first chamber job, what did you learn? And what the relationship like with the local city leaders and elected officials, and things such as that? MR. HARDY: What I learned, and what I've seen happen in most places that I've ever lived, is that there is no community issue, I don't care what it is, that cannot be resolved if you have engaged community leadership willing to address it. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. MR. HARDY: We talk a lot about what it takes for a town to be successful. But what it really takes is leadership. That leadership, the chamber is the prism through which the business community's leadership is presumably focused. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. MR. HARDY: But there also is the leadership in the arts community. There's the leadership in the political community, or whatever. MR. MCDANIEL: The educational community. MR. HARDY: The educational community is a good example. It's the communities that suffer, the communities that struggle, are those where leadership, for whatever reason, abdicates and decides, "I'm going to leave it to somebody else." MR. MCDANIEL: Really? MR. HARDY: So, I've now lived in Oak Ridge longer than I ... I've been here 20 years. Lived here longer than I ever lived anywhere in my life, by a long shot. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. MR. HARDY: So for me, my job at the Oak Ridge chamber, I know we're still talking about that first chamber, but this is where it differs. There, it was kind of a job. Now, what I do is in the place that I have chosen to make my home. So there's a different level of, call it commitment, call it intensity, whatever the right word, it's a little different when it's a job in your home, as opposed to a job that's a stepping stone to the next job. MR. MCDANIEL: I was talking to, I interviewed Chris Whaley, the president of Roane State, this week. And we were talking about it, because we both went to Roane State, Chris and I. We were there at the same time. And we both went to other schools. And one of the things that he and I talked about was Roane State, there's something unique about Roane State, for the students who go there. I said it's because people feel like it's their school. You may go to another big school, and feel and be a part of it, but that's not your school. Roane State was their school. MR. HARDY: I mean, that's exactly right. MR. MCDANIEL: So there's a different feeling about it. So I guess it's the same for you. MR. HARDY: For us, it is. And when I say for us, it's for me and family, my wife and two sons. Oak Ridge has become home to us. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Sure. So how long were you at that first chamber job? MR. HARDY: I was at the first chamber in Kinston, North Carolina, about six years, and then went to Lynchburg, Virginia, where I ran the chamber. And it has a lot of connections to Oak Ridge in that the nuclear industry is a pretty heavy player in Lynchburg, Virginia. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh. I didn't know that. MR. HARDY: And so, I stayed in Lynchburg, Virginia, from '86 until the end of 1990. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay. All right. MR. HARDY: And went from there to Dekalb County, Georgia. And from Dekalb County, came to Tennessee to work with the '96 Olympic Games. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh is that right? MR. HARDY: The state of Tennessee had created an organization called the Tennessee Ocoee Development Agency, and its role was to host the canoe kayak slalom event. Meaning white water canoes and kayak on the Ocoee River. I was asked to come and lead that organization. I had never been in a kayak. I had seen one in the movies. Suddenly, I find myself leading the organization that's putting on the biggest event in the history of the sport. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. MR. HARDY: I'm not sure whether that was wise or just out of foolishness. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Sure. Sure. So did it all go as expected? MR. HARDY: That went off great. The Economist, The London Economist, quite honestly, said that if, and I was one small cog, (my job was to make sure the state of Tennessee, the international Olympic committee, the canoe federation, the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority], and the forest service were all on the same river at the same day), but The London Economist said that if Atlanta had hosted the Olympic Games the way the state of Tennessee hosted that one event, it would have been the greatest, it would have been a great Olympics. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MR. HARDY: So that got us to East Tennessee, or actually southeast Tennessee. And my wife and I said, "Well, we like it here." So let's figure out a way to stay. So I started looking for employment, basically anywhere from Knoxville to Chattanooga. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're ... MR. HARDY: And that's how we wound up- MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're job was about over, wasn't it. Your Olympic job was- MR. HARDY: It was definitely about over, and we had, I had two kids and a three meal a day habit. MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure. Sure. I understand. MR. HARDY: So, I actually submitted my resume to Oak Ridge when I heard the job was opening, just to practice interviewing. I had no intention of ever getting back in the chamber business. And the next thing I knew, I came up. I remember spending the night in Oak Ridge and calling my wife. We were living in Cleveland, Tennessee, and saying, "You know, you might like it here." The next thing we knew, our house in Cleveland had sold and we were looking for a house in Oak Ridge. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, tell me about the interview process. Tell me who you interviewed with, who you met when you first came to Oak Ridge, your first feelings about Oak Ridge and impressions about Oak Ridge. MR. HARDY: So, I knew a little bit about Oak Ridge, obviously, from the history lessons. I knew something about its role in the Manhattan Project, not nearly as deeply as I do now, obviously. I had a high school fraternity brother who grew up here. I've never heard from him. I've looked for him since I came here. I've never seen him since then. But, knew a little bit about Oak Ridge. So, when I came ... In the chamber business, you're most often interviewed by a committee. This was a committee that, coincidentally, one of the people on that committee was Warren Gooch, who is now the mayor. But at that time, he was the chair-elect of the chamber. So, my job interview actually occurred at Kramer Rayson's offices in Oak Ridge, rather than at the chamber itself. So there was a committee of, holy cow, ten or fifteen people. We expressed a mutual interest. I wanted to get back into a smaller market. I wanted to get back into a smaller market where you could deal with, what I refer to as bigger city issues. If you look at Oak Ridge, as a community, we deal with things here that you typically would not find in a town of 30,000 people. The issues here are much more complex. So, this gives me an opportunity to do the kinds of things I did in larger markets, but at the same time, it takes me eight minutes to get to work in the morning. So it's the best of both worlds. So I was fully expecting to be here five or six years and then see where you go. The kids were in school. And we really, really liked Oak Ridge, and just decided, "Well, as long as they'll still have us, we'll still stay." MR. MCDANIEL: And you've been here 20 years. MR. HARDY: 20 years, last November. MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning of those 20 years. Tell me about some of the issues that, because I know there've been a lot of issues over 20 years. But what are some of the issues that, or have been important to you and to the chamber, to address. MR. HARDY:  Well, the chamber focuses on building this community's economic climate. We've since then taken over the leadership program, which we started back, or helped to start, back 25, 30 years ago. But the driving force that goes on at Oak Ridge often is the, what do we do to take the economy that has been built as a result of the federal complex, and translate that into new jobs. And translate that into other employment opportunities. It is complicated by the way the retail world has changed. For example, when I interviewed for that job in 1996, I said, "So what's one of the things that we're most pleased about in Oak Ridge?" And I'll never forget, one of the answers was, "Well, we finally got a shopping mall." Okay. Fast forward to almost exactly a year ago, we were celebrating the demolition of that shopping mall. MR. MCDANIEL: Of course. Of course. MR. HARDY: So, that's the ... A lot of things have turn 180 degrees in Oak Ridge. But at rock bottom, I think it boils to then and now, in my opinion, is the need for a greater sense of unity within the community. There are probably four or five issues, together, we need to address. Now, housing is beginning to come to the forefront, like perhaps it ought to. So there's that tension. I don't mean tension in a negative way, but that tension between the government and the private sector, the major government contractors, and the Department of Energy, and the more pure private sector. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. MR. HARDY: That's not a negative tension, but it's sometimes hard to ... My job, a lot of times, is to walk in both those worlds. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. MR. HARDY: So, the economic issues in Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge took it on the chin. There were a lot of threats about what was going to be the future of Y-12, for example. What was going to happen at the National Laboratory and the whole complex? As those things have become righted through a lot of effort by leaders in this community and across the country, the issues such as the Main Street project, have now come to light. I think, as long as business and government continue to work, and the community can focus on two or three key issues, I think this community's got an enormous future. MR. MCDANIEL: Let's see. What was I going to ask you? It was on the tip of my tongue. Now the chamber, does the chamber ... I know you do help grow the business community. Does that include retail, industrial, or is it just retail? Or how does that work? MR. HARDY: So the way we are organized now is ... and the way economic development happens in chambers of commerce differs around the country, and differs with history. When I came here, for example, we had a contract with the city of Oak Ridge under which we were responsible for all of economic development. Now, we have what we refer to as the diamond team, which is the city manager; myself; Steve Jones, who as a consultant to the city, leads the new industrial recruitment; Ray Evans, who is basically on that team, focuses as kind of the project manager, which company likes to come, how do we get them permitted, how do we get all the regulatory stuff done. The chamber focuses, and me specifically, focuses on attraction of retail, and the expansion of existing business. Because most of those existing companies are already our members. But all four of us work together, as a team. So, I've spent probably the last ten years in the economic development piece, focused almost exclusively on retail and a lot of existing industry work. MR. MCDANIEL: And I understand that Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce, anybody can be a member. I mean, if you do business in Oak Ridge, you don't have to be in Oak Ridge. Right? Is that the way that works? MR. HARDY: Well, probably 25 percent of our membership's actually located outside the city of Oak Ridge. We've got about 500 members, ranging from small mom and pop stores to the largest employers in the area. And again, I think the chamber is the place where the leadership of the business community focuses its resources. Those resources can be financial. Those resources can be resources of influence, if you need a bill passed, for example, or you need a support for, say, public education funding, or what have you. It can be influence of talent, if you will. Sometimes it's just roll up your sleeves and get down and do some gut work. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. I understand. Because this is the big thing, the Main Street, just in the last ten years, it's been a struggle. But now, we're starting to see some results from all that hard work. Why don't you take me back, and tell me the story about ... Don't spend a lot of time on the mall, because we kind of, everybody kind of knows about the mall a little bit. But tell me, give me some of the highlights. And then talk about the whole Main Street project. And how that came to be, and because I know the chamber was right smack dab in the thick of all. MR. HARDY: And still remains it. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. I'm sure you do. MR. HARDY: So, Crown American built what became Oak Ridge Mall, in the late 1990, 1995, '96 timeframe, at a time when, quite honestly, most enclosed malls were dying, particularly, unless they were regional in nature. And that mall was overbuilt by two or three hundred thousand square feet, everybody now knows. So, the mall started to struggle the day it opened. Many Oak Ridgers will not realize that there were sections in that mall, when they tore it down last year, that had been built out for stores, but floors had never even been poured. So the mall never really reached, in the overbuilt mall, but came on at a time when most malls were losing market share. Because of economic forces, it's expensive to operate an enclosed shopping center. And so, opportunities came to redevelop it. Steve Arnsdorf made an effort to actually acquire it. The chamber helped lead a referendum to invest about $29 million in the community, some going for the mall, or for the redevelopment of the mall, into a town center kind of concept. Other stuff to go toward some improvements in the schools, and some other things. But you rolled all that together in a $29 million bond packet. And in hindsight, 20/20, it was beyond the blink level of a lot of the community. And so ... MR. MCDANIEL: So that failed. MR. HARDY: And so, that failed. The chamber, I mean, I invested 90 days of my life doing nothing but that. And the chamber probably put $30,000, or more, in cash. We raised a lot of the money, and mobilized a lot of the people, and organized a get out to vote campaign. All that kind of stuff. When that failed, that retail world went silent for three or four years because the retail community and the retail investment community said, rightly or wrongly, said, "This is a town that's not receptive to new business." MR. MCDANIEL: And they were deflated over that. MR. HARDY: Yeah. So, but ultimately, it came back, and ultimately came back, and the next effort was the opportunity to invest in a development called Crestpoint, which is up behind Pine Ridge Office Park. That got forced to a referendum as well. We supported that again, and we lost that one again. So, in the meantime, the mall just continued to languish. It dropped down to probably two or three stores only. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Sears, [J.C.] Penneys- MR. HARDY: Sears, Penneys, and Belk were all that was left in the mall, proper. Sears, it's no secret, has had significant problems over the last several years. So the closing of Sears, I think, was the straw that broke the consortium that owned the mall and said that they would elect to sell it. And long story short, a lot of us worked to find a buyer. We worked with the seller to help find a buyer. We worked with various realtors. Ultimately, Crosland Southeast got it. Then, it got transformed over to RealtyLink. So there's been a changing- MR. MCDANIEL: What happened with the Crosland Southeast? MR. HARDY: Well I think that actually the seller wound up redoing the deal, and putting it in the hands of RealtyLink. That was okay. Crosland, in the meantime, was also making a substantial investment in Nashville and other areas. So, Crosland and RealtyLink collaborated and cooperated a lot. It wasn't necessarily one yanking the rug from the other. Crosland worked very closely with RealtyLink, turning over all their due diligence, all their plans, and everything else, so RealtyLink could pick up and go with it on their own. MR. MCDANIEL: They sort of got to the point in saying, "You know, maybe this isn't the best thing for us, but it may be good for RealtyLink and we want them to be successful." So ... MR. HARDY: And so there's been very, very close cooperation with them. And RealtyLink has done similar projects. And it's a South Carolina company, it's very familiar with Tennessee. They've, within the last year, finished a shopping center up in Sevier County. So, that's gone very, very well. The ribbons are being cut, later this week, as a matter of fact. So we're starting to see some things turn around. That's great news. MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me the big plan. What's the ultimate plan. I mean, because I've heard phase one and phase two and phase three. MR. HARDY: Phases tend to move a lot as investment dollars become available. So let's start with the retail and kind of work. Think of it functionally instead of in terms in of phases. Retail investments will have up to four to five hundred thousand square feet of retail and restaurants. To put that in perspective, the former Oak Ridge Mall had close to 800,000 square feet of retail. So that's what I meant, it was way over built. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. MR. HARDY: You'll also have an 80 room hotel, that will have a Marriott flag. You will have approximately, we think, 200 apartments. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really? MR. HARDY: And so that's how these mixed use developments, these kind of town centers tend to be working out better than the typical enclosed mall. Consumers today, two-income families were cooped up in our workplaces. The last thing they want to do is, on Saturday morning, go wander around an enclosed shopping mall. They like to get out in the sunshine, particularly in a climate like East Tennessee, where basically it gets cold three days a year. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. MR. HARDY: So, there's that kind of opportunities. There's restaurant with outdoor dining opportunities. You can drive up to the store of your choice and not necessarily have to walk through a 60 acre mall. And so ... MR. MCDANIEL: Some of those reason, is that why Turkey Creek has been- MR. HARDY: Oh, no question in my mind, that's why Turkey Creek has been so successful. And Turkey Creek has locational advantages. I mean, you're sitting right next to an interstate. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course. Of course. MR. HARDY: There will not be a shopping center, well shopping center is the wrong word. There will not be a mixed use facility anywhere in East Tennessee quite like this Main Street project, with a mixture of hotel and restaurant and so on. Hotel, restaurant, perhaps some office and apartments, this is going to be- MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine residential is a key part of the success because they're going to be right there where the restaurants and shops are. MR. HARDY: So, within probably five minutes walking time of Main Street, you have in excess of 500 office workers or professionals, ranging from those at Oak Ridge Associated Universities, to what 1200 kids at Oak Ridge High School? MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Sure. MR. HARDY: There's a lot of things that can turn and that can bring money into that market. And what is important, though, is the opportunity it creates from what I refer to as our legacy shopping centers. The growth centers, the Jackson Squares, those smaller centers tend to lose traffic. If someone gets in their car and goes to shop at a department store in Turkey Creek, that boutique in Jackson Square doesn't stand a chance of capturing that customer. If that customer is shopping at a big box store in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, they're at least here in this market. And it creates an opportunity for some cross shopping. So I believe that the concentration of shopping that will occur in Main Street will drive business to some of our smaller shopping centers. We've seen that with the Westcott Center, which is where- MR. MCDANIEL: Kroger. MR. HARDY: ... where the Kroger marketplace is. That's attracting shoppers from 17 zip codes, from five counties. And I mean, you drive through that parking lot on the weekends, you see Anderson, Campbell, Scott, Morgan, and Roane county license plates, predominantly. And that same effect will occur with Main Street. MR. MCDANIEL: What is Main Street, in your opinion, going to do for the city, I mean, for our quality of life, for the future stabilization of economic basis. MR. HARDY: So, from a body politics standpoint, and I'm not a politician, but cities basically have two sources of revenues to pay for their schools, to pave their potholes, to keep their parks up. That's sales tax and property tax. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. MR. HARDY: The property taxes collected on the mall has just spiraled downhill as that mall's value- MR. MCDANIEL: Plummeted. MR. HARDY: ... shrunk from 60 million to six. MR. MCDANIEL: To six. MR. HARDY: Okay. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. MR. HARDY: And then, add to that, the other half of the pie, the sales tax revenue went away as well. So, it put financial stress on the city in a very, very big way. So this helps reverse that. The other piece of that ... And, consequently, as the mall's value goes up in terms of its property value, that raises the property values all around the mall. So that's what it does, from the, what I'll call the public economy. For the private economy, it takes a black hole that's in the center of this town, because that’s what the mall is virtually, Main Street is virtually in the center of Oak Ridge. And suddenly, it becomes thriving again. I'm sitting here today in clothes that are ... These are not expensive clothes. Not a single article of my clothing that you can see can be found in an Oak Ridge store today. This is not expensive stuff, but it's going to change. So you'll start to see that happen. I think it will be a catalyst to help spur on residential development because people like to live in a community with a thriving downtown, and with a thriving retail sector. So, I think it's an important piece of the puzzle that can really jumpstart Oak Ridge. And we're seeing substantial interest from new residential developers, already. We are seeing a lot of economic growth that I think is right on the cusp. MR. MCDANIEL: You know one of the things that people talk about, and I don't know, but what I hear people talking about, is that a thriving downtown attracts a younger resident. If you have residential opportunities, they are close. And that's what people in Oak Ridge feel we need, is we need young families and young couples and young singles to come in and kind of shore up some of Oak Ridge, because let's be honest, Oak Ridge is pretty gray. It has been pretty gray for years. You know? And those folks are leaving us. MR. HARDY: If you look at Oak Ridge, statistically, we have a large gap in the 25 to 45 year old age range, when you compare our community to peer cities. Now, so when I came here, I would've fit within that gap. I'd have been 45. And so, and remember, those are the people who are on the upward path of their career. They have kids in school. They are spending more than they are necessarily saving. And they really push an economy. You and I grew up in an age where we moved to a community because a job was there. The Millennials of today move to a community where they want to live, and then they will find a job. So it's critically important for our employers, who need to attract young talent, to be in a place that young talent wants to come. MR. MCDANIEL: Wants to live in. MR. HARDY: Because, again, that 25 year old, today, picks the place he or she wants to live. That's their first choice. And then, they will find a job. That's a 180 from the Baby Boomer generation that I grew up, where you moved to where the job was, and you learned to like the town. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly. MR. HARDY: So, that Main Street is important, but equally important are things like, I mentioned the Jackson Square, the Grove Center, and so on. Those kinds of gathering places, and they are very much gathering places, are attractive to young people as well, who like to come to the place where there's that quirky boutique or that unusual restaurant. And that sense of place and that sense of history. So, we've got some of all of that. The missing piece, now, is housing stock. We've spent a year doing an analysis of housing stock, between ... There's a shortage of newly constructed homes between 165, or 180 and 280 thousand dollars. And I moved, when I came to Oak Ridge, I moved to a home built in the 1960s. It was a great house. Loved it. But I was also, had the ability to drive a few nails if I wanted to fix it up. 25 year olds, today, very seldom do they want to do that. They want to spend their weekend doing whatever they do on a weekend, paddle boarding or kayaking on Melton Lake or whatever it may be. So, that new housing stock's important and we're communicating that market demand to regional builders to consider investments in Oak Ridge. MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine, also, like you said, people in that demographic, they pick a place they want and then they find a job. So I guess it's important for our town and our community to develop those other things, like the Haw Ridge, like the recreation, like the rowing area, the marina, all that kind of stuff is very attractive to that demographic. MR. HARDY: Lifestyle is important. The Laboratory, UT [University of Tennessee] Battelle, which manages the Laboratory, believe me, they have made substantial investments on the waterfront, for example. A rowing tower. Invested in the docks that the rowers use to start from, competitively. Some of that they did, they underwrote the cost of the pavilion down there. I just use them as an example. Now, some of that they did as a gesture of corporate citizenship, but they also knew that if you look at the skill set and the degree set of competitive rowers, very often, they are in fields that the national laboratory wants to employ anyway. MR. MCDANIEL: Well sure. Of course. MR. HARDY: So, you can, in our corporate community, the Lab being one, Y-12 being, all of them being, there's a corporate citizenship here in Oak Ridge you don't see in a lot of towns. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. But it's also good for them. MR. HARDY: Sure. MR. MCDANIEL: To make Oak Ridge attractive. MR. HARDY: There is nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest. MR. MCDANIEL: That's exactly right. MR. HARDY: And, as a matter of fact, there's everything right with it, in this case. And so, if they want to- MR. MCDANIEL: Because everybody benefits. MR. HARDY: If they want to attract the worker that they need to operate the Uranium Processing Facility that's going to be built, to run that next generation of super computers, to do the scientific work associated with cleaning up after the Cold War, to do whatever it is that a company's going to be doing, they've got to have a place that that workforce is going to want to come. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. MR. HARDY: So, it's in their best interest to help build that. So, that's an important shift from the way things used to be. Remember, people came to Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project. Hell, they didn't even know where it was. MR. MCDANIEL: They didn't. There wasn't anything here. MR. HARDY: They went for a job. MR. MCDANIEL: They went for a job. That's exactly right. MR. HARDY: Today, if you were to ... If, fast forward, if, God forbid, another Manhattan Project had to replicated in 2017, would people come for a job? I expect a heavy sell would have to be made on place, as well. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. And I guess we can look at history, the last couple of decades or so, and realize, going back to what you were talking about, about the investment in the community is good for the employers, because there's a lot of people that work out at those labs, at Y-12, at Oak Ridge, now, that live in west Knoxville. MR. HARDY: Well, the issue in American business, today, is workforce. And workforce may be the buzz word, but basically what it boils down to is do you have an educational system that grooms young people for the jobs of tomorrow. So, heavy investments have been made in Oak Ridge's school system, from the very beginning. You can build a town. You can put in shopping centers. You can put in subdivisions. But I would maintain that a school system is sort of ingrained into the value of the community. So we got a school system that's the envy of a lot of communities. So, now we're starting to put in place some of the other elements. Now, remember, Oak Ridge is a young town. So, we're having to do things in a different fashion than other communities do because we grew by generational chunks. You’ve got the Cold War, you’ve got the Manhattan Project people, the Cold War people, the post-Cold War people. We've grown in chunks, as opposed on a more gradual basis. Now that's Parker Hardy's theory of community growth. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. I understand. I understand. MR. HARDY: Some sociologist, somewhere, may prove that I'm absolutely full of hooey, but that's the way it makes sense to me. MR. MCDANIEL: And also, Oak Ridge is different in the fact that it has had such a strong federal presence. When people came here to work in the Manhattan Project, they came to work for the government. That was just the way it was. You had very, very few people who weren't here working for the government, or providing services to the workers of the government. And so, and that has changed. The dependency on the federal presence, has changed over the years as well, in the fact that we love having them here. It's a great part of our economy. It's a great part of town. But what would happen if they just up and left, one day? Where would Oak Ridge be? MR. HARDY: Oh, it would still be, I mean, it would be economic disaster. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, of course it would. MR. HARDY: I mean, it is the ... But the mindset in America has changed so that the Department of Energy and its employers can now be a foundation for other growth that they could ... 25 years ago, if I was a scientist working in Oak Ridge, policy would have prevented me from consulting in that field. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure. Of course. MR. HARDY: So, fast forward to today, when scientists that work in Oak Ridge for the major contractors are encouraged to consult with existing or local business and industry, or what have you. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I think the whole- MR. HARDY: That's a sea change. MR. MCDANIEL: The whole technology transfer thing, when that happened, when it came along to where technology that was developed at the national labs could be licensed by private industry. And so, there's a lot of businesses in Oak Ridge that were created because of that, which helps, which just helps. It helps everything. MR. HARDY: So a lot of people don't understand. A lot of people still think Oak Ridge is a military base. A lot of people still think Oak Ridge is the secret city. It certainly is not. It is the center for high tech job growth in East Tennessee. Yes, a lot of our workforce elects to live in west Knoxville. So, what that tells us is, maybe we need to concentrate on building a community where they want to live instead. MR. MCDANIEL: That was my whole- MR. HARDY: So, that's the focus now. Let's get the housing stock they need. We're getting the retail they need. We got the school system they need. So, I think Oak Ridge is really poised to take off. Quite honestly, with 2008 and the crash of the housing bubble, and the collapse of the commercial real estate markets, and everything else, that put Oak Ridge back on its heels a lot. It put a lot of small towns back on their heels, because when growth came back, it came back into the more urban areas. Now that's coming to more suburban areas, like Oak Ridge. That's the other issue we have. When we market Oak Ridge as a business location, from a manufacturing standpoint, we have to say Oak Ridge is the center of high tech jobs. When I talk to a retailer, I have to position Oak Ridge as a suburb of Knoxville. So, it depends upon who the customer is, as to how we market the community. MR. MCDANIEL: How does being not near, I mean, we're near, but we're not on the interstate. What kind of challenges does that put in place for your job? MR. HARDY: Well, I mean, interstate location is a wonderful thing. But that's not something we can turn around and change overnight. So instead we focused, over the last couple decades, on things like Pellissippi Parkway, on the widening of 58 and 95, so that now you're a straight shot, effectively to I-40. MR. MCDANIEL: In ten minutes. MR. HARDY: And so, remember that Oak Ridge was picked for the Manhattan Project because it was difficult to get here. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure. Of course. MR. HARDY: And so, now, we've had to turn that equation on its ear. It would be easier if we were on an interstate, but what is more important ... Business looks at two things, primarily. They look at access to markets. So the interstate plays well into access to market. They also look at access to talent. So, we've got an enormously strong talent pool here in East Tennessee and Oak Ridge. So one can tend to offset the other. If somebody says to me, "Yeah, but you're not on an interstate," I say, "That's right, so let me tell you what our high school graduation rate is. Let me tell you about Tennessee Achieves and those things. Let me tell you about enrollment in Roane State. Let me tell you about the partnerships with the University of Tennessee." Those kinds of things tend to help us offset some of the interstate issues. MR. MCDANIEL: People that I've interviewed, people that I've talked to, things are finally starting to turn around. That's kind of the sense that things are starting to turn around. Everybody's excited about Main Street. What are still some big challenges? I know you mentioned housing. And you might want to speak on that a little bit more. But what are some other things- MR. HARDY: I think housing is the next- MR. MCDANIEL: As you said when we first started this interview, where the community leaders need to come together and make something happen. MR. HARDY: Well, I think you hit it, right there. The challenges come together. Now, we can come together on housing. We came together on retail. We've come together on industrial. We can come together on housing. And so, what we've got, in my opinion, and this is the opinion of the chamber's leadership, we need to come together on ... There are probably three or four key issues that this community needs to finally say, "As a community, we need to address them." Retail was one of them. But what we got to understand: in Oak Ridge is there's no one magic bullet. We also need to understand that, in building a community, sometimes close enough is good enough. By that I mean, so, if you're working on a component of a nuclear weapon, you got to be right on. Got to be dead certain. There's no risk to be taken. It's got to be done exactly right. If you're building a community, you cannot paralyze yourself by analysis. Sometimes, you have to say, "Okay, we think this makes sense. Let's go forward." And so, because of a community's mindset that's focused on the technical and the scientific, and appropriately so, it's got to be done right, we sometimes miss opportunities that are more entrepreneurial, and that are more driven by seat of the pants thinking. MR. MCDANIEL: And also- MR. HARDY: But unity is the number one issue this community needs. MR. MCDANIEL: And also, you got to have a little flexibility and little bit of a sense of compromise, sometimes, for anything to happen. It may not be exactly the way that you would like it, but it's pretty close. It may not be the exact thing that you want. It may not be that somebody may be talking about your sacred cow, but hey, sometimes things aren't the way they were 40, 50 years ago. MR. HARDY: And they'll be different in 40 or 50 years from now. MR. MCDANIEL: That's exactly right. MR. HARDY: Remember, this is the city that wasn't supposed to be here. MR. MCDANIEL: After seven years. Yeah. MR. HARDY: We were supposed to go away by 1950. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure. MR. HARDY: And so, Oak Ridge is breaking all the rules, just by its very existence. So, it's ... I think it's an exciting place to live. I like living here a lot. I enjoy working here. I enjoy the fact that in my job, I have the opportunity to shake the place, to some extent, where I live. MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk about the housing issue, just a minute. What do you think ... You say people need to come together and figure that out. What are two or three key issues that need to be resolved for that housing to happen? Appropriate housing. MR. HARDY: I think we need to look at ... And this, too, is generational. We have a very, very large percentage of older housing, much of which is in the hands of absentee landlords or a second or third generation that, perhaps, doesn't care for that home. And that creates some economic problems for the community. Then, we have the absence of new construction, again, in that price point, our studies shows that between 180 and 280. And so, we're not going to solve the residential issue, one house at a time. For new construction, which is where the chamber will probably play in because that's where we have our relationships, we're pushing very hard. Those kinds of developers that can do, what I call, scalable building, where you can say, "We're going to build 100 homes. And we're going to have 15 or 20 going all the time." And so my framing crew knows that I can gain an economy by hiring a framing contractor, because that contractor knows he's going to be building 20 houses, not one. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. MR. HARDY: And so, that is a different kind of challenge from what does the land bank do? What does code enforcement do, to deal with some of the older houses that need repair. And I'm not trying to create some ... I'm not saying I need to create some sort of elitist community. There is a place for every economic spectrum in town. These older Manhattan Project homes, many of them are historic. Many of them, we've seen can be ... Amazing things can be done with them. But we can't let them, we just can't let them collapse in, on themselves. MR. MCDANIEL: Right, which is happening. MR. HARDY: Which is happening. And home ownership is a key component of that. We have an abundantly high percentage of rental housing. Nothing wrong with renting a house, believe me, not at all. But you raise that level by bringing in new growth, not squashing the old. MR. MCDANIEL: But, I mean- MR. HARDY: That's how you balance it. MR. MCDANIEL: You may disagree with me, but my feeling would be old homes, if you're going to rent them, you can't get much rent. So you've got people that can't afford much rent, to do that, which that's not just, that's not a single incident. You get enough of that, and their kids are in the school system, it impacts the school system. MR. HARDY: It puts a strain on the schools, because you have a high percentage of children who are from financially disadvantaged families. MR. MCDANIEL: Poverty level, possibly. MR. HARDY: And, as a result, I think they come to school ... A kid who comes to school hungry- MR. MCDANIEL: Is not going to learn. MR. HARDY: ... is not focused on learning the multiplication tables or whatever it is, and so, it puts a stress on the schools. It puts a stress on the community. So, the way that we do that, again, you build employment opportunities, so that those kids or those kids' parents have got an opportunity for a job. And so- MR. MCDANIEL: Or for a better job. MR. HARDY: For a better job. So, you don't grow a community by disenfranchising people. You grow a community by balancing it, and I mean, in terms of its talents pool. I mean, socioeconomically, and so on. So we got to attract an additional middle class back to Oak Ridge. And I think we can do that. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. What are other issues, besides housing, that you think you see, down the road, that we need to handle- MR. HARDY: The city is now addressing it, pretty effectively. But immediately on ... There are serious infrastructure needs here. I mean, let's face it, when everything's built at one time, a typical sewer line has a life expectancy of 50 years. Okay? We're about to celebrate our 75th birthday. So, all of that went in at one time. All of it's failing at one time. That makes for the need for a huge capital investment on behalf of the community. Those are the kinds of things ... We have an opportunity to basically build a new city here. That's, I think, one of the exciting things. It's a different kind of city than any place in America. And that's why I've enjoyed being part of it. MR. MCDANIEL: What about other ... We got Main Street going. And you said Main Street will have an impact on the existing smaller mom and pops’, just because traditionally that's what happens when you have new retail. I mean, what other retail opportunities are there? MR. HARDY: Well, right now, the ones that we're pursuing based upon our analysis of the market, we're heavily focused on apparel. Restaurants are very, very hot. 50 percent of the retail projects going on in America today are restaurants. MR. MCDANIEL: Let me just tell you this. When Freddy's opens, I'm going off my diet for at least one day. MR. HARDY: Okay. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay? Freddy's, what is it? Freddy's frozen custard and steakburgers. MR. HARDY: Steak burgers and frozen custard. Yeah. So, 50 percent of all retail activity deals in the country, today, are restaurants. The opportunity there is a large percentage of those are franchise driven, which means the opportunity for a local ownership of a business. And so, I've forgotten where I was going. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. You were talking about the different, what retail- MR. HARDY: Oh. Heavy on apparel, heavy on ... Sporting goods is one we're pursuing. Dick's has helped us cover that base. Discount department stores, very, very, important still. And so, but that retail target changes, depending upon who else is entering the marketplace. MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure. MR. HARDY: The challenge we have, quite honestly, is how do we assist that mom and pop retailer; that person who wants to start their own small retail store, when they tend to think of, not just our chamber, but every chamber, as some sort of institution that is only interested in the big guys. Fact of the matter is, 90 percent of my members have fewer than 20 employees. But most people think that 90 percent of our members are the larger employers. And so, we have a small business development assistance center sponsored by the state of Tennessee and Small Businesses Administration, located in the chamber, who can provide one on one and free counseling to that entrepreneur that wants to start a business, or that small business that's in existence that's facing a challenge. But you got to nurture those. That's a customer, for us, that's harder to reach than the corporate real estate for a Fortune 500 company. Because there, they've got a dream in their bedroom. They've got a dream in their garage, for a small business. And how do you coax that dream out of that spare bedroom, into a shopping center, or into a business park? That's a perennial challenge we're going to  have. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, what have I not asked you about, that you want to talk about? MR. HARDY: You've asked me everything except the color of my socks, and they're black.  MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Well, we appreciate all you do for us, that you've done for the community, the last 20 years. And thanks for coming in and talking about what the chamber does. I appreciate it. MR. HARDY: Thanks a lot. I've enjoyed it. MR. MCDANIEL: Good.
[End of Interview]