Chattanooga is a wonderful place to live, play and raise a family. It is not surprising that families are often willing to make significant changes in their lives in order to make Chattanooga home. Many have chosen to work here rather than follow careers that would lead them to other locations. Some of these people have shared their experiences and motivations for making Chattanooga their choice to live and raise their families.
Mike and Miriam Thompson are owners of The Rug Rack in Chattanooga’s Southside. Though Thompson is a native Chattanoogan, he lived in many other cities after graduating from Middle Tennessee State University. “I worked for a food service company in Columbia, Tennessee, a chemical company in Kentucky, then West Point Pepperell in Dallas. When Shaw Industries bought the company, I moved to Knoxville and St. Louis,” he says. In 1996, Thompson had the opportunity to move to Chattanooga. “It was a really good time in my life to be close to home and to my parents. During the 90’s, I was seeing Chattanooga take shape and living here made me want to have a business here. I started to look at what Shaw was doing with area rugs in Chattanooga and found that we weren’t doing anything. I thought about whether people would go to Dalton if there was a full service rug store here in Chattanooga. The kids were in middle school at the time and I was always someplace else. I enjoyed my job with Shaw, but not what it took to do it. Miriam found our locations for the store and did a great job. We decided to give it a shot,” he explains. “It takes a while to build a business and develop relationships in the community. Seven years later, we are just seeing the fruits of our ability to hang in there,” says Thompson. The single most important factor in Thompson’s decision to leave the corporate career and become a local business owner was the family. “I wanted to be available for my parents if they needed me and to be close enough, if need be, to close the door and go see the ballgame when one of the kids was playing. The family thought that I was crazy at the time, but now I think they understand. I also liked what was happening downtown. Miriam is from the Nashville area, so we are not far from her family. It has worked out well.”
Chip Baker came to Chattanooga in 1992 as Administrator of T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital. “As a hospital administrator, you usually move about every four years,” Baker explains. “I spent a year between 1998 and 1999 trying to decide how to stay here. At the same time I was looking at the possibility of parallel paths with hospitals around the country. About the time an old boss from Dallas wanted me to take over a hospital in Houston, the Riverbend opportunity came up. I had gotten into the event business while planning the air show as a fundraiser for Children’s and used that experience to take advantage of the opportunity for Riverbend and it all worked out. There has never been a hesitation from the family. My wife is actively involved in many parts of the community and I am involved with the school board. It is all about making the community a better place to live for all of us.”
“Since we have been here, we have had four children, so giving them a permanent home was one of the most important factors in the decision to stay. It is a great place to put down roots and raise children,” notes Baker. “The people in the community, the friends that we made, the beauty of the area and affordability of living all played into the decision. I like the way everyone pitches in to solve problems in this community. That is a truly wonderful thing. The partnerships and relationships that are created through problem-solving are one of a kind. Chattanooga is a ‘can-do’ city,” Baker says.
Steve Murphy, owner of Monica’s in the North Shore area was transferred to Chattanooga by Buster Brown from New Jersey in 1985. “Buster Brown went into bankruptcy in 1997, so my options were to seek something in another part of the country or see if there was something that could keep us here,” says Murphy. “Our kids were raised here. We looked into several businesses and Monica’s looked like a good fit, so we bought it. Chattanooga offered a wonderful living environment and this seemed like a significant opportunity to stay here and prosper. Our children were raised in Chattanooga. Ironically, we had one child in college and two more were going off to college that fall. When we broached the subject of relocation to another area, they were dead set against it. This was their home and if we moved to another area of the country, it would be our home, but never theirs. Their opinions were very important to us. We had also made some wonderful friends here and we did not want to leave them.”
Craig Holley of CapitalMark Bank & Trustand his family have lived in Chattanooga twice. “The family and I moved here in the early nineties,” he explains. “I am a career banker and was with AmSouth Bank. AmSouth had just purchased First Federal here in Chattanooga. We moved here around 1992 and lived on Lookout Mountain for about three years. We completely fell in love with the city during that period. We relocated to Montgomery, Alabama where I was in charge of AmSouth’s Central Alabama operations for about two years, then to Huntsville to manage the bank’s North Alabama area. In 1999, we returned to Chattanooga. That was during the AmSouth, First American and Pioneer merger, so I came back to run AmSouth’s Southeast Tennessee-North Georgia operations which were headquartered in Chattanooga. Of course, Terri and the family were excited about coming back because they had enjoyed the first three years we lived here.
Holley has two daughters now ages 12 and 16. “They never planned to move again,” he notes. “They absolutely loved Chattanooga. My second daughter was born here so she did not remember much about it, but my oldest daughter had developed friendships when we lived here before and was excited about coming back to get reacquainted with them. AmSouth Bank, now Regions Bank, is a highly regarded institution with a fine group of employees. However, during my 25 year career with AmSouth I had moved six times, and when I realized in 2005 that to remain with the bank we would once again have to relocate, I resigned. We had already discussed when we moved back in 1999, that we would like to make Chattanooga our home. In 2005, Terri opened a new women’s shoe boutique on the north shore called Embellish and after taking a year off, I, along with a group of seven other individuals, organized Chattanooga’s newest bank, CapitalMark Bank & Trust,” Holley says. “There was no single factor determining that we would stay, though I am not sure that my family would have moved with me if I had remained with AmSouth. We were so ingrained with our friends, our church and the schools. We loved the mountains, valleys and river and Chattanooga’s proximity to Atlanta, Birmingham and Nashville where we have friends and love to visit. We loved what was happening downtown. The heart and soul of any city is its downtown area and Chattanooga has made tremendous strides revitalizing its downtown. Groups from around the country and the world come here to learn about the successful redevelopment along the riverfront and our central business district. Terri and I plan one day to relocate downtown to live, but that is about as far as I can get her to move. We love it. We work and go to church downtown and our girls spend a lot of time there, so that is our plan one day.”
Jim Kennedy came to Chattanooga in 1974 to teach at Baylor School, following his brother Dan, who had come to teach at Baylor the year before (and is still there). Kennedy went to Texas for a couple of years, returning in 1979 to work for Miller-Reid advertising. After nine years with the agency, he went to work for the RiverCity Company. “Those were the pre-aquarium days when we were going around with a slide show trying to get people excited about the idea,” he says. Kennedy served as president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau for six and a half years and the Chamber of Commerce for three. After he left the Chamber, the Kennedys faced the decision whether to stay in Chattanooga. “We decided to stay, and I hung out a shingle to see if I could make it as a consultant. I started in 2001 doing marketing and communications, but wound up doing more strategic planning than anything else. My friend Ann Coulter was considering going into business for herself, so we joined forces. Stroud Watson, who had been the city’s urban design consultant for 20 years and Christian Rushing, who had been at the planning and design studio, came on board and we became Kennedy, Coulter, Rushing & Watson. We now do strategic planning and design for cities and the civic organizations, institutions and agencies that help cities run. We felt we could be successful at this because there have been so many lessons learned in Chattanooga and we felt that we could give other cities the benefit of our experience.”
Two factors influenced Kennedy’s decision to stay in Chattanooga. “Over the course of 30 years, you really set down roots. By the time the decision came in 2001, Barbara and I had three kids who had their own circle of friends, and Barbara had a great job. You don’t want to create a family upheaval by moving on. The other thing is that I have been really lucky over my career to have been very close to the renaissance of this community. When you get tied to a city’s redevelopment and reawakening, it is hard to let go of that. I wanted to stay and continue to contribute to Chattanooga because it has been very good to me. Being able to work with people like Ann and Stroud and Christian was the icing on the cake.”
Keith Moreland is a native Chattanoogan from East Brainerd. He went to college at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville then moved to Charlotte and Boston. “My mom, brother and two sisters live here. As the kids grew older, being away from family was harder,” he remarks. “I really enjoyed watching Chattanooga transition from what it used to be to what it is today and always sort of wanted to come back, so we looked at ways to make that happen. I worked for a big software company doing a lot of travel out of the country. I love my kids and I am so proud of them, but when you miss important events, it is not first-hand pride, but pride from a distance. That was just not what I wanted to continue and if I had stayed in my job, it would have. The motivation was to have more time with my family and allow them to grow up around the relatives that I had enjoyed when I was a youth, something they were not getting. I felt that it was doing them a disservice.”
Moreland spent about two years investigating opportunities. “We had our kids in Little Gym in Boston. That was our first exposure,” says Moreland. “We looked at many opportunities rather than Little Gym, but when we started narrowing and fine-tuning our interest in a business, this sort of hit us. I was a gymnast growing up and I love kids. The more we thought about it, it just seemed perfect. Chattanooga needed a Little Gym. After a great deal of market research, my idea that East Brainerd would be a good location was confirmed. We opened in May, 2005. It has worked out very well. We have over 400 kids who come through the gym every week. What makes me love this so much is the difference we are making in these kids lives.”
Natural beauty abounds throughout the Chattanooga Region’s mountains, lakes and rivers. Outdoor enthusiasts enjoy incredibly beautiful walking trails, fishing and water sports. With an ambiance of its own, Chattanooga is richly endowed with history, cultural and educational opportunities. Then, there are its people who have retained a culture of hospitality that is welcoming and heartwarming. Atlanta, Birmingham and Nashville, with their unique attractions, are only a couple of hours away. It is difficult to imagine a more beautiful environment. It is no surprise that many families consider Chattanooga as the only place to be.