By Reed Baskin, M.D.

Editor’s note: It’s often insightful to read what is published about Birmingham in media outside of Birmingham. This piece was published by Doug Martinson  last month in Huntsville on al.com under the same title.

Doug Martinson:  “I was in Birmingham recently, and when our Uber driver asked where we were from, she talked about all the jobs in Huntsville and how Huntsville kept gaining population while Birmingham was losing population.

With three very large announcements in recent weeks, I thought it would be interesting to look at the parallels in Tennessee, comparing the trajectories of Nashville and Memphis with Huntsville and Birmingham.

Just this week, with the $6 billion Eli Lilly plant, Huntsville had the largest economic development project in Alabama history. It was also announced that the FBI would be moving 4,000 jobs to the area and there is an unveiling of the Space Command logo.

These projects are not luck. They are the result of long-term planning by the city and local businessmen and elected officials.

This week’s guest column is by my wife’s uncle, Reed Baskin, a retired oncologist who has lived in Memphis for 50 years and has watched Nashville grow rapidly, passing Memphis.”

By Reed Baskin, M.D.

In 2017, for the first time, Nashville slipped past Memphis. The Music City’s population of 660,388 surpassed Memphis’ population of 652,717, becoming Tennessee’s largest.

In Tennessee, it wasn’t just the cities. It was the whole surrounding areas.

During the first quarter of the 21st century, metro Nashville grew larger and wealthier than metro Memphis. In 2000, metro Memphis’ population of 974,000 exceeded metro Nashville’s population of 755,000 by over 200,000 people.

A quarter of a century later, the Nashville metro passed 2 million. In contrast, the Memphis metro, located on the Chickasaw bluffs overlooking the eastern banks of the Mississippi river, has less than 1.4 million people.

Two Tennessee cities, separated by 200 miles, have some similarities, but are poles apart in character.

Both cities depend on tourism. Nashville’s Centennial park has a full-sized replica of the Parthenon, while Memphis’s river front has a 30-story high Pyramid, now home of a Bass Pro megastore. The Hermitage, home of the seventh President of the United States Andrew Jackon, is located in metro Nashville. Memphis is home to Graceland.

Both cities have riverside attractions and public parks, but Memphis has one of the largest urban parks, Shelby Farms, in the country. Nashville has the Johnny Cash museum and Madame Tussauds museum, among others. Memphis has the National Civil Rights Museum, a soon to be relocated Brooks Museum on Front Street, among others.

If you’re keeping score, advantage: Memphis.

Memphis has Beale Street. Nashville has the Grand Ole Opry, CMA music fest, Country Music Hall of Fame, music row and sporting events bringing in $11.2 billion in tourism dollars each year. Tourism contributes $4.2 billion to the Memphis economy each year. Advantage Nashville, with a slam dunk.

Nashville has an NFL team. But Nashville lacks an NBA franchise. Memphis has the Grizzlies, a step up over professional hockey and soccer. Go Grizzlies.

Both cities are churched up. Nashville is home to religious publishing houses, Christian recording services, and houses the administrative office of the Southern Baptist Convention. Memphis claims one of the largest, most influential churches, Bellevue Baptist, in the Southern Baptist convention, and is the administrative home of the God in Christ Church.

How did Nashville pass Memphis?

Historically, Memphis was far larger, culturally more advanced, and had a more diverse population than Nashville during the latter half of the 19^th century.

Memphis’ trajectory was permanently changed when Yellow Fever spread from New Orleans in 1878, along the lower Mississippi River, causing an epidemic. An estimated 17,000 thousand Memphians were infected and 5,000 died. Meanwhile, 40,000 people, including European immigrants, left the city. The exodus left Memphis, once home to its own opera house, devastated.

Following the great epidemic, Memphis changed culturally, as it grew from an influx of rural people from the Mississippi Delta, East Arkansas, southern Missouri and west Tennessee. No longer considered an International city, Memphis assumed the character of its inhabitants. Aptly put on a plaque at the Peabody Hotel, “The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of Memphis’ Peabody Hotel and ends on catfish row in Vicksburg.”

Both flourished in the 20 Century

In the early 1950s, Ike Turner recorded the first rock-n-roll record “Rocket 88” at Sun studio in Memphis. Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, two of the genre’s five Godfathers, along with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, inventor of Rockabilly, and BB King recorded at Sun records, making music that broke the color line.

Meanwhile, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry began live radio broadcasts on WSM in 1925. In the 1930s live performances of the Opry reached 30 states on WSM broadcasting at 50,000 watts. In 1939 the Opry debuted nationally on NBC. In 1955, Owen and Harold Badley established the “Nashville sound.”

Memphis continued to mark more milestones. The motel industry was transformed by Holiday Inn, St Jude’ Children’s Research Hospital discovered a cure for childhood leukemia and overnight just-in-time delivery services became a verb, Fed-Exed. Simultaneously Nashville opened Opryland USA, Nissan began operations in nearby Smyrna, the Tennessee Oilers, now Tennessee Titans played their first NFL game in Vanderbilt Stadium, and the Professional Tennessee Predators hockey team was formed.

Advantage, even. But that didn’t last.

Geography

Memphis, like Birmingham, is largely boxed in.

The Memphis city limits are limited by the Mississippi State line on the south, the Arkansas state line and Mississippi river, on the west, and suburban cities on the east and north. To the south, Desoto County in Mississippi has grown to over 200,000 people. Mississippi residents who work and take advantage of Memphis amenities, but identity with their home state. West Memphis, Arkansas, a truck stop and casino attached to a friendly community, identifies with Little Rock.

Nashville, like Huntsville, was less restricted. Located in the center of the state, Nashville today is surrounded by affluent suburbs and rapidly growing towns and small cities.

Advantage: Nashville.

Governance

Then there’s the issue of good governance.

Nashville is the Tennessee state capital. In the 1960s Nashville and Davidson County formed a unified governing body. That makes Nashville agile, more able to plan for growth and recruit industry.

Memphis and Shelby County suffer from fragmentation, similar to Birmingham, and an overabundance of governance.

Memphis has a mayor and elected city council. Shelby County also has a mayor and elected board of commissioners. Each are known to take opposing positions.

When the Memphis-Shelby County school board abruptly fired the superintendent before she’d completed her first year in service, Memphians shrugged their shoulders declaring: “That’s so Memphis.“

Memphis is a blue city in a red state. But when the Memphis city council tried to implement gun control measures, Tennessee Republic state office holders threatened to withhold Memphis’ share of state sales tax.

Advantage: Grudgingly to Nashville

Economy

In 2000 the gross domestic product for metro Nashville was $69 billion, already slightly higher than metro Memphis’ $62 billion. By 2024 the GDP, the market value of all the goods and services produce in a defined area, for metropolitan Nashville had ballooned to $200 billion, outperforming the GDP growth in Memphis by $100 billion dollars.

Advantage: Nashville, with a star.

Why the disparities in growth?

Memphis’ major economic drivers include healthcare; the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, St Jude Children’ s research hospital and 86 medical device companies, logistic, transportation, manufacturing and three fortune 500 hundred companies — Fed EX , AutoZone and International Paper.

There’s also agriculture, education, a burgeoning steel industry on the Mississippi river north of Memphis, and computer centers for X and a planned Google computer center. Memphis’s economic growth is heavily dependent on slow growth, mature industries, transportation and warehousing and agriculture.

Nashville is home to a vibrant, diversified business community including hundreds of healthcare companies including HCA, Health Corporation of America, major banks, tech startups and companies ranging from religious publishing houses to Total Nonstop Wrestling. Nissan of North America, Community Health Systems, Dollar General are based in Nashville. Amazon and Oracle maintain a presence.

Nashville is also a Mecca for country music devotees. Music Row has over a hundred recording studios and the highest concentration of musicians in the country.

Lower Broadway, a neon lit boulevard of broken dreams, is home to honky tonks filled with aspiring musicians. On Saturday night there are more mustachioed drug store cowboys, who don’t know the difference between a heifer, steer and bull, decked out in Stetson hats, pearl snap shirts wearing two toned leather boots. And there are throngs of women in Dollar General tiaras celebrating bachelorette parties, more per block than all of New York city. In all, they are contributing over $9 billion annually to the Nashville economy.

Advantage: Nashville, this time with two stars.

Perception

Nationally televised events, from the Country Music Awards (CMA) to country Christmas shows, depict Nashville as a wholesome city poised for the future. In contrast, Memphis is a nuanced city with the soul of the Delta blues, the turbulence of a Beethoven symphony and the heart of Rock -N-Roll.

But there is a crime problem. Too many guns and too many people with limited educations who recklessly abandon the rules of society, pushing Memphis to the top ten cities in crimes per 100,000 people. That perception problem is a very real problem for future growth.

Perhaps there are lessons in all of this for Birmingham and Huntsville. Change is slow at first, and then it’s here. Nashville hosts a national New Year’s Eve bash. Memphis hosts the national guard.

I love Memphis and it’s rich history and vibrant people. But the signs were there when the NFL chose Nashville and the trajectory has not changed.

We won’t know the future until we see it, but Nashville will likely strive to be Atlanta. More people, more Waffle Houses per mile, more traffic jams, higher cost of living, higher taxes to keep up with overstretched infrastructure.

Memphis will make an effort to be a better Memphis. Manageable growth, less crime (crime is down10%), higher wages, affordable housing and generational equality. Memphis will also aim for an NBA championship plus an NCAA basketball championship. GO TIGERS!

Recommended:  Huntsville didn’t need UAB to win Eli Lilly — and that should terrify Birmingham

Reed Baskin grew up in the bootheel of Missouri and moved to Memphis for college and has lived there for 60 years. He is a retired practicing oncologist, hematologist and medical educator. He was a clinical associate professor at University of Tennessee College of Medicine.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown.  He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com