Greenheck Group chose Knoxville because of its people and the cultural fit
State and local economic developers discussed the decision to locate the company's fourth corporate campus in Knox County during last week's GOVCON event.
It felt like we were in the midst of a family reunion celebration as C-Suite representatives of Greenheck Group, one of Wisconsin’s largest privately owned companies, joined state and local economic development leaders to share how the company chose Knoxville for its fourth corporate campus.
The occasion was a panel discussion, titled “Sealing the Deal,” during last week’s GOVCON, the annual conference of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TN ECD).
From the outset, three things about the deal were apparent.
- These people bonded early on, and the camaraderie they felt for each other was evident.
- The investment, announced in April (see teknovation.biz article here) as a $300 million commitment with 440 jobs, has ballooned to possibly $1 billion and as many as 2,000 jobs.
- Finally, unlike many recruitments that start with the available incentives, Greenheck executives said their top priority was a “community that shared its values.”
“This is a differentiator,” Rich Totzke, Chief Executive Officer, told a crowded room of attendees. “The people (of Knoxville) made the difference. The only competitive advantage a community has is its people. There was genuineness among the people in Tennessee.”
Carrie Strobel, Greenheck’s Chief Human Resource Officer, explained, “We wanted to know what the community was like.” Unlike other communities that tried to sell them, she said that “Knoxville listened and responded.”
For Doug Lawyer, the Knoxville Chamber’s Vice President of Economic Development, the first indication he had about the biggest project potentially in the Chamber’s history came when he received a call from a site selection consultant in Phoenix.
“I never get calls off my desk phone,” he quipped, but that call actually came to the phone. “I had to find it and dust it off.”
Greenheck, which specializes in manufacturing industrial ventilation equipment, already had major campuses in North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin and was seeking a fourth location to serve customers located within a day away. An adequate workforce was also critically important.
“We’re willing to invest a billion dollars because of the people we met,” Totzke said midway through his presentation. The company’s newest corporate campus, spread across multiple buildings at the Midway Business Park in East Knox County, will include manufacturing and warehousing facilities as well as a main office and dedicated space for training, research, and development.
What occurs when the proposed first site does not ring the bell of Greenheck? You pivot, and that’s exactly what Lawyer did.
At 6:45 a.m. ahead of an early morning departure back to Wisconsin, he arranged to show the Greenheck team a second site – the long vacant Midway Business Park. It was just after sunrise, he said. When they jumped out of their cars and started taking pictures, Lawyer breathed a little easier.
So, what about the incentives?
Strobel said Gary Human, the longtime East Tennessee Regional Director for TN ECD, kept wanting to talk about incentives the state could provide, and the Greenheck representatives kept deferring that item.
“It was not about the incentives,” Human told the attendees, “It was about the community and the culture.”
That point was emphasized by Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs who stressed the importance of the quality of your community, noting in the end, “It was a partnership.”
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