Growth Changes Tennessee Community : Nissan Plant Puts Town on Bumpy Road to Prosperity
When the first “made-in-the-U.S.A.” Nissan car rolls ceremoniously off the assembly line Tuesday at the Japanese auto maker’s sprawling plant here, Sam Ridley is certain to be in the forefront of all the hoopla and ballyhoo.
And for good reason. Ridley, a 65-year-old veteran of Gen. George S. Patton’s World War II campaigns, has been Smyrna’s mayor and chief economic booster for nearly 40 years. Ever since he first took office, he has dreamed of bringing business to Smyrna in a really big way and transforming this rural community just southeast of Nashville into a genuine boom town.
The $660-million Nissan plant--the largest foreign-owned automotive facility in the nation--is the jewel in the crown of those efforts. In the 4 1/2 years since Nissan announced the selection of Smyrna as the site of its U.S. plant, the town has prospered beyond even the mayor’s wildest expectations.
“When I came back to Smyrna after the war,” Ridley said, “we didn’t have a sewer system, we didn’t even have an adequate water system, and many of the streets were unpaved. But I had a vision of what this community could be. Now, when I look out at Smyrna, I feel like Moses must have felt when he looked over into the Promised Land.”
But not everyone shares the mayor’s exhilaration over the changes in Smyrna since the advent of Nissan, which began producing trucks here in mid-1983 and decided just last May to build Sentra autos here as well. In fact, many townspeople believe that the arrival of the Japanese has been--at best--a mixed blessing, bringing as much in the way of problems as it has in progress.
Such an attitude toward the community’s newly found riches may seem perverse at a time when a growing number of rural Southern towns are seeing their businesses and industries decimated by overseas competition.
But Smyrna is a textbook case of the agony that often accompanies the ecstasy of rapid economic growth.
On the plus side, new shopping centers, fast-food restaurants, banks, convenience stores and gasoline stations are sprouting up along U.S. 40-71, the town’s once-sleepy commercial strip. New subdivisions are being carved out of the surrounding farmlands, including one project along a nearby lake where homes will have $150,000 price tags.
Addition to Park
The city-owned recreational park is adding 35 acres to its present 45 acres of baseball diamonds, tennis courts, jogging trails and picnic pavilions. And a new clubhouse is in the works for the municipal golf course.
The city treasury, which expects to collect about $675,000 from Nissan this year, now boasts a surplus of $5.5 million--or enough to hand $500 to every man, woman and child in town. And the local property tax rate remains at 75 cents per $100 of assessed value--the same as it was when Ridley took office in 1947.
That is not a bad record for a town that only a few years ago was literally little more than a wide spot in the road, famous only as the state’s worst speed trap.
Another unsettling byproduct of Smyrna’s boom is the rancorous political debate over the division of the spoils--millions of dollars.
But the achievement has a price. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Smyrna’s spiraling development is the rapid erosion of its small-town atmosphere. Traffic jams, overcrowded schools and the unabating onslaught of fortune-seeking strangers are replacing the old order.
Recent population projections for the town predict an increase of about 80% in the current population of 10,500 by 1990.
“It used to be that you could walk down the street and know everybody you’d meet and call them by their first name,” one elderly resident said, echoing a common complaint. “Now, if I meet somebody I know, it’s a surprise. There are just so many people walking down the street you don’t know.”
There are also widespread fears that, despite the failure of unions to make even the slightest inroads in the Nissan plant, it is only a matter of time before they do. And that, to many residents, spells trouble with a capital “T.”
“I’ll tell you what these ol’ country boys in Middle Tennessee do when the union tells them to blow up somebody’s house,” said Carl Montgomery, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who is one of Smyrna’s most prominent businessmen. “They go out and put a stick of dynamite behind the water heater and another outside the garage just to make sure.
“So, whenever the unions start coming in to Nissan--and they will--you’re going to find it isn’t going to be safe for anybody here.”
Newspaper Ad
Montgomery, like the mayor a World War II veteran, once led an unsuccessful petition drive to have the access road to Nissan named Pearl Harbor Boulevard. And, on another occasion, he took out a half-page ad in the local newspaper saying: “Nissan’s here, trouble’s a-coming, I’m a-leaving.”
Skepticism about the new prosperity is perhaps strongest among those whom it has least benefited. The jobless rate for Rutherford County in January, the latest month for which statistics are available, was 6.4%.
That is well below the statewide average of 9.4% but also well above the 4.2% in neighboring Davidson County, which includes Nashville.
Not all businesses have profited from Smyrna’s growth, either. Mom-and-pop stores are under particular strain from the growing number of chain operations. “There was one little grocery store a half-block off the main drag that had been open for the past 30 or 40 years,” said Mike Woods, Smyrna city clerk. “But it folded and is now a church.”
Some Businesses Fail
Even some new businesses have found the going tough. A Japanese restaurant that flourished during Nissan’s early days here has long since shut down. “Most of the Japanese Nissan had here then returned home for good, and Tennesseans just don’t go for raw octopus,” Woods said.
Another unsettling byproduct of Smyrna’s boom is the rancorous political debate over the division of the spoils--those millions upon millions of dollars injected into the local economy by Nissan. Charges are rife that the mayor and his cronies are using their clout and insider’s positions to rake in the lion’s share.
For example, nearly 200 of the 872 acres purchased by Nissan at premium prices for its plant were owned by Ridley and his identical twin brother, Knox, a former juvenile court judge.
“Sam Ridley is the wittiest little crook I ever met,” said Billy M. (Pusher) Howell, a junior high school principal and one-time business partner of Ridley. “I don’t think he’s a bad leader. I just think he’s a corrupt politician.”
Longstanding Feud
The Howell-Ridley feud is longstanding. Even before Nissan announced its decision to come to Smyrna, Howell helped finance a lawsuit to oust Ridley on charges of using his office for personal gain.
A jury found the mayor guilty of those charges in 1981 after an eight-day trial. But he has remained in office pending a review of his case by the state Supreme Court.
Ridley is taking all the controversy well in stride. He realizes that the changes in Smyrna will not find universal favor--although he insists that the community’s small-town character will not suffer. “We’ll still be rural,” he says with a puckish smile in his high-pitched voice, “but it’ll be more rural-cosmopolitan.”
He is bolstered as well by the wealth of living testaments to his belief that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. “My business has gone up about 35%,” said Judy Bushee, 36, owner of the Advanced Hair Styles shop on Smyrna’s main drag, which now also features a new tanning booth. “I’ve hired four new people. And I didn’t have to raise my prices. I make it up on the volume.”
Ridley and his supporters also get a big kick out of the fact that the same Carl Montgomery who took out an ad saying Nissan was here and he was leaving has not left yet. What’s more, Montgomery took out a later ad showing him shaking hands with the top Japanese executive at Nissan and nominating him for a Rotary Club membership.
Mayor Deeply Hurt
Ridley says that he has been deeply hurt by those who have moved to oust him and dismisses the conflict-of-interest charges as “absolutely ridiculous.”
“It’s the old story of Cain and Abel,” he said. “Abel went out and brought back his gift to God, and God blessed him. Then Cain went out and brought back his gift to God, but God rejected it. So Cain slew Abel out of jealously.”
Ridley leaves no doubt that he is Abel in the story.
However, he salves his bruised feelings with the knowledge that he won 65% of the vote in the last mayoral election--held shortly after his trial--against a field of six candidates.
‘Vote of Confidence’
“That was a tremendous vote of confidence in what I’ve stood for all these years,” he says.
And Smyrna, despite all the strains tugging at it, has remained remarkably cohesive and orderly.
“Yeah, the traffic’s bad,” said Jeanne Phipps, a 39-year-old Nissan assembly-line worker who left town 15 years ago but came back to reap her share of the American dream. “My subdivision, when I moved here, had four houses on our street. Now there are no more vacant lots. We can’t go out and ride our bikes without getting hit by a car.”
But, like most Smyrnans, she says she is happier than she ever believed possible. “When I left Smyrna, I said I’d never return to that little bitty hick town. But here I am.”
