BusinessTN

Politicians love to tout big economic developments that occur on their watch, gleefully attending made-for-photo-op ribbon cuttings whenever the opportunity presents itself. Similarly, nothing is sweeter to those who earn their living in the field of economic development than crowing about good paying jobs and increased tax revenues accrued as a result of their professional efforts. It’s especially the case when those jobs are high tech in nature.

All of which made it quite unusual when no public pronouncements or appearances by politicians took place when The Bank of New York, the nation’s 11th largest bank, decided last April after a two-year deliberation to invest what sources say is $120 million in a high-tech transactions processing plant in Nashville. The plant will employ 125 people (about half of them local) earning an average salary of $75,000, or roughly twice Nashville’s median income. The daily dollar value of the transactions to be processed at the site will be comparable to the gross national product of Canada. New tax revenues both real and personal will be significant (and ongoing, given computer upgrades costing tens of millions of dollars each decade). Despite the project’s size and scope, however, news of it barely graced the pages of Nashville’s local media.

Bank spokesman Kevin Heine says the reason for the lack of a public relations blitz is simple. Essentially a back-office function, the data center really has no need to promote itself to the local community. “It’s out of public sight and invisible to our customers,” Heine says of the plant, incorporated as Tennessee Processing Center LLC and not even carrying the Bank of New York flag. “There’s no real business reason to advertise it.”

Still, that doesn’t explain why the company wouldn’t be willing to let local officials rejoice publicly over their success in attracting the investment, one of the biggest in Nashville in 2004. Officials with the state Department of Economic and Community Development, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Nashville Electric Service and the city of Nashville, all of whom provided attractive incentives to seal the deal, each declined to be interviewed for this article, muzzled by the company. Hawkins Development Co., the site developer, and the Nashville Area Chamber also declined comment. Why such secrecy? The reason, say multiple sources, stems at least in part from political considerations.

The Bank of New York first opened its doors in Lower Manhattan in 1784. Located in post-revolutionary America’s first capitol, the bank has the distinction of being the first bank to loan money to the new American government. Now with headquarters at One Wall Street, the company sits across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Given that history, the bank’s decision to spurn Buffalo, N.Y., the other finalist for the project, and instead build in Nashville, had bank officials skittish about too much positive Southern press reaching the ears of political allies and citizens alike in their home state. As one Buffalo-based journalist told Business Tennessee magazine, “It would be one thing if this was Webster Bank. But this is, after all, the Bank of New York. From their standpoint, they’re treating this project from a public relations perspective almost as a negative story.”

The company’s 160,000-square-foot plant now under construction in obscure Walton Business Park in North Nashville is far from the public eye, and the bank’s arrival in Nashville has been the business equivalent of the old question about a tree falling in the forest: If a major company enters a market, but the media does not cover it or state officials tout it, is it still a big deal? Subdued as the project has been, however, some local officials are hopeful that the bank’s decision to decentralize operations post 9/11, and to choose Nashville as a remote location, could lead to a migration of other New York- and Washington, D.C.-based financial institutions to the Music City. If so—and preliminary indications are that Bank of New York officials are pleased with their Nashville experience to date—the success local officials had in attracting the bank might enable the Athens of the South to reclaim some semblance of its once proud status as a banking capitol. That would be something to crow about.