BusinessTN

Though the new site for BlueCross BlueShield’s headquarters hasn’t gone to the dogs, the kitties can’t have it either

When BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announced plans last year to build a new $226 million headquarters, it put to rest any lingering fears that the independent, not-for-profit Blues plan, which started in Chattanooga in 1945 and currently employs 3,800, would opt to one day relocate to Nashville or Memphis, where it has a significant presence.

The announcement was also significant given that the Blues chose to build its new digs on Cameron Hill. Long ago one of the city’s premiere residential districts, Cameron Hill underwent urban renewal in the 1950s and for decades existed as a low-rent, multi-family district (albeit with a great view of downtown) primarily used by U.T.-Chattanooga students. Redevelopment of the blighted area adds another chapter to downtown Chattanooga’s well-chronicled urban revitalization effort.

Achieving consensus for such a large capital project no doubt required the strategic equivalent of “herding cats” on the part of BCBS leadership. But in fact, the only apparent hitch in development plans to date has been, well, the actual herding of cats.

Mary Thompson, media relations manager for BCBS, was on Cameron Hill just days before BCBS’s public announcement of plans to build there when she spotted two cats in cages near a dumpster. “That was my first indication this was an area where unwanted animals resided,” Thompson says.

Guy Bilyeu, director of the Humane Educational Society of Chattanooga, says Cameron Hill has long been an animal drop-off spot and home to a cat colony residing in the kudzu on the side of the hill. Bilyeu actually trapped, altered and inoculated most of the colony two years ago before releasing them back on the property. “We didn’t know at that time that [BCBS] would be purchasing the property,” he says.

Recently Bilyeu spent eight weeks re-trapping the cats, five dozen at last count, and identifying people willing to adopt them—all at BCBS’s expense. “Many companies wouldn’t have gone the extra mile for animals that weren’t their responsibility in the first place,” says Bilyeu in an unusual endorsement of BCBS’s status as a good corporate citizen. Cat colony aside, BCBS’s new headquarters sends an important message.

In the ever-consolidating world of Blues plans nationally, BCBS of Tennessee is putting all its efforts into ensuring it will remain an independent, not-for-profit Blues plan positioned to stay in Chattanooga long term.