Local business representatives received an update on the state of Maryville’s government Friday morning, June 14 as Maryville City Manager Greg McClain walked a packed room through statistics, achievements and plans for the coming months. Highlights include a strong city credit rating, rising growth and the possibility of paying off city debt in the future.
McClain’s hourlong presentation was part of a series of legislative briefings hosted by the Blount Partnership. He led guests through a bird’s-eye-view of the city’s recent operations, recapping recently completed projects and looking at the coming months.
Key developments coming to the community, he said, are the approaching completion of the new Amazon last-mile facility on Robert C. Jackson Drive and BJ’s Wholesale Club near Foothills Mall. The warehouse club, he said, is the first the company has built in East Tennessee and the fourth in the state.
Other projects underway include updating the walkability of the corridor from the Blount County Public Library to Maryville College, which should begin in a few weeks, and refreshing park bridges around the city. Work on Carpenter’s Grade Road is also slated to begin this fall, according to Maryville City Engineer Kevin Stoltenberg.
Growth
The growth landscape of the city is changing, McClain said. City staff have seen a drop in residential building permits in recent years.
“As you know, you can’t go anywhere without seeing an apartment building being built or houses being built somewhere,” he said, “But the truth is that it’s beginning to slow down.”
From 2021 to 2023, the city went from 175 residential building permits to 64.
Commercial building permits, on the other hand, are on the rise. Over the same time period, the city has gone from eight to 17 commercial permits. That trend has the city keeping an eye on its current utility capacity. Services like water treatment and the electrical grid must be constantly maintained and updated to meet demand.
Some growth is necessary to keep the community healthy, McClain said, referencing the county’s 1% annual growth rate compared to other, faster-growing regions.
“There’s something worse than growing, and that’s not growing at all,” he said.
McClain said the city is choosing to spend its tax money carefully as it approaches projects like funding school expansions in the near future. “For the first time in my career, you’re going to see some debt paid off,” he said.
Employees
Employment is another landscape that’s changing. Around 74 of the city’s 329 employees are nearing retirement age, McClain said, counting himself in that number.
“First it’s finding people who want to work,” he said. “And then when you get good people, it’s hanging onto them. And if you do that really well and they’ve been with you a long time, at some point they’re going to leave you for retirement.”
Assistant City Manager Roger Campbell is one such person who’s going to be leaving the city later this year. Staff are changing Stoltenberg’s job title to assistant city manager in July in anticipation of that departure.
That doesn’t mean Stoltenberg is slated as the next city manager, McClain said, since that position will be appointed by the city council when it’s next open, but he hopes to be able to pass his knowledge to the younger city staffer before his own retirement.
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