Another Corporation Comes to Nashville
This time, it's Quanta Computer, a Taiwan-based maker of notebook PCs. The company plans to build its U.S. manufacturing and distribution facility in Nashville-Davidson County, reports The Tennessean on its website today. Quanta Computer makes notebook computers for Dell Computer Corp., Apple, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard. Dell has a major manufacturing and distribution presence in Nashville and a nearby suburb. Quanta will initially employ 50 people at the facility, where it will manufacture file servers, and employment is expected to grow to 500 people within three years. The Tennessean says Taiwan Economic News reported on April 30 that Dell had asked Quanta to locate a facility in Tennessee.

Nashville is on an economic development roll reminiscent of the mid-1990s. Quanta looks to be a big deal, though not as big as the relocation of Fortune 500 pharmaceutical services company Caremark from Birmingham, Ala., to Nashville, announced Tuesday. But certainly bigger than the relocation of Asurion, a wireless company, from Silicon Valley to Nashville announced a few weeks ago.

The politics of this is interesting. Along with Asurion, CareMark and Quanta Computer, several smaller economic development projects have been announced in other cities and counties across Tennessee. No doubt, most or even all of these deals were all in the works before Gov. Phil Bredesen took office in January, but it is Bredesen who reaps the political benefits. Timing is everything.

Bredesen made his mark as an economic development dynamo during his two terms as mayor of Nashville in the 1990s, helping bring the headquarters of Hospital Corporation of America back to Nashville, building and arena and stadium and landing an NHL expansion franchise and the relocation of the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans). His biggest coup, however, was landing Dell Computer, with a rich incentives package that became a lightning rod for criticism.

Even in recent weeks, the true cost of that incentives package, which is based on Dell's level of employment, came under fire from the current Nashville mayor, reopening the questioning of the "Dell deal," as it is known around Nashville.

But news that Dell, effectively, is responsible for the coming of Quanta and some 500 new jobs, should quiet the Dell deal dissent - and burnish Bredesen's image as an economic development wunderkind.