Growth Fuels Passionate Huntsville Residents

Noah Logan

compelling information as they talk with potential employees considering a move here,” Cape concluded.

Among the more recent recognitions, Huntsville has been named the 3rd best place to live (Studyfinds.org), the 2nd Best City for Career Opportunities (smartasset.com), the 5th Best Tech Town (CompTIA.org), and the 2022-2023 Best Place to Live (News & World Report), to name a few.

Yet still, initial reactions to Huntsville’s recent rise in national fame were still negative, regardless of the above rankings.

The Business Journal sat down with Huntsville’s Director of Urban and Economic Development Shane Davis to get a response to some of these notions.

When asked about the sentiment that Huntsville is growing too fast for its infrastructure to allow, Davis responded that while the city has seen an influx of people, Huntsville has and will continue to provide for its residents.

“I think if you go back in and look historically over the last 10 years, we've seen this population growth now for the last decade. And, certainly if you look at the curve the last two to three years, it's been a much more vertical spike. But you've always heard leader- ship in Huntsville say we don't wanna be the biggest, we want to strive to be the best,” said Davis.

“It gives us a matrix for housing demand and how to plan for transportation infrastructure. But there's not a goal inside City Hall to grow to a certain population. From an infrastructure standpoint, we've got two capital plans in the city, and we saw this coming back in 2014. We created a new capital improvement plan that's solely dedicated to public infrastructure and heavily focused on roads,” Davis concluded.

Davis also made a point to note the amount of infrastructure changes and enhancements that the city has made over the past few years.

“If you look at what we've been doing in the last five years, we've completed $400 million worth of road projects. And then there's $800 million on the books that will be completed in the next five years. So we feel like we've got a good handle on transportation. In 2023, I see over a hundred million dollars of additional road construction,” said Davis.

Davis then turned toward the future, and really urged bregurged citizens to look at the long-term picture.

“If you look at a 10 year span, what we've done and what will be done, you're looking at $1.2 billion worth of road projects done here locally. So, we want to stay focused on infrastructure, not just roads, but our parks, our greenways, our utilities to make sure that, there’s always been a focus before this growth,”said Davis.

Davis was also asked to respond to people who have expressed their view that the city’s growth is unfairly benefiting the wealthiest of Huntsville’s residents.

“I would challenge that a little bit, in that, we've created 41,000 jobs since 2014 and 18,000 of those jobs are still to be filled. The one thing that we focused on coming outta the recession is to not have two classes of citizens, if you will,” said Davis Davis noted that, out of the 41,000 jobs added, 22,000 paid over $50,000 per year as a base salary, which does not include benefits.

He also pointed to the fact that more than half of the jobs added could be attained with a GED or high school diploma. Davis stated that more than half of the 18,000 positions that still needed to be filled could be at- tained with these credentials.

“It gives people that don’t have a PhD or four year bachelor's degree in an engineering field per se, or a medical field, or finance field, to go get a really good job with benefits. We have helped create these opportunities, and we want [our residents] to do that,” Davis concluded.

Davis concluded the interview by urging people to get out and seek these positions.

“There are people commuting into the city. Our daytime population from Monday through Friday increases by 130,000 people in this community. We have evidence that there are opportunities for people here. We have people commuting from 14 different counties, including some in Tennessee.

“So, there are opportunities here. People come here to grow families, and for the health benefits. That’s why we got the ranking we did. We have helped create these opportunities, and we want [our residents] to take them,” Shane concluded.

To view a full and comprehensive list of recent Huntsville accolades and media recognitions, please visit hsvchamber.org/category/accolades. w