Rooms To Go will locate its new warehouse and retail outlet store in Wilson County, investing $69 million and creating 200 new jobs.

Founded in 1990, Rooms To Go is one of the nation’s top selling furniture retailers. The company operates 226 stores across 10 states and Puerto Rico and has five retail stores located in Tennessee.

The new facility will be at Lebanon’s Cedar Farms, an industrial building developed by Al Neyer and New York Life Real Estate Investors, an investment division within NYL Investors, a wholly owned subsidiary of New York Life Insurance Company.

Rooms To Go will utilize the 902,000-square-foot facility as a furniture warehouse and will add an additional 40,000 square feet, which will serve as a retail outlet.

The Wilson County facility will be the company’s first outlet store in Tennessee and will give Rooms To Go easy access to three interstates and convenient delivery to 39 million people within 300 miles of Nashville.

Nashville Food launches Lynchburg excursions

Nashville Food Adventures has launched a new Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey Adventure Tour.

The tours are scheduled for Sundays and Tuesdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The tour also is available to businesses or private groups.

Guests will be transported in a 14-passenger vehicle with an expert bourbon guide, drinks, light snacks, trivia and more.

Once at the distillery, tours vary from a standard tasting and tour to a platinum tasting tour featuring a second Lynchburg distillery, a barbecue lunch, a wine tasting, and tickets to two additional Nashville area distillery tours.

Information: [email protected], DabbleTours.com

Fridge wins big at 40th Telly Awards

Fridge Agency, a full-service food and beverage advertising, marketing and communications agency with locations in Nashville and Louisiana, brought home 12 national awards, including a first-place, from the 40th Annual Telly Awards.

With more than 10,000 entries from around the world, the Telly Awards honors excellence in video and TV across all screens and is judged by leaders from video platforms, television, streaming networks and production companies, such as Vice, Vimeo, Hearst Digital Media, BuzzFeed and A&E Networks.

The Tellys awarded the coveted Gold Telly to Fridge for its submission in the Non-Broadcast General-Production Company/Ad Agency Demo Reel category for the reel it produced through its work with Smoothie King, titled “Smoothie King Cleaner Blending BTS.”

Fridge’s regional television and social media videos for Mellow Mushroom dominated the competition, winning three silver and six bronze awards, while two other Fridge-produced videos for Smoothie King also earned bronze.

Study: Middle Tennessee continues strong growth

The Tennessee State Data Center reports the Middle Tennessee boom continues.

The Center operates out of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research in the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business, and its new report comes from U.S. Census Bureau city and county population data that was recently analyzed.

Based on the change in population between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018, nine of the 10 cities with the largest gains were in Middle Tennessee.

Murfreesboro and Clarksville were the state’s two fastest-growing cities of 2018. Metropolitan Davidson County was third and ranked as the 24th most populous city in the nation.

In addition, eight of the 10 fastest-growing counties in Tennessee last year were in Middle Tennessee, and four of those landed among the 100 fastest growing counties in the nation.

“The fact that cities and towns in the Nashville area recorded some impressive population growth again last year is a very familiar concept for residents in that part of the state,” says Tim Kuhn, director of the State Data Center.

“The real news here is that this trend is continuing. That is important for planners and public officials working to provide services in these communities and for businesses operating in the area.”

Residents continued to move away from Memphis for the sixth straight year, with the state’s second-largest city losing 944 residents in 2018 and dipping one spot to No. 26 in the ranking of largest US cities. Across the state, 136 municipalities lost population in 2019 while 206 increased in size.

Overall, Tennessee cities added 37,471 new residents last year, compared to 27,745 in unincorporated areas.

TBA partners with Velocity Solutions

Velocity Solutions, LLC, a provider of revenue enhancement solutions to regional and community financial institutions, has announced a strategic partnership with the Tennessee Bankers Association.

The partnership will enable its member banks to provide small-dollar consumer loans in their communities.

The TBA has identified Velocity’s CashPlease program as the solution that member banks can use to deliver small-dollar loans to their customers in an efficient and compliant way.

CashPlease is an automated small-dollar, short-term loan platform that allows consumers to apply for loans 24/7 on their bank’s branded CashPlease website or mobile app.

Loan amounts generally range from $100 to $1,500, and do not require a traditional credit check.

An ability-to-repay determination is made by Velocity’s data-driven proprietary algorithm, the underlying technology of which has been used to analyze short-term liquidity on millions of accounts for many years.

SouthPoint Risk acquires First Insurance Partners

SouthPoint Risk – a full-service independent insurance agency – has acquired First Insurance Partners of Dickson, continuing its expansion across the Southeast.

SouthPoint now has nine locations throughout Tennessee and Kentucky.

First Insurance Partners provides services across Middle Tennessee, including Davidson, Montgomery and Williamson counties, and specializes in a range of insurance such as entertainment, public entity and social service, among others.

Forbes names Asurion 1 of Tennessee’s best employers

Asurion has been listed as one of Forbes America’s Best-in-State Employers 2019 for the state of Tennessee.

Best-in-state employers were chosen based on an independent survey of 80,000 employees who work for companies employing at least 500 workers. In partnership with market research firm Statista, the Forbes survey emphasized how likely employees were to recommend their employer to friends and family.

Employees also were asked to recommend other employers, which also factored into the rankings.

Jackson, TD Ameritrade partner on annuity

Jackson National Life Insurance Company, based in Franklin, and TD Ameritrade are bringing the carrier’s most popular advisory annuity product – Perspective Advisory IISM – to the independent RIA (registered investment adviser) channel.

Since its launch in 2017, Jackson’s Perspective Advisory II has been one of the leading advisory variable annuities. The product’s many rider options allow individuals to customize their choices to meet unique needs and goals, while investment freedom gives RIAs the ability to work with their clients to build a diversified portfolio that is customized to meet their clients’ individual priorities and preferences, rather than locking them into restrictive allocation models.

FiftyForward gets $150K grant for day services

The Cigna Foundation has announced a $150,000 grant over three years to FiftyForward in Nashville to provide day services for adults aged 50 and older who are experiencing cognitive or physical health challenges.

The program offers social, mental and physical learning opportunities in a safe environment, and is the first organization to offer this type of social model day program in the Middle Tennessee community.

The FiftyForward Adult Day Services program serves community-dwelling older adults in need of care.

Services include individual and group activities, volunteering, exercise, nutritious meals, transportation and peer engagement.

Report examines State of Black Music

The National Museum of African American Music recently released its second annual report, the State of Black Music.

The Nashville-based museum, set to open in early 2020, will be the only museum dedicated solely to preserving African-American music traditions and celebrating the influence African-American have had on music.

Highlights from the report include:

After overtaking rock as the most-played music last year, hip-hop’s dominance has only gotten larger. Eight of the 10 most-streamed artists last year were rappers.

Black artists were leaders in mixing genres and defying category. Lil Nas X became the most-streamed artist in a single week after a collaboration with Billy Ray Cyrus, and Cardi B’s “I Like It” topped the charts and was nominated for Record of the Year.

The past year has also been tough for artists lost – Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson, James Ingram, Roy Hargrove and Nipsey Hussle, among others – whose legacies touch the last 60 years of popular music and will continue to reverberate.

LP buys prefinished siding company

Nashville-based Louisiana-Pacific Corporation has announced it has acquired Prefinished Staining Product Incorporated, a prefinished siding company located in Green Bay.

PSPI has been offering prefinished LP SmartSide Trim and Siding for a number of years.

“This acquisition will help us continue to grow our siding business and increase market penetration in the segments we serve,” says Neil Sherman, LP executive vice president for siding. “This is an important part of our strategy as we transform into a leading building solutions provider.”

“In addition, LP will continue to utilize our existing prefinished providers and partner to help grow their business as well as the LP SmartSide brand.”

The prefinished siding market is expected to grow significantly over the next five years.

Acquiring PSPI provides LP with the facilities, capability and expertise to enter this market and drive growth in the company’s siding business.

“LP Building Solutions is focused on developing building solutions for a market that continues to face the challenge of labor shortages,” Sherman says.

PSPI will operate as part of LP’s siding business.