Nashville Entrepreneur Center has announced the 2024 NEXT Awards winners, spotlighting entrepreneurs reshaping industries and fueling Middle Tennessee’s growth.
Fourteen startup and high-growth business leaders took the stage recently, with individuals and businesses awarded at two stages of growth. Winners are:
• Startup Entrepreneur of 2024: Woody Baum, Local Infusion
• Growth Entrepreneur of 2024: Kaitlin Feriante, Redwood Literacy
The 12 total winners (one in each stage) from the following industry categories are:
Health care
• Startup: Local Infusion
• Growth: Thalamus
Financial Services
• Startup: inRev
• Growth: Celero Commerce
Music, Sports, Gaming, Entertainment
• Startup: Absolutely Ridiculous
• Growth: Single
Products and Services
• Startup: HeroWear
• Growth: Redwood Literacy
Real Estate and Construction
• Startup: Urban Campus and Core, LLC
• Growth: Grade A Construction, LLC
Hospitality and Retail
• Startup: Killjoy
• Growth: The Nashville Black Market
Witnesses: Armed group harassed Helene workers
Witnesses reported seeing a group of armed people harassing hurricane relief workers in a remote Tennessee community last weekend, a sheriff said Wednesday as a man in North Carolina appeared in court for allegedly threatening aid workers in that state.
Although there is no indication that the incidents are related, they come with the Federal Emergency Management Agency facing rampant disinformation about its response to Hurricane Helene, which came ashore in Florida on Sept. 26 before heading north and leaving a trail of destruction across six states. Reports of threats to aid workers sparked a temporary shift in how FEMA was operating in Western North Carolina.
In Tennessee, Carter County Sheriff Mike Fraley said that witnesses reported Saturday that FEMA workers were being harassed by a small group of armed people in the remote community of Elk Mills, not far from the North Carolina border. No arrests were made, but Fraley said that the people who showed up were looking to cause trouble.
“It was a little hairy situation, no guns were drawn, but they were armed,” Fraley told The Associated Press.
Fraley said his department was setting up a 24-hour command post in Elk Mills because of what happened. The region is still largely cut off from the rest of the state because Helene damaged and destroyed many bridges and roads.
“The community in that area has been great to work with, but this group is trying to create more hate toward the federal government,” Fraley said.
First-ever Tennessee Book Awards winners named
Humanities Tennessee, in partnership with the Tennessee State Library and Archives, has announced the winners of the first-ever Tennessee Book Awards.
Monic Ductan won in the fiction category for her short story collection “Daughters of Muscadine”; Rachel Louise Martin won in nonfiction for her book “A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation”; and Denton Loving won the poetry category for his poetry anthology “Tamp.”
The winners will each receive a $2,500 prize, and winners and finalists will speak about their work at a special session at the Southern Festival of Books at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
A statewide panel of teachers, librarians and Humanities Tennessee staffers reviewed all submissions and selected finalists. The winners were chosen by an all-star collection of authors: Haitian American novelist Edwidge Danticat, award-winning journalist and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan, and acclaimed and prolific poet George Ella Lyon.
Anderson, Burton, Keith inducted to Hall of Fame
Revered vocalist John Anderson, influential guitarist James Burton and iconic country hitmaker Toby Keith were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame Oct. 20. The three honorees became the 153rd, 154th, and 155th members of the Hall of Fame during the annual Medallion Ceremony, held at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater.
From the podium at the invitation-only event, museum CEO Kyle Young told the audience how those three musicians “took very different paths” to country music’s highest honor.
After being inducted by Hall of Fame member, “Falling Star” songwriter and fellow Florida native Bobby Braddock – who called Anderson “my country hero” – Anderson arrived at the podium, and reflected on his journey while acknowledging the many friends, family members, even personal physicians, in the audience before him.
“[There were] a lot of hills and valleys, many twists and turns, and dead stops,” Anderson says. “But I must say, behind all of that, there was a lot of adventure. And I got to choose my own way.”
Keith died in February at age 62, after a battle with stomach cancer – just three days after voting concluded for the 2024 Hall of Fame inductees.
“He didn’t get the chance to hear the news that he had been inducted,” says Keith’s wife, Tricia Covel. “I have a feeling…he might have thought, ‘I should have been.’”
The audience chuckled, recognizing the cocksure attitude that, in part, made Keith a larger-than-life star. Keith was inducted by Alabama frontman Randy Owen, who called his friend “a man that I dearly loved.”
Seventy years after Burton first started backing big-name singers, some of those same artists showed up Sunday to offer up their talents for his sake. The first to pay tribute was Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Elvis Costello – for whom Burton leapt up from his seat in the front row to shake hands.
But Costello wasn’t the only British music maker in attendance to honor Burton.
“I made it, James,” Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says with a grin after spotting his hero in the front row, adding, “I don’t think I’d be here without him.”
The evening closed, per tradition, with a singalong of the Carter Family’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
Zillow: Builders focused on condos, townhomes
America’s housing stock continues to grow faster than it did before the pandemic-induced housing frenzy, as builders race to fill a shortage of 4.5 million homes.
The latest analysis from Zillow shows roughly 1 million single-family homes were completed in 2023, the second-highest annual total since before the global financial crisis. That’s about 11% more homes than were completed in 2019.
To achieve this pace, builders pivoted toward higher density, building more townhomes as opposed to detached single-family homes – similar to what they did in 2022. Construction starts for detached single-family homes declined by nearly 9% from 2022 to 2023, but starts for attached single-family homes rose by more than 3% over the same time span.
“The housing affordability crisis still grips America. It was precipitated by decades of underbuilding, and despite builders’ recent efforts, the unmet need for homes is growing,” says Orphe Divounguy, Zillow senior economist. “The best long-term solution is more supply. Builders are helping where they can by shifting to more cost-conscious and space-efficient designs. But promoting density through local laws is key – that will go a long way to bring in more affordable homes where they’re needed the most.”
But the pace of construction is slowing, likely due in large part to slowing demand amid housing affordability challenges. Construction began on 946,000 single-family homes in 2023, about 7% fewer than in 2022 and 16.5% fewer than in 2021. This is a decline from a very strong couple of years; it still represents a solid number, historically speaking, 6% higher than 2019.
Markets that have issued the most single-family permits since 2020 are Houston and Dallas, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. Nashville ranks ninth in the list of those markets, with 70,850 single-family permits issued between January 2020 and August 2024, with a 50% increase in single-family home value during that same time period.
State unemployment well below national rate
Tennessee’s unemployment rate increased slightly last month but is still nearly one full percentage point below the national rate, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.2% in September, up 0.1% over the previous month. The state saw a record-low rate of 3% in May, June and July.
When compared with last year, Tennessee’s unemployment rate is 0.2% lower than its September 2023 rate of 3.4%.
Tennessee employers added 3,300 nonfarm jobs between August and September 2024. The health care and social assistance sector accounted for the largest increase, followed by the retail trade sector and the professional, scientific and technical services sector.
Over the past year, total nonfarm employment across the state increased by 31,100 jobs, with the biggest gains in the education and health services sector, followed by the trade, transportation and utilities sector, and other services.
Even though Tennessee experienced a small uptick in its unemployment rate over the past month, the state’s rate is still nearly a full percentage point below the U.S. rate of 4.1%.
Frozen waffle brands recalled due to listeria
Hundreds of frozen waffle products sold in leading retailers including Walmart and Target are being recalled because of possible contamination by the listeria bacteria, according to the manufacturer.
TreeHouse Foods said Friday that it issued a voluntary recall after discovering possible contamination during routing testing at its plant. It said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Canadian food regulators are aware of the recall.
Listeria infections can cause mild illness including fever and diarrhea or more serious problems. The illness is most dangerous to pregnant women, newborns, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
The CDC estimates that 1,600 people are infected with listeria each year in the United States and 260 die.
The recalled waffles are sold under a variety of names including Walmart’s Great Value, Target’s Good & Gather and private label brands sold by Food Lion, Kroger and Schnucks. TreeHouse published a complete list.
TreeHouse said there have been no confirmed reports of illness related to the waffles. The company said consumers holding any of the products should dispose of them or return them to the store for credit.
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