Best of business 2014: Coke stays in Chattanooga

On a blustery morning in late April, Chattanooga Coca-Cola Bottling Co. leaders gathered at the company's 1970s-era bottling facility off Amnicola Highway and revealed that Chattanooga Coke would build its new, $62 million regional headquarters in Chattanooga.

Chattanooga the world's first Coke bottling city has handled bottling and distribution of Coke products for 115 years. As The Coca-Cola Co. pulls back from distribution services, the mega soda maker is increasingly dependant on independent bottlers like Chattanooga to move in and pick up extra territories.

But Coca-Cola Bottling Co. United Chattanooga's parent company based in Birmingham, Ala. was looking at a handful of cities to expand its regional bottling and distribution facility and claimed right up to the day of the big announcement that the new facility could have gone to Dalton, Ga. or other nearby towns.

What Chattanooga Coke officials didn't say until the announcement was that the new headquarters and distribution hub not only created 43 new jobs by staying in Chattanooga, but saved 270 existing jobs that would have transferred to the new facility, wherever it was built.

Coke United's decision to stay in Chattanooga largely fell on Chattanooga's Coke bottling heritage and existing infrastructure, company officials said.

"We knew it was correct to stay in Chattanooga," said Coca-Cola Bottling Company United CEO Claude Nielsen. "It's the only place that this facility should be."

Coke United picked the abandoned facility once occupied by what was once another one of Chattanooga's biggest companies, Olan Mills. The former portrait photography processing center off Highway 153 and Shepard Road was demolished and a new distribution complex is now taking shape.

Construction began in late summer, and the new facility is scheduled to open sometime in January 2016.