J.B. Underwood, owner of Collegedale Central Exxon, and David Barto, executive director of the Collegedale Tomorrow Foundation.J.B. Underwood was in high school when the city of Collegedale was incorporated in 1968. A few years later, he incorporated "Collegedale Central Exxon," located at the corner of Apison Pike and Ooltewah-Ringgold Road. He believed the day would come when his service center would sit at the center of the new city.
"People just laughed at the idea, and I understood why," Underwood says.
No one is laughing anymore. Collegedale - the fastest-growing city in Tennessee - celebrates its 50th birthday this year, and the intersection of Apison Pike and Ooltewah-Ringgold Road, where Underwood is in his 44th year as a small-business owner, is indeed the center of the city.
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Collegedale was conceived in 1915, when what is now Southern Adventist University located on land a mile up the road from Collegedale Central Exxon. The founders of the school called the land Collegedale.
Known as Southern Junior College, the school incorporated work into its students' lives. That outlet was a furniture factory in the 1950s. After it burned down in 1956, the school took the insurance money and built a new manufacturing facility.
Paralleling the journey of Southern, O.D. and Ruth McKee were looking for a new home for their baking business. The McKees had purchased a small bakery in Chattanooga in 1934. In 1937, they expanded and moved their business to North Carolina, but the couple returned to Chattanooga in 1952.
In 1957, Southern was looking for a tenant for its new plant and the McKees were again looking to expand. The match was made, and 62 years later, the two institutions remain the heart and soul of the city.
"Everything in Collegedale is ancillary to Southern and McKee," says Underwood, who first leased his gas station from O.D. McKee.
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Like many rural communities, Collegedale incorporated in 1968 to avoid the threat of annexation from a larger municipality, in this case Chattanooga. Originally, less than 1,000 people lived inside the city. By the mid-1980s, Collegedale had around 5,000 residents.
Things began to really pick up in 1993 when Little Debbie Parkway opened, connecting Apison Pike to Old Lee Highway in Ooltewah. The road was designed to get McKee trucks off of Apison Pike because the narrow, two-lane road presented a safety hazard with every trip to and from Interstate 75 and the McKee plant.
The road helped McKee, but it also opened Collegedale to traffic coming from the growing Ooltewah area.
During the recession in 2008-2009, three significant things occurred that help explain why Collegedale is thriving today. McKee was investing in the growth that would help it become the largest provider of snack cakes in the country; there was discussion of widening Apison Pike; and the blockbuster announcement came that Volkswagen would build its plant at Enterprise South, just down the road. Apison Pike opened as a five-lane boulevard in August 2017, Volkswagen has continued to grow more jobs, and McKee has invested more than $100 million in its facilities in the past three years.
The convergence of jobs and access sparked a 34 percent increase in population between 2007 and 2017, and there are at least four new housing developments currently underway that are either inside Collegedale or border its city limits.
Katie Lamb, mayor of Collegedale for the past four years, has lived in the city for 47 years. As the leader of government and a lifelong resident, she has a unique perspective on the city's rural past and the accelerated growth, which shows no sign of slowing.
"We felt like we were living in a small country town on the edge of a big city," Lamb says as she reflects on the early years of the city. "After 15 years or so, it started becoming clear that people liked living out here. I know some people bemoan the growth that has happened, but I know we are prepared to keep this as a bedroom community with the services a family will need."
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Greg Vital was 23 when he was elected to Collegedale City Council in 1979, and he remains the youngest person ever elected to public office in Hamilton County. He served four years on the council and has since gone on to a successful business career as a co-founder of Morning Pointe Senior Living Communities. Vital is passionate about land conservation and is a member of the Collegedale Tomorrow Foundation, creator of The Commons, a multi-use community space in the center of the city.
He points to an early commitment to planning and conservative financial stewardship by the local government as a foundation for the emergence of Collegedale today. He says the consistent presence of the McKee family's commitment to the community blended perfectly with the efforts of government.
"Back then we were already talking about beautification and sidewalks. There was a focus on planning back in the early 1980s about what Four Corners would become," he says, using the colloquial name for the intersection of Apison Pike and Ooltewah-Ringgold Road.
Vital points to the development around the city hall complex as evidence that the commitment to community planning through the decades has paid dividends in Collegedale. Veterans Memorial Park, Imagination Station, the Collegedale Dog Park, the scenic greenways and walking paths and The Commons are all within walking distance of the city hall complex, which is less than a half-mile from Four Corners.
"We have always valued planning to incorporate urban growth with the preservation of the way of life we enjoy," Vital says, adding, "The McKee family has always been the engine that helped job creation in east Hamilton County, but they also made a philanthropic and civic commitment to improving services. I see their commitment to Collegedale paying off 40 years later for the entire region."