The city Andy Berke inherited as mayor in April 2013 was one that had weathered the Great Recession better than most, according to experts.
It was, according to a NerdWallet list that year, sixth in the nation – based on labor and housing market data through 2012 – among cities that had improved most from the recession.
From 2009 to 2012, median home value grew 14.04%, median household income grew 13.43% and, according to the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, gross retail sales in the county increased.
Three years earlier, in March 2010, Moody’s Economy.com placed the city among the nearly half in the country that already had bottomed out from the recession and were recovering. Atlanta, Nashville and Knoxville, at the time, still were thought to be in recession.
“Overall,” Alex Miron, associate economist for Moody’s Economy, said at the time, “Chattanooga has experienced a much smaller decline in employment than at the national level, so with all of the development now going on in the area, it wasn’t surprising to see [it] emerge from the recession.”