Best Chattanooga business stories of 2014

Four years after the end of the worst economic downturn in modern history, metropolitan Chattanooga has yet to regain all of the more than 23,000 jobs it lost during the Great Recession.

But 2014 laid the foundation for the Chattanooga area to soon move ahead to record high employment levels.

Chattanooga landed nearly $1 billion of new business locations or expansions in the past year, including more than $700 million from Volkswagen and its automotive suppliers. Collectively, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce projects new business investments announced in the Chattanooga area in 2014 will add nearly 4,000 direct new jobs in manufacturing, tourism and business services. Those should help support thousands of other new spinoff jobs in the region.

Metro Chattanooga has already added back about three-fourths of the jobs it lost in the recession and the planned new hirings should push employment levels in the 6-county region to new heights, perhaps as soon as 2015.

In neighboring Cleveland, Tenn., employment already is at a record high mark after increasing in 2014 to high of 3,500 jobs above its pre-recession peak.

But metropolitan Dalton, hard hit by the decline in housing and the shift to hardwood floors from the carpets upon which Dalton is built, continues to lag behind its pre-recession employment levels. Dalton has about 20 percent less employment, or about 17,000 fewer jobs, than what it had in 2006.

One of Chattanooga's biggest employers, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is adjusting to a newer more energy efficient world of commerce, which is cutting the growth in electrical demand. In response, TVA cut 2,000 jobs from its employment rolls in 2014.

But the region is benefiting from the ongoing work at three of the biggest construction projects in all of Tennessee TVA's $4.2 billion Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor near Spring City, Tenn., the $2 billion Wacker polysilicon plant near Charleston, Tenn., and the $600 million addition at Volkswagen.

While VW captured the biggest headlines in 2014, some of Chattanooga's oldest businesses also expanded in 2014, including Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Southern Champion Tray, Shaw Industries, and Chattem Chemicals, among others.

Chattanooga also is gaining global attention for its first-in-the-nation gigabit-per-second Internet service and the budding technology ventures attracted to the Gig City. City boosters expect the addition of new venture funds, Tech Town and Startup Week in 2014 should pay even bigger dividends for new business startups in the future.

"The eyes of the world are watching us," Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said.