2002 - Battle Academy opens on Market Street, paving the way to the expansion of the Southside as an entertainment and residential district which has continued for almost two decades. The downtown magnet school is named for H.H. Battle, a former Chattanooga pastor and member of the former city board of education. Brown Academy, a twin magnet school near UTC, was also opened that year. The same year, Normal Park Museum Magnet opens across the river in North Chattanooga, serving as a catalyst for a residential and commercial resurgence in one of the city's traditional, pre-WWII neighborhoods.
2005 - The 21st Century Waterfront Project is completed. Engineered by Mayor Bob Corker, the $120 project led to expansion of the North Shore and riverfront areas and provided a catalyst for tourism and downtown living. Building on the construction of the Tennessee Aquarium in the 1990s, the 21st Century Waterfront plan added a second salt-water phase to the Aquarium as well as Renaissance park on the North Shore.
2008 - Volkswagen announces it will build a $1 billion assembly plant in Hamilton County, sparking a new automotive sector in the local economy that will grow to employ almost 4,000 by the end of next decade. The plant was formally announced in July 2008 and began production of the Passat sedan in April 2011.
2009 - BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee opens new LEED Gold-certified corporate campus on Cameron Hill, solidifying Chattanooga's insurance industry and keeping in place one of the city's top employers.
2010 - Amazon announced that it was building 1 million-square-foot distribution centers in Chattanooga and Charleston, Tenn., investing $139 million and creating more than 1,400 full-time jobs. Amazon started with about 700 full-time workers in Chattanooga and 300 in Charleston when it began operations in 2011. By the end of the decade the Chattanooga facility would employ about 2,500 people.
2010 - EPB gains world attention becoming the first company in the United States to offer 1 gig high-speed internet. At the time, that was more than 200 times faster than the national average speed. Later, in 2015, EPB introduced the world's first 10-gig Internet service, available citywide.
2014 - Access American Transport, a third-party logistics company established in Chattanooga in the early 2000s, was merged with Coyote Logistics creating a $2 billion freight brokerage company. The deal reportedly paid Access American's owners $260. The combined company, in turn, was sold to UPS for $1.8 billion in 2015. The company still forms the backbone of the Chattanooga area's robust freight logistics industry.
2015 - The Innovation District of Chattanooga, managed by the Enterprise Center, is established as a downtown corridor. It is billed as a mix of start-up businesses, incubators, and accelerators. The district aims to build off EPB's gigabit network and smart grid.
2016 - Wacker Chemical launches a production site in Charleston, Tenn., described as one of the "most modern production facilities for hyperpure polysilicon in the world." Hyperpure polysilicon is used in the production of solar panels. At a cost of $2.5 billion it represented the single biggest investment in the company's history.