The Chattanooga Engineers Club has been an active participant in community economic development for more than 80 years.

Serving its members, and the community at large, by working on projects that bring good, technical jobs to the community has been a significant activity. This activity is often done "behind the scenes", such as recent work in the transfer of significant portions of the "Volunteer Site" from the US Army to the local city and county government. The new organization, Enterprise South, is now recognized as a "Mega-Site" in the development community and is likely to acquire a major manufacturing site within the next year or so.

With almost 7000 acres of land, the site of the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant (VAAP) represented an excellent opportunity to combine the two long-term strengths of the Chattanooga area. We are quite skilled in the production of new items, and we are located at the crossroads of the eastern United States. Enterprise South permits the community to have both new industrial jobs and a significant "greenspace" development for recreation.

Chattanooga has had a leadership role in the manufacture of "new" materials in several fields (polymers, castable alloys, and ceramics to name a few), and we have used our central position in the ground transportation system to build leadership in truck, rail, pipeline and logistics.

This same network of ground transportation is providing unprecedented new opportunities in telecommunication, because the voice and data cables follow the same general paths that made Chattanooga a crucial location as long ago as the Civil War.

The recent emphasis on development by organizing "clusters" of related activity will allow the CEC to continue to bring "good" jobs to the area