Beyond the Square

A stronger economy may depend less on landing one giant employer, more on stacking smaller wins that fit the county

8:18 p.m. Sept. 3, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

Moore County does not need 500 acres and 500 jobs to move its economy forward.

It may need 50 or 60 rooms for overnight stays, a place worth lingering after supper, 20 people who know industrial controls, and a machine shop that can make something Tuesday morning and sell it three counties over by Wednesday.

That is a different picture of economic development from the one small counties have pursued for generations. There is no giant industrial park in the middle of it, no sea of rooftops, and no promise that one enormous employer will ride into town and fix everything.

What fits Moore County looks smaller, sharper, and more deliberate. The best prospects keep more visitor dollars here, bring in outside dollars, or help a local business grow along the way.

Moore County already has the hardest pieces in place. Tourism brings millions of dollars from outside into Lynchburg every year. Manufacturing already pays some of the county’s strongest wages. Just beyond the county line sits a larger regional workforce, technical training at Motlow State Community College, and established manufacturing economies in Coffee, Bedford, Franklin, and Lincoln counties.

The question is not whether Moore County can grow. It is a question of what kind of growth fits – one the Planning and Zoning Commission returns to often.

Keep more of the money already coming here

Tourism gives Moore County a head start most rural counties would gladly take.

Visitors spent nearly $14.89 million here in 2025, generating 99 direct jobs, nearly $1.97 million in labor income, and about $241,800 in local taxes. Tourism accounted for 33.57% of the county’s retail and non-retail sales, more than twice the statewide share.

But tucked inside those numbers is an obvious weakness.

Moore County’s day visitors spent an estimated $141 per person, more than day visitors in Bedford, Coffee, Franklin, or Lincoln counties. Once the sun went down, the order flipped.

Overnight visitors spent an estimated $171 apiece, the lowest figure among the five counties. Lincoln County’s overnight figure was $294. Coffee County’s was $266.

Lodging tells much the same story. Visitors spent only about $504,000 on lodging in Moore County, roughly 3% of all visitor spending.

That does not prove Lynchburg can fill any hotel somebody decides to build. A proper feasibility study still has to answer that. The numbers do show where the tourism economy gets thin: Moore County is already doing the hard part by getting people here. The opportunity is keeping more of them here.

Ryan French, executive director and CEO of the South Central Tennessee Tourism Association, has said for years that overnight visitation is one of the clearest ways to grow tourism’s local impact.

“Overnight visitation has a massive impact on local tourism economics and is one of the biggest needs to grow the impact of visitation in Moore County,” French told the Observer last year after the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development’s Economic Impact of Travel on Tennessee report.

Nothing has changed – except visitors spent nearly $14.89 million in Moore County last year, down 4.5% from 2024.

“With sales taxes being the biggest driver of local impact, retention is key,” French said. “One more burger, one more tank of gas, and especially one more overnight leads to big bucks for local businesses and local tax collections.”

The overnight stay is only part of the payoff. Staying until morning creates another chance for supper, gasoline, coffee, breakfast, shopping, and another experience before the visitor leaves town.

For generations, the Square has been the center of Lynchburg’s tourism economy. It still matters. But the next chapter cannot depend on foot traffic alone along Main, Mechanic, Short, and Hiles streets.

Growth will require more places to stay, more things to do, and more reasons for visitors to spend money beyond the streets surrounding the Square.

That, at its core, is also the premise behind Whiskey Creek: create lodging and visitor infrastructure that gives people a reason to spend the night – and the next morning’s money – in Moore County.

A well-scaled hotel or boutique lodging development deserves a hard look. So do businesses that stretch a Lynchburg visit into the evening – a destination restaurant, live music, culinary experiences, outdoor recreation, or other attractions that keep folks from pointing the car toward Tullahoma, Winchester, Fayetteville, or Huntsville before supper.

The best tourism growth is not another business fighting over the same noon-hour dollar. It is a business that creates a new dollar.

The goal is simple: turn tour, lunch, shop, leave into tour, lunch, shop, supper, stay, breakfast, leave.

Bring outside dollars home

Tourism cannot carry the whole load.

Moore County’s population remains below 7,000, and the local labor force is small. That makes the old economic-development model – land a giant plant and find hundreds of workers — a tougher proposition from the start.

There simply is not an army of unemployed people sitting around waiting for a factory gate to open. But that does not mean Moore County is out of the industrial game. It means the game needs to be different.

Instead of chasing a 500-job operation, Moore County could be a strong fit for a 15-person automation company, a 25-person precision machine shop, a specialty fabrication business, an engineering firm, or an industrial technology company.

Those businesses do not need thousands of local customers. They do not need every employee to live inside the county. And they do not need acres upon acres of land.

They need access to a regional workforce, technical skills, roads, power, dependable broadband where needed, and customers within reach.

Moore County sits in the middle of that kind of region.

Motlow State Community College offers training in mechatronics, robotics, automation, and other technical fields. Coffee County has a larger manufacturing base next door. Bedford, Franklin, and Lincoln counties add their own plants, trades, and workforce. Huntsville sits farther south with a deep engineering and technology economy.

The county line matters for taxes. It matters considerably less to a machinist driving 25 minutes to work.

A small industrial controls company could be based in Moore County and service plants in Tullahoma, Shelbyville, Fayetteville, Winchester, and beyond. A machine shop could make parts for customers scattered across Middle Tennessee and North Alabama. An engineering firm could sell expertise without needing 100 acres or 300 employees.

The paycheck comes home even when the customer does not.

Start with what we already have

Recruitment is only one side of economic development. Sometimes the next good business is already here – in a workshop, storefront, or somebody’s notebook.

Brookings found much the same approach in Wytheville, Va., a rural town of about 8,000 that turned to entrepreneurship while rebuilding its downtown economy. Rather than waiting for somebody from somewhere else to rescue it, “the town decided to start with what it had locally” – aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start businesses.

There is something in that for Moore County.

The county already has tradesmen, craftspeople, contractors, small manufacturers, food businesses, retailers, tourism operators, and people working for somebody else who may eventually want to hang out their own shingle.

Economic development can mean helping a local company grow from three employees to eight just as surely as it can mean recruiting one from Ohio.

McKinsey’s research on rural economic development makes the case more directly. The firm found that “expanding and retaining SMEs” – small and midsize businesses – “has a higher return on investment,” in part because businesses already rooted in a community generally do not need incentives to move there.

That matters in Moore County. Jack Daniel’s is the county’s largest employer and an enormous economic asset. The point is not to choose small business over large industry or tourism over manufacturing. It is to build more legs under the table.

That could mean helping a contractor reach neighboring counties, moving a locally made product into e-commerce, or helping a skilled tradesman turn experience into a company.

The business does not have to become enormous to matter here. Ten good jobs land differently in a county of fewer than 7,000 people than they do in Nashville.

Build around what Moore County already knows

Moore County also speaks the language of manufacturing. Hundreds of local jobs are tied to it, and average manufacturing wages are among the strongest in the county. Food and beverage is already one of Moore County’s dominant industrial clusters, giving local recruitment somewhere natural to start.

Jack Daniel’s does not have to be the only company making something here, and Moore County does not need another whiskey distillery to build around the whiskey economy.

Beverage manufacturers need controls, stainless fabrication, packaging, machinery, maintenance, engineering, and specialty parts. Some might employ 12 people, others 30 or 40 – not a headline-grabbing jobs announcement, perhaps, but enough good jobs to matter plenty in a county this size.

A specialty manufacturer could have Lynchburg on the return address and customers from Memphis to Chattanooga. Jack Daniel’s becomes part of the county’s calling card, but not necessarily the whole customer list.

Around here, land is not something we make more of.

A business producing high-value work from a modest building may make more sense than a low-wage operation sprawling across a large tract. Economic development should count jobs, but it should also count wages, acres used, infrastructure required, traffic created, and whether the business still makes sense 20 years from now.

Growth is not automatically good because the building is big.

The neighbors are part of the opportunity

Moore County’s size can make the county line look bigger than it really is. Workers, contractors, and customers cross it every morning. Businesses buy from suppliers on the other side without giving the boundary much thought. That is how a regional economy works.

Moore County does not have to build everything inside 129 square miles. It can recruit businesses that tap workers from neighboring counties, sell to companies across southern Middle Tennessee, and still keep payroll, property, and business activity here.

A precision shop in Lynchburg can supply a plant in Coffee County. An automation firm here can service equipment in Bedford or Lincoln County. A local hotel can catch visitors headed across the region.

Coffee, Franklin, Lincoln, and Bedford counties do not have to lose for Moore County to win. The better play is bringing more paychecks home without pretending the economy stops at the county line.

That also means Moore County should resist the temptation to chase everything carrying the label “development.”

A giant distribution center consuming acres while producing modest wages may be a poor trade. A labor-hungry operation requiring hundreds of workers could strain a workforce that is already tight. Another round of generic tourist retail may simply divide existing spending into smaller pieces.

Being selective is not being anti-growth. It is recognizing that a small county cannot afford too many bad fits.

Small can still mean serious

There is no single business waiting somewhere to fix Moore County’s future, and there probably should not be.

The stronger play is a collection of businesses that fit the county instead of trying to remake it – some recruited here, some grown here.

They can broaden the tax base, add good payroll, give existing shops more customers, and give a few more young people a reason to build their lives closer to home.

That is serious economic development even if the parking lot is not enormous.

The opportunity is not to make Moore County bigger than Bedford, busier than Coffee, or more industrial than Lincoln.

It is to keep more visitor dollars here, bring more outside dollars home, and do both without asking Moore County to become something it is not.