East Ridge TN

Doing Business

The Border Region District

East Ridge sits on the Georgia line, so retail dollars had been crossing the border for years. The district was the City's answer to that.

Where the Border Region district sits A schematic of East Ridge at the Tennessee and Georgia state line. Interstate 75 runs north from the Georgia line and meets Interstate 24 at the interchange. Exit One sits at that junction, and the 950-acre Border Region district is drawn around the interchange and along Ringgold Road. Exit One Ringgold Rd I-75 I-24 TENNESSEE GEORGIA 950-ACRE DISTRICT
The Border Region district Designated October 2011. Schematic, drawn from the City's own boundary description.

How the Designation Works

The 2011 act let Tennessee municipalities that border another state and have an interstate running through them apply to the state Commissioner of Revenue for a district designation. Inside that district the City can enter financial incentive agreements to bring new development, and the state reimburses the City for the cost of those incentives out of its share of the increased sales tax.

East Ridge applied under a City ordinance adopted October 26, 2011, and the designation followed in October 2011.

What the district covers

  • Exit One
  • The I-75 and I-24 interchange
  • The central business district along Ringgold Road
  • South Moore Road
  • Germantown Road
  • North of I-24 along Germantown Road

The designation starts with where the city is. This is the basin from the crest of Missionary Ridge, looking west to Lookout Mountain. East Ridge lies on the far side of that ridge, against the state line the act was written for.

The long wooded profile of Lookout Mountain across the horizon, with the floor of the Chattanooga basin below it — houses, trees, warehouses and a scatter of taller buildings receding into haze.
Lookout Mountain across the Chattanooga basin From the crest of Missionary Ridge Chris Light · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · cropped

What the District Has Produced

nearly $800 million

Sales tax growth in the region since the district began.

2024

Excellence in Economic Development from the Tennessee Municipal League, for meeting sales tax leakage across the border with incentives and investment that revitalized the downtown business district.

950 acres

Designated by the State Commissioner of Revenue under the Border Region Retail Tourism Development Act, 2011.