Welcome back. Glad you're here.

Workforce development is a decent chunk of what I do for a living, so I think about RCAM more than most people would consider healthy. The strange part is how few people in this town know it's there. It's one of the more important things Kingsport has built in twenty years and it might as well be unmarked.

In today's post:

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Everybody in this town can name the plant. There is an Eastman badge in somebody's kitchen drawer in every neighborhood in Kingsport, and if it isn't yours it's your neighbor's, or it belonged to your grandfather and now it lives in a shoebox. Manufacturing isn't an abstraction here. It's the reason the streets run the way they run.

So here's the question for today. What is the building at 305 West Main Street?

Almost nobody knows. They drive past it every week.

It's the Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing. RCAM. Twenty-six thousand square feet of simulators, labs, and classrooms operated by Northeast State, and it's the most consequential building downtown that nobody ever mentions.

Start with why this town needed one.

Kingsport was a manufacturing town before it was much of a town at all. Tennessee Eastman arrives in 1920 because George Eastman went looking for a place with enough forest to supply methanol and acetone and decided on us. Kingsport Press follows in 1922, and its first contract is printing miniature clothbound classics for Woolworth. Holliston Mills in 1926. Kingsport Foundry in 1927. In 1942 Tennessee Eastman builds Holston Ordnance Works to make explosives for the war, shuts it down in 1945, and fires it back up in 1949.

For most of a century, the deal was simple. You graduated, you went to the plant, somebody older than you taught you the job on the floor.

Then that deal came apart.

The Press went on strike in 1963 and stayed out until 1967, one of the longest strikes in the country. Arcata bought it in 1969. Quebecor bought Arcata in the nineties. In 2007, Quebecor closed. The town that printed books for the whole country stopped printing books.

Kingsport never stopped making things. But the guy who was going to teach you the job on the floor was retiring, and there were fewer of him every year.

Which brings us back to 305 West Main, and RCAM.

The city's answer was the Academic Village, and it got built one building at a time. Blazier-Wilson Hall opened in 2002 as the first. The Regional Center for Health Professions followed in 2008. In 2009, two things opened at once: RCAM, and the Kingsport Center for Higher Education, which went on to win an Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard's Ash Center. The Pal Barger Regional Center for Automotive Programs made five buildings in 2010.

RCAM is powered by something called the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, and the roster is the interesting part. The City of Kingsport. Eastman. Northeast State. Domtar. The Kingsport Chamber. I have sat in a lot of rooms about regional workforce, and companies that compete for the same workers agreeing on what the training ought to look like is not the normal outcome. Usually everybody builds their own version of it and calls that “collaboration”. Not Kingsport.

The money followed. Eastman announced Project Reinvest, more than $1.3 billion into its Kingsport headquarters and complex. The state of Tennessee put in $15 million for workforce development. Out of that, Eastman contributed $2.7 million toward the RCAM facility, and the U.S. Department of Labor added $1.9 million for equipment and scholarships.

There are three RCAM buildings downtown now, and the part I didn't understand until recently is how far back into the school system that reaches.

Kingsport City Schools starts career and technical coursework in 8th grade, before a student ever sets foot in Dobyns-Bennett. By the time they get there, 22 teachers are running CTE courses, and the senior registration card alone runs three pages. Bo Shadden, who directs CTE and post-secondary programs for the district, took that to the Board of Education last fall alongside associate director Nathan Bailey. Since 2021, 118 D-B students have earned 122 certificates or diplomas through dual enrollment with Northeast State and TCAT-Elizabethton. Not credits toward something later. Credentials, in hand, before they graduate.

The list of what they can train in keeps getting longer. Pipefitting. Certified clinical medical assistant. Electric and hybrid vehicle repair, taught on a 2025 electric truck the school bought with grant money and now uses to haul recycling out of D-B football games. Barbering, which started this year. Health science clinicals and work-based learning placements that put students inside actual businesses, with RCAM staff sitting on the industry partner side of that table.

So the deal isn't gone. The kid who used to learn the job from somebody older on the plant floor still learns it from somebody older. The floor just moved to 305 West Main.

Drive down West Main this week and actually look at the building. Somebody inside is learning to run the machine that makes the thing that ends up in your car, your medicine cabinet, your kitchen. They give tours. 423-354-5149. Take somebody's kid. (with permission of course)

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Three things worth knowing this week:

Party at the Park | Friday, July 31, 10 a.m. to noon | BlueCross Healthy Place at Riverwalk Park, 875 W. Industry Drive The city's first ever version of this, put together by Parks and Rec, Bays Mountain, and the library. Free, with touch a truck, pickleball, bike safety demos, a DJ, and an ice cream truck handing out the first 100 free. Details

Final Friday Food Truck Rally | Friday, July 31, 5 to 8 p.m. | City lot at Cherokee and Cumberland, next to Bellafina Chocolates The last Friday of every month, downtown, and the first one since Fun Fest cleared out. Bring cash and go early. Details

Live Acoustic with Charlie Blane | Saturday, August 1, 8 to 10 p.m. | Inspire Wine Bar, Commerce Street A free acoustic set in a small room, which is about the right speed for the first weekend after nine days of festival. Details

Petworks Animal Services is a 501c3 nonprofit at 3101 East Stone Drive that holds the contract to serve as animal control for the City of Kingsport. So it's doing a job the city has to get done, funded like a charity, which means the stray your neighbor called about and the cat somebody surrendered on a Tuesday both land in the same building, paid for partly by donations from people who will never meet either animal.

Their mission is short. Shelter them, care for them, rehome them. Right now they're saying publicly that they're handling more cruelty cases than they ever have, animals showing up hurt and scared and needing weeks of patience before they're ready for anybody's living room.

Adoptions are open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 1 to 5:30. You can adopt, foster, volunteer, or donate, and all four of those actually move the number.

If you've been telling yourself you'd get a dog when the timing is right, the timing is a11 to 7 weekdays, 11 to 5 Saturday. hotdoghutkingsport.com

731 Redwood Drive, Mount Carmel, TN | 3 bed, 2.5 bath

Speaking of things somebody built on purpose.

This one turns heads before you're out of the car, wrapped in a moody blue exterior that tells you it has opinions. Inside, the sunken living room with tall ceilings and hardwood floors sets the tone immediately. The main level runs from there into the kitchen and dining area, where a gas fireplace does the work on a Tuesday night in February. Half bath and laundry are tucked in nearby, and a flexible bonus room finishes out the floor, ready to be a fourth bedroom, an office, a playroom, or whatever you need it to be.

Upstairs is brand new LVP throughout. Two spacious bedrooms share a full bath, and the primary suite comes with its own gas fireplace, a private bath, and a freshly rebuilt balcony.

Then there's the back. Half an acre, level, fully fenced, with an in-ground pool that just got a new liner and a new concrete patio with a path running straight to the water. The two car garage has added 50 amp service for an RV hookup. That's not a backyard. That's a reason to stop making summer plans.

Full listing at sellstateline.com.

Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Buyer to verify all details through independent due diligence.

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That's it for this week. Thanks for trusting me with your inbox. Let's tell some stories.

Talk soon,

Ryan