Andy Meek - The Daily News -

Memphis and Shelby County’s two mayors have talked for months about finding a way to give their joint business recruitment and retention efforts an edge.

Fittingly, that’s what they’re calling a proposed umbrella group they want to establish to streamline and bring together in one place the related economic development work now spread over several existing agencies.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell are expected to seek legislative approval by the end of this month from the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission for the creation of a new body called the E.D.G.E. The letters stand for the Economic Development Growth Engine for Memphis and Shelby County.

That body would collect several existing programs under one roof: the city-county Office of Economic Development; the city-county Industrial Development Board; the city-county Port Commission; the city-county Depot Redevelopment Authority; Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park; the city of Memphis Foreign Trade Zone 77 program; and the city of Memphis Renewal Community program.

Both mayors also see the opportunity to realize new ambitions through creating the structure, such as the possibility of forming a rail authority to help coordinate the city’s status as a prominent railroad hub and to act as a conduit for federal rail grants. Also, it’s hoped that the new office could help expand the number of economic development financing programs available to small and medium-sized firms.

A big-picture goal is the creation of a one-stop-shop for the next Pinnacle Airlines Corp. or Electrolux that comes calling. Those are companies that recently represented big economic development coups for the city and county but that crossed the finish line only after frantic scrambles to enlist support and win approvals and incentives from multiple agencies and groups.

Pinnacle, for example, secured a package of incentives worth millions of dollars to help defray costs associated with bringing its Memphis headquarters to Downtown’s One Commerce Square, which is happening this year.

But those incentives meant trips before multiple government bodies over a period of several weeks, with plenty of opportunities for the deal to fall apart since so many approvals, meeting appearances and government officials were involved.

“Imagine, if you would, having a choir. And the sopranos have one songbook, the tenors have another one, the basses have another one, and they’re all supposed to bring some harmony to a rendition,” Wharton said. “One of the prime benefits will be that once this is consummated, we’ll be able to pull all of the bodies together and come up with one vision so that we have the same opinion with respect to how incentives should be issued, what incentives should be offered, by whom – all the questions that go into successful recruiting.”

Luttrell is especially excited about another piece of the new economic development framework that’s being created: an office of small business that will be part of the group.

He said the small business office will work with those businesses in the area to help them navigate the various approvals, licenses, regulations and other requirements they need to address to get themselves established.

Luttrell said the overall new economic development concept will be revenue-neutral and will represent a major step forward for the city and county.

“We’re hoping to get this concept approved by the (legislative) bodies by the end of this month, then we would start the process of ramping up the

organization,” Luttrell said. “I would hope we could have it fully in place before the summer.”

Luttrell said the two mayors started working to put the model in place around the time Swedish appliance maker Electrolux approached local officials with an interest in developing a plant here. Electrolux recently announced it’s building a 700,000-square-foot plant at Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park.

It gave both mayors an opportunity to further refine and think through their proposal.

“I’ve run this by our county commissioners, and I know that Mayor Wharton is doing the same” among City Council members, Luttrell said.

Wharton and Luttrell would each nominate four members to a nine-member board for the group. Wharton would pick four from the city; Luttrell would pick four from the county outside the city. The ninth would be a joint appointment.

A president would be chosen to serve as an economic development point-person for the area. And that person would be directly answerable to both mayors.

“Right after the campaign, Mayor Wharton and I visited, and I told him some of my observations” along the lines of economic development, Luttrell said. “He immediately pounced and said we need to get this thing started. He already had a plan that had been worked through but just not implemented. So I jumped into it and started studying it and it was right along the lines of what we felt like we needed.

“So we agreed on the framework and started building on it from that.”