by John Shearer
posted September 3, 2008
) Former Chattanoogan Joel Solomon |
A current resident of Vancouver, B.C. – site of the 2010 Winter Olympics – Mr. Solomon is head of an investment company called Renewal Partners. The firm tries to partner with businesses or organizations that make positive contributions to the world as well as profits.
“We are less interested in purely making money,” he said recently over the telephone. “We are looking at the triple bottom line, not the financial bottom line.”
According to Mr. Solomon, this strategy could include investing in a firm that does not damage the environment or one that helps solve in a positive manner a pressing societal need. The firm is also involved in grants and collaborations.
Mr. Solomon also serves as volunteer head of the board of directors of the progressive Hollyhock educational retreat center in Canada.
Mr. Solomon has traveled far in miles and outlook since his days in Chattanooga. Reared in Stuart Heights, he attended Baylor School beginning in 1966 before graduating from Chattanooga “City” High in 1972.
Among his friends from his younger years are former Chattanooga mayor Jon Kinsey and Ken Hays, a political and business partner of Mr. Kinsey.
Mr. Solomon’s late father is familiar to younger Chattanoogans as the man for whom the Federal Building downtown is named. The honor came after his Cabinet-level service as head of the General Services Administration under President Jimmy Carter.
Older Chattanoogans remember the elder Mr. Solomon as a business partner with the Lebovitz family in the development and operation of movie theaters and later shopping centers and malls.
“I grew up working around the offices and doing construction projects,” Mr. Solomon said, adding that he vividly remembers helping build Northgate Mall before it opened in 1972.
He later became interested in politics and worked with the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign, traveling around the country and settling in Washington, D.C.
However, when he was in his early 20s, he was diagnosed with a genetic kidney disease, which had also struck his father and grandfather.
“That popped me out of my tracks,” he said. “I decided I wanted to see more of the world, so I spent several years traveling and doing things and learning how to grow food and ended up in British Columbia. Through that, I fell in love with that part of the world.”
Not long ago, he received a kidney transplant from a friend, curing him of his disease.
His father, who later moved to Nashville, died in 1984, and Mr. Solomon spent the next 10 years in Nashville converting his father’s business interests into projects about which he was passionate, such as coffee shops and other neighborhood-level businesses.
“I wasn’t that inspired to do shopping malls,” he said.
Mr. Solomon also became interested in businesses related to organic food and green products a decade or so ahead of most other people.
He then teamed with a woman named Carol Newell to start Renewal Partners. She had inherited $50 million and together they funded a wide range of sustainable and altruistic business projects, including organic agriculture and social justice and leadership initiatives.
Just as his firm has encouraged sustainability and being environmentally friendly, so has Chattanooga in recent years, and Mr. Solomon has noticed.
“It is kind of interesting I ended up in this field so far away, and now Chattanooga has gotten into it,” he said with a laugh.
Other than his friendships with Mr. Kinsey and Mr. Hays and his slight partnership with them and others in the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Mr. Solomon said he has not had much business or social contact with his former hometown.
He does still own a building next to Northgate Mall, he said.
His sister, Linda Solomon, also lives in Vancouver and is a journalist.
While no longer closely connected with Chattanooga, Mr. Solomon is admittedly still excited to see what the city has become, saying it is now known more as a city that inspires its younger people to want to stay and be a part of its urban life.
He also still carries with him feelings that were nurtured in Chattanooga, including desires for protecting the environment and partnering with longtime friends in business and other ventures.
“My experience in nature in Chattanooga and my close friendships ended up being very emblematic of me throughout my life,” he said.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
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