The local communities of Portland in Sumner County and White Bluff in Dickson County have been named recipients of the latest round of state grants to help them revitalize their downtown commercial districts. Volunteer groups from both towns will take part in training sessions supported by the National Main Street Center over several months.

The six selected communities are each home to downtown commercial districts established at least 50 years ago and have demonstrated their readiness to organize efforts for downtown revitalization based on the successful “Main Street Four-Point Approach to Downtown Revitalizationtm.” The highly competitive selection process was based on five core criteria: historic resources, need (economic and physical), demonstrated local effort, overall presentation and probability of success.

Officials with the City of Portland have teamed up with their insurance carrier to file suit against Volunteer State Bank, which they say last year allowed unauthorized wire transfers that drained the city's accounts by more than $100,000. In their complaint, the plaintiffs say a city official's computer appeared to have been highjacked by a virus last December and told to drain $175,000 from the city's water and sewer account at Volunteer State through three transfers.

One of the transfers went to an Ohio jeweler store, which promptly returned the money. But the two others went to accounts in New Jersey and California, whose unidentified owners quickly withdrew the cash. Portland and the Tennessee Municipal League Risk Management Pool say Volunteer State needs to pay them back the lost $115,000 plus interest from those two charges because "the security procedure employed by the Bank was not a commercially reasonable method of providing security against unauthorized payment orders and the Bank did not accept the fraudulent payment orders in good faith."

Consumer lender Advance Financial continues to add to its regional store network and has set up shop at 2500 Murfreesboro Pike in the Nashboro Village area as well as on Main Street in Hendersonville. Advance President Mike Hodges a year ago raised more than $6 million in capital and set out to upgrade and add to his store base. He also recently expanded in Clarksville.