I bought in. Now I’m asking to set the table.

I’m Jesse Welter. I came to Puryear in 2025 and bought the old parlor building at 102 South Front Street. I’m turning it into Puryear Station — a coffee and bistro. It is still being built. Before that I was an aircraft mechanic, then a service engineer, then I ran tours, a shop, and a cafe in Detroit. I like putting things back to work.

I also bought a corner house that fire had already taken. I had what was left taken down and put that ground to work as an urban farm. I wasn’t looking for a speech. I saw what the lot can feed: the Station, farm to table, as both come online.

I hope for a market stand at the end of that property — a place local farmers can sell what they grow. And I hope that corner becomes the end cap of the south downtown district: South McDonald, the downtown we have, and the Poplar pathway out to the kiln, on the public walk. That work is underway. I put my own money in because I can see the opportunity.

I bought the old Puryear school for the same reason. I can see what it can hold: an institute where local kids and young adults learn the skills that are coming, without having to leave town to get them — and then apply what they learned here, in a job or a small business of their own. A place that gives someone a reason to stay, and gives someone else a reason to want to live here. The building is in work. The institute is the next step.

US 641 is being widened to five lanes through this county, with a new bridge and a first view of the town as you ascend. The southern section is still in design. That expansion does not create a second northern door. It makes this one the only candidate for Henry County’s northern gateway — first Tennessee city on 641 from Kentucky, first intersection at 140. Before anyone sees Paris or the lake, they see us. I will ask Mayor Lodge’s office so that first door looks like we meant it.

I’m not running on a jobs pledge. I’m running to structure the city so opportunity has somewhere to land, and so what lands is another charm on the bracelet: railroad town, Front Street, the kiln, the people who stayed. Lights and a walk that is whole are how we look cared for — not a word against anyone’s door. I am new. I will not pretend otherwise. I did buy in.