Office, tech projects on Horizon

The Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board on Monday agreed to give an unnamed local financial services company a 60-day option to purchase 39 acres in the Horizon Center business park for a large office project along Highway 58. The potential purchase price is $25,000 per acre, or $975,000 total.

Also Monday, the IDB agreed to set aside two 13-acre tracts in the mostly empty business park for a possible carbon-fiber technology center project managed by UT-Battelle, the managing contractor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. That property, which could require some extension of electrical infrastructure, could sell for $23,000 an acre.

“We’re thrilled that there’s this level of interest in Horizon Center,” IDB Executive Director Kim Denton said. “There’s a good mix right now. We’re very encouraged at the level of activity.”

Denton is also president of the Oak Ridge Economic Partnership, and she became IDB executive director under an agreement recently signed between that board and the Oak Ridge Economic Partnership.

The office project could feature a three-story, 120,000-square-foot building and consolidate work currently conducted at other locations. The company hopes to operate there by 2012, said Michelle Gibbs, a commercial real estate advisor for Sperry Van Ness in Knoxville.

Gibbs said the firm wants to stay within the Oak Ridge area, has looked at several locations and likes Horizon Center — where land has been for sale for about six years or so — because the firm could expand there.

She said she could not disclose additional information about the project, including the potential number of employees or the estimated capital investment.

“This is a tremendous project,” Denton said.

While the land for the office project is at the front side of Horizon Center, along Highway 58, the parcels for the potential technology center project are located at the back of the business park, west of Philotechnics.

Denton said a demonstration facility for the technology center project has to be located on a site developed by the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, a nonprofit organization that develops and subleases property and equipment owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. There are three CROET-developed sites: Horizon Center, the Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park at ORNL, and Heritage Center, the former K-25 uranium enrichment site.

“To allow for fair and open competition to the teams proposing a building to be leased by UT-Battelle for the Carbon Fiber Technology Center Project, it is recommended that property within Horizon Center be set aside for this project,” Denton said in a memo to IDB members.

The office project and the proposed carbon-fiber technology center project would involve an estimated 50 acres at Horizon Center, where there are an additional 350 or so acres available for development. There are currently two businesses located at the industrial park: IMPACT Services and Philotechnics.

John Huotari can be contacted at (865) 220-5533.

Source: The Oak Ridger Business RSS

DOE stimulus money arrives in Oak Ridge TN

OAK RIDGE – Three weeks after the Department of Energy announced that Oak Ridge would receive $755 million in stimulus money for shovel-ready environmental cleanup projects, the money has finally arrived – at least the first allotment.

“We have received $604 million,” DOE spokesman John Shewairy said Wednesday.

That’s 80 percent of the total money that’s targeted for Oak Ridge projects. DOE earlier said that 20 percent would be held back in Washington and distributed later, based on each site’s progress and efficiency in conducting the stimulus-funded work.

All told, DOE received $6 billion for environmental cleanup activities under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is supposed to create jobs and jump-start the economy during these difficult times.

Shewairy said the Oak Ridge contractors can now proceed with their planned work, which includes the cleanup and dismantling of old buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Full Story Here: KnoxNews.com

Projects Bolster Innovation Valley Claim as World-Class Research and Entrepreneurial Hub

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Two far-reaching projects announced in recent days further bolster the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley’s claim as a world-class center of research, entrepreneurial activities and high tech jobs.

Work begins this week on the 188-acre Cherokee Farms high tech park on the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus. The first building planned for the park, the Joint Institute for Materials Science, is one of several cooperative ventures between the university and Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), the Department of Energy’s largest science and energy lab and home to extensive bioenergy-, nanotech- and homeland security-related research, and the most powerful computer in the world for open science.

Meanwhile, the Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled plans for the “Tennessee Valley Enterprise,” a regional network anchored in Oak Ridge that will utilize existing assets, including surplus federal properties, to improve national energy security.

Economic development officials throughout the Innovation Valley are counting on extensive DOE investments in the project, including federal stimulus money dedicated for cleanup and energy development. With 4,300 employees, ORNL is one of the region’s largest employers. Its economic impact, however, extends well beyond its payroll. Over the past decade, the lab has subcontracted more than $1.5 billion to small businesses and has contributed key innovations for 80 high tech business startups.

DOE deputy assistant secretary Mark Gilbertson said the Innovation Valley “is a perfect example” of how vital research and a strong economic future fit together.

Oak Ridge also houses the Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park, the only private enterprise park at a national lab campus, and the East Tennessee Industrial Park, an extensive reindustrialized site on former federal land.

“Public and private partnerships, research, and regional cooperation in economic development definitely put us at an advantage,” said Kim Denton, president of the Oak Ridge Economic Partnership. “The Innovation Valley has become a true crossroads – a place where research leads to economic development.”

She cited as a case in point Thom Mason, who in addition to his duties as ORNL director also chairs the Innovation Valley five-year initiative and is president and CEO of UT-Battelle, the joint venture between the University of Tennessee and Battelle that manages the national lab.

Source: PRnewswire.com