A data center could be built in an existing building on Pine Ridge, also known as The Summit, off South Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge.
The project has been proposed by GIGA Data Centers of Atlanta.
The data center would be in the building on The Summit that was once used by the Y-12 National Security Complex to store documents. The building, which is about 30,000 square feet, would be retrofitted.
[Read more…]
The former American Museum of Science and Energy is pictured above on South Tulane Avenue on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Oak Ridge Mayor Pro Tem Rick Chinn and his brother Ryan are minority partners in the project to build apartments at the former American Museum of Science and Energy site.
Rick Chinn, a developer, said this month that the project will bring much-needed apartments to the city, allowing more people who work in Oak Ridge to live here. The apartments are being built as RealtyLink, a South Carolina developer, plans to build more new stores across South Tulane Avenue at Main Street Oak Ridge, the redevelopment of the former Oak Ridge Mall.
Now called Main Street Lofts, the apartment project has included an agreement to reduce property taxes and the transfer of what had been federal property from the U.S. Department of Energy to the city and then to a developer. It will include the demolition of the former AMSE building. It is expected to include seven three-story buildings with 226 apartment units on 10 acres.
Rick Chinn and his father, Richard Chinn, a member of the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board, have been abstaining from votes related to the apartment project for at least a year.
They have not been required to explain their abstentions, but Oak Ridge Today has asked Rick and Richard Chinn why they have been abstaining.
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Protomet Corporation is pictured above in the Bethel Valley Industrial Park in south Oak Ridge on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Jeff Bohanan
Protomet Corporation on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016, announced a $30 million, 200-job expansion, but the landlocked company could move to another county —or even another state. Pictured above is Protomet production associate Walt Weaver. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Note: This story was last updated at 11:35 a.m. Feb. 3.
Protomet Corporation on Tuesday announced a $30 million, 200-job expansion, but the landlocked company could move to another county —or even another state.
Protomet is now located in the Bethel Valley Industrial Park in south Oak Ridge.
The company hopes to break ground on the 100,000-square-foot expansion in June and plans to add 200 new jobs during the next five years. Protomet now has 70 workers in a 40,000-square-foot building on eight acres, so the company would more than triple in size.
Besides staying put, Protomet is also looking at sites in Roane County (the Horizon Center in west Oak Ridge), Loudon and Monroe counties, and South Carolina. The company is looking at some tracts of land outside Anderson County that are more than 25 acres. Protomet needs about 25-30 acres for the expansion, and right now, it doesn’t have it. [Read more…]
By Leonard Abbatiello
November 20, 2015
We are all jubilant about the recent creation of the Manhattan Project National Park, but unfortunately there will be little done until it is funded. But this newly created national park offers an unprecedented opportunity for the three Energy Cities to unify and solve the single largest problem that birthed them. All of these cities (Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico) are impacted by large tracts of federally owned property and the presence of ongoing U.S. Department of Energy operations. Let’s team to provide DOE with an internal mechanism to better service these DOE impacted communities!
Manhattan Project National Park: Our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
We have been handed a win-win-win opportunity of a lifetime! Congress has recently created an atomic history national park, which is to preserve and honor the atomic history in the three Energy Cities. The cities that created the atomic bomb and made nuclear energy available to the world!
The three energy communities are to each host a national park complex. But there is a fly in the ointment! The national park has been created without any funding to accomplish its objectives! Future federal budgets have zeroed out all funding for this national park complex. Without money, nothing will happen!
DOE is expected to provide all funding of these Manhattan Project National Park needs! This gives Oak Ridge the opportunity to create a unified “Energy Cities Team†team to encourage DOE to create a new “Division of Community Assistance,†which would oversee the dispersal of all community or public service project funding for: 1) the national park system, 2) community PILTs (payments in lieu of taxes), 3) AMSE (American Museum of Science and Energy) and recreational commitments (Carbide Park, etc.), and 4) community grants, etc.
It could all be funded by a small DOE “internal tax†on each and every science and production program that DOE supports in these cities. DOE is a $33 billion-plus annual operation, and it currently has no way of either funding or centrally managing the multitude of community assistance, national park, recreational/museum, self-sufficiency projects, and grants that it funds in all three of the energy communities. A small internal DOE “project tax†of less than one-half of 1 percent could easily fund all of the current and proposed DOE community/public efforts while a central DOE division would be charged with managing all of these community assistance/funding efforts efficiently. This would provide a single point of contact for the communities and allow DOE to efficiently manage all of these community/public assistance efforts.
The potential for Oak Ridge is enormous! But only if DOE begins to pay its fair share of operations! It might be possible to even greatly reduce or nearly eliminate property taxes. Additionally, if other major cost reductions were implemented, property taxes could be completely eliminated and Oak Ridges’ financial future assured! If existing land, coupled with better-than-competitive costs, were used to attract new major industrial businesses, our housing growth would blossom!
My wish is that we pursue this win-win-win opportunity that the unfunded Manhattan National Park creation now presents. We would need to “team†with the other Energy Cities, to engage both them and their congressional delegations. This could result in a joint effort resulting in a lobbying effort asking Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to create this interface point called the “DOE Division of Community Assistance,†which could handle all National Park funding, grants, community PILTS, etc. Then we would have a central point through which we might request review of the basis of our Oak Ridge PILT payments, the AMSE, and the Carbide Park, and other local assistance commitments. It helps everyone if we should be successful in creating a central management/financial organization.
This budget shortfall is an opportunity for us to make this a win-win-win for all! It helps DOE, the Energy Cities, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Congress by helping DOE to create one central, efficient financial management system that provides a way for DOE to begin to pay its fair share. Everyone wins! Let’s help DOE solve their growing community problem as we help ourselves. This corrects the single greatest shortfall of the AECA of 1955, which gave birth to the City of Oak Ridge and our sister energy cities.
You, our seven City Council members, are the only individuals who can direct any effort to improve the financial future of Oak Ridge and our relationship with DOE. You have the opportunity to define a bright competitive future, or do nothing. Four of you can really make a difference! What is your choice?
Leonard Abbatiello is a former Oak Ridge City Council member.
***
Note: The submitted letters and columns published in the Opinion section do not necessarily reflect the views of Oak Ridge Today or its staff.
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By Leonard Abbatiello
Nov. 19, 2015
In a previous article, I pointed out how Oak Ridge has changed. To summarize, we have changed drastically since the mid-1970s, becoming Tennessee average in median income, graduation rates, ethnic and age distributions. We are also heavily in debt, as we continue to spend beyond our means for all of our high quality services.
About 50 percent of our housing is over 70 years old and in various conditions located on lots that are often unsuitable for today’s desired off-street parking. Currently, over 12 percent of all homes are vacant, and those on the market are selling at 75 percent of their initial asking price. All aging residential housing is collectively dropping in both value and desirability. Our low-income population has increased to the point that they are the majority of our residents, and they cannot financially support our high-end services. Today, we are building only 10s of new homes annually, and a large percentage of the Manhattan Era housing remains vacant. Department of Energy radioactive and hazardous waste storage taints the community image as an attractive place to live.
We have evolved to this condition from a city that was given to us citizens debt free in the 1960s and rocketed to be the highest property taxed Tennessee city by 1973. Since then, it has endured a long list of both failed and evaporated DOE promised self-sufficiency projects. Today, DOE self-sufficiency efforts are no longer offered by DOE. Things even got worse following the 1985 fragmentation of all DOE single contractor federal operations, which then made effective local financial discussions impossible. [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge City Council has a special meeting tonight to discuss U.S. Department of Energy support and funding. (File photo/August 2013)
The Oak Ridge City Council will discuss U.S. Department of Energy funding and support during a special meeting tonight. It’s described at least in part as an “information-gathering session.”
The special meeting was called by City Council members Trina Baughn and Charlie Hensley. Hensley, in particular, has raised questions about whether DOE is paying its fair share to the city.
Here’s the language outlining tonight’s discussion:
“to discuss and possibly take action on a plan to engage DOE officials with regards to their obligations to the City of Oak Ridge and its citizenry. Let it [the special meeting request] include formally requesting, in writing, a DOE Community Assistance Review as allowed within AECA 1955, PL 84-221, DOE Order 2100.12A, and other supporting legislation, including those self-sufficiency plans dating from 1980 through a Council Resolution and other joint local government collaborative action to include a specific date for a response.”
Local, state, and federal officials join volunteers and nonprofit and business executives for a groundbreaking ceremony at the historic Alexander Inn on Thursday.
Top military leaders and scientists once stayed at this historic two-story hotel in the heart of Oak Ridge, and now it’s being converted into an assisted living center.
The $5.5 million renovation of the Alexander Inn at Jackson Square started in July, the culmination of a years-long preservation effort. It could be complete by mid-2014, said Rick Dover, manager of Family Pride Corp., the company converting the hotel.
The Guest House Senior Living at the Alexander Inn will have 62 rooms, including a 17-room memory care wing.
The hotel was built during the Manhattan Project, a top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic bombs during World War II. Guests who once stayed there included Gen. Leslie Groves, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi. [Read more…]
Trina Baughn
On Sept. 9, your Oak Ridge City Council will likely vote to approve additional water and sewer rate increases. When combined with the last two increases, the average user’s bill will have spiked 62 percent in just 34 months. Subsequently, should council adopt the fully proposed schedule through 2019, most residents and businesses will be paying double what they were paying prior to the initial increase imposed in May 2012.
These increases are to pay for the $33 million of debt that the city incurred in the last two years in addition to a projected $15 million more that Public Works says is still needed. We are continuing to borrow without limits and without regard for your ability to pay such astronomical bills.
Much of this debt could have been reduced or avoided all together had your city government taken the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency up on the many opportunities they gave us to make corrections. (See my Feb. 24 post at trinabaughn.com entitled, “The Rest of the EPA Mandate Story.â€) Unfortunately, we’ve screwed up so many times that we were too fearful to pursue leniencies that are now being afforded to many cities across the nation. So, while others have 20-25 years to comply and can spread out costs to minimize the hit their ratepayers will take, Oak Ridge has just five years and is forcing the entire burden on its residents and businesses. [Read more…]
Protomet breaks ground Friday on a $6.25 million expansion in the Bethel Valley Industrial Park. Pictured above from left are Operations Director Andrew Jenkins and Engineering Director Matt Reid of Protomet; LeRoy Thompson, Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development regional director; Protomet President Jeff Bohanan; Sherry Browder, Oak Ridge Economic Partnership chair; Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan; and David Wilson, Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board chair.
Protomet Corp. broke ground on Friday on a $6.25 million expansion of its manufacturing facility in Bethel Valley Industrial Park, allowing the company to more than double its space, consolidate operations with a Blount County facility, and expand production.
The expanded facility, which could be complete by the end of the year, will have more  than 40,000 square feet, and it will bring more than 30 jobs to Oak Ridge, a press release said. It is the second multi-million dollar investment at the company’s Oak Ridge site. [Read more…]
Trina Baughn
Note: This story was updated at 11:38 p.m.
Oak Ridge City Council member Trina Baughn has proposed that the city sell Centennial Golf Course, and terminate the lease agreement with the Chamber of Commerce and sell the property.
Those proposals would convert city-owned assets into taxable properties, Baughn said.
Baughn has also asked the seven-member Council to consider setting up a team that could negotiate voluntary payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements with tax-exempt organizations that “are most able to afford paying for city services that are currently paid for by the taxpayer.” Those organizations could include Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge Utility District, Tech 2020, Roane State Community College, and the University of Tennessee, Baughn said in a May 5 e-mail to Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson and City Clerk Diana Stanley. [Read more…]
Trina Baughn
The problem
This month, the Oak Ridge City Council will establish your property tax rate for 2014 via the approval of our annual city budget. And though it appears that taxes will remain flat, our excessive spending levels are unsustainable and continue to hinder our ability to compete with surrounding communities.
In spite of all the new developments happening as of late, if council approves the budget as proposed, residents and businesses will continue to feel the financial crunch for quite some time. Not only will we retain one of the highest property tax rates in the state, but we’ll also retain one of the largest per capita debt levels in the region. (At nearly $7,000 per person, we have more than four times that of Knox County residents and more than seven times that of Knoxville residents). A dozen more chicken places and grocery store relocations won’t make a dent in the average Oak Ridger’s bills.
If we are to make any kind of progress, we need a strategy that aims to increase revenue while reducing expenditures. This column will focus on increasing our revenue base. I will address budgetary inefficiencies and waste in a follow-up piece next week. [Read more…]
