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Chattanooga: Part of VW site ready Saturday

By: Mike Pare
(Contact)

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Bill Payne

With mass grading of the Volkswagen plant site 69 percent done, a portion of it will be ready to be turned over to VW on Saturday, an official said Tuesday.

“We’ve moved over 5 million cubic yards of soil,” said Chattanooga City Engineer Bill Payne.

Nathan Czerniejewski of the engineering firm SSOE Inc. said part of the main building pad is set to be turned over Saturday, a day officials had targeted to have the Enterprise South industrial park site ready for construction by VW.

Other parts of the site will be conveyed in the second or third week of November, he said at a meeting of the city’s Industrial Development Board.

Plans remain for concrete to be poured on the site in November to start building the $1 billion auto assembly plant, Mr. Czerniejewski said.

Massive amounts of dirt continue to be moved by the city, Hamilton County and their contractors to make way for construction of the facility, officials said.

Mr. Payne said workers prepping the site lost a couple of days of work last week due to rain.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep it on schedule,” he said.

The board, meanwhile, approved a $10.7 million contract for Toledo, Ohio,-based SSOE to provide design and construction management work related to the facility’s construction.

Included in the scope of work is about $127 million in infrastructure projects. Among those on the list are the building of a test track, a helipad, tank farm, streets, drainage, and a fire station.

SSOE also is providing design services for VW related to the plant project, Mr. Payne said.

Steve Leach, the city’s public works administrator, said the $10.7 million is coming from state, city and county funds.

He said the 1,350-acre location continues to be “an active site.” Officials said no groundbreaking ceremony for the 1.9 million-square-foot plant has been announced yet.

The plant is slated to open in early 2011, produce 150,000 vehicles a year and employ 2,000 people, according to the German automaker.

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