Homebuilder Pratt moving headquarters

Friday, January 1, 1904

photo Higgins Construction Co. employee Smiley Eldridge, left, uses a torch to cut steel from an awning of the loading dock at the former Stovall of Chattanooga building on Dayton Boulevard. Mitch Allmon, right, watches the effort.

Chattanooga-based homebuilder Pratt plans to shift its headquarters to a site in Red Bank near a high-profile intersection.

James Pratt, one of the company's owners, said it has bought three tracts off Dayton Boulevard near Signal Mountain Road.

He said the former Stovall of Chattanooga building will be remodeled and turned into Pratt's corporate headquarters, moving from its current Manufacturers Road location. A nearby former Dayton Boulevard service station is to be torn down, Pratt added.

"We've got 350 feet on Dayton Boulevard," he said.

Red Bank Mayor John Roberts said the city has upped its efforts to attract new businesses such as Pratt.

"We're trying to recruit new businesses up and down the boulevard," he said.

Roberts said the city is making progress.

"We're changing the atmosphere for Red Bank," he said.

Recently, the city wooed the biggest new shopping center to open in Red Bank in more than five years that's being built to accommodate growth stemming outward from Chattanooga's busy North Shore, according to the developers.

"It's almost like a growing extension to the North Shore," said Matt McGauley, vice president of Fidelity Trust Co. A Family Dollar store will mark the first phase of the work on the center, a project valued at about $1.1 million

Also, Chattanooga developer John Coffelt of HGH Construction Inc. is proposing a 28-unit project with the houses similar to those in the Jefferson Heights neighborhood on the Southside on a vacant tract off Memorial Drive near Dayton Boulevard.

Pratt said he wasn't sure when he would get started on the project for his company, which dates to the late 1990s.

Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.