Anna George wore a hard hat and reflective vest Tuesday morning while she maneuvered around construction supplies and roamed the unfinished halls of the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute's new facility.
This 14,000-square-foot building is a work in progress, but the safety gear will be shed later this fall when the doors to the state-of-the-art facility open, cementing the aquarium's place as a conservation leader in the Southeast.
"It already feels like home," said George, the institute's director, as she gave a tour of the under-construction, $4.5 million building adjacent to the Baylor School campus.
The facility will house the aquarium's conservation, education and collaboration initiatives, including its propagation programs that reintroduce freshwater fish species to the wild.
There are already several signs that this is not just another building. Freshwater conservation is the core of the institute's purpose, and the new building exemplifies the environmentally friendly nature of that mission.
Windows are strategically placed to provide natural light at work stations and the roof is sloped to capture and re-use rainwater as part of a bioretention system that will include a 6,000-gallon cistern behind the building.
Water that falls from the roof will enter the cistern, overflow into another container and out into a channel that takes it past the front of the building.
"The first thing you'll see when you enter is a small stream tying you to our mission with fresh water," George said.
The building itself, being constructed by locally based EMJ Construction, will be completed with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification - the second-highest ranking in the U.S. Green Building Council's certification program.
"We really emphasized throughout this design process that water was our mission," George said. "So we looked for every water point that we could get."
Staff offices and a conference room will feature scenic views of the Tennessee River.
Construction is expected to be finished in mid-September with a grand opening to follow in late October.
"This is not a normal construction project," said Clint Dean, executive vice president for EMJ Construction. "The level of detail that's going into this building is beyond typical. It's an important project for our community and for us to be a part of something like that, we are thrilled to be a part of it."
The Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute began as the Southeast Aquatic Research Institute in 1996 in Cohutta, Ga., as a partnership among the Tennessee Aquarium, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Tennessee River Gorge Trust.
The institute took on its current name in 2009 and moved to Chattanooga in 2011. It is a separate organization from the Tennessee Aquarium, but it reports to the aquarium's board of trustees and is under the Tennessee Aquarium Corporation.
Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.