Matt Phillips of the Rise Partners commercial real estate firm in Chattanooga believes the city is behind some of its peers when it comes to offering companies the space that businesses need.
“We’re a land-constrained market,” he says, citing Hamilton County’s hilly terrain. “It makes it difficult to find a good site.”
Chattanooga and Hamilton County developers, sometimes with the help of local government, are moving ahead with several high-profile projects to create more room for companies.
In Phillips’ case, his group has proposed a new 88-acre industrial park in Chattanooga on much of the former DuPont plant property off North Access Road. Rise Partners plans to build four buildings totaling 800,000 square feet at the new North River Commerce Park. Work is to start in late summer and the first structure is set to open in 2023, Phillips says. He says the proposed $102-million industrial park could provide 600 full-time jobs when complete.
Photography by Robin Rudd / U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks at an event marking the retrofitting of a former Alstom manufacturing plant at The Bend for use by Novonix, which makes materials for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.Huntsville, Alabama, and Greenville, South Carolina, are among the cities with which Chattanooga needs to play catch-up, Phillips says.