Engineers planning the 3.5 mile extension of the Riverwalk will open up not only new scenic vista to walkers, but industrial ones as well, such as this view of the Alstom plant.Alstom Power’s plans to cut 100 jobs at its Chattanooga boiler services plant will leave it with about half the staff it had just two years ago and a fraction of the about 600 workers it employed five years ago.
The Riverfront Parkway facility, which makes equipment primarily for coal-fired power plants, will employ about 200 people after the layoffs take place by the end of August, the company said Tuesday. The layoffs are due to reduced workload and low order volume.
Next door, at Alstom’s turbomachinery facility, the 150 people working there are about half the number company officials envisioned when that $300 million operation opened in 2010 to make equipment for nuclear power plants.
In total, the 350 people Alstom will employ on Riverfront Parkway by the end of August are a shadow of what the site had once held.
Four decades ago, the industrial tract then owned by Combustion Engineering had nearly 6,000 workers and housed Chattanooga’s largest manufacturing employer, which made fossil-fueled and nuclear steam-generating equipment.