EPB is preparing its site for fleet maintenance and operations at the former Cavalier Corp. site at Central and Bailey avenues.• Name: EPB Cavalier Site, named after the Cavalier Corp. that made vending machines for Coca-Cola products. Founded in 1865, the company originally operated a sawmill at the site, then the Tennessee Furniture Co. of Chattanooga, and then an ice-chest manufacturing plant. The company went bankrupt in 1987 and closed in 2000, according to vintagevending.com.
• Location: Off Central Avenue, under the Bailey Avenue bridge.
• Status: The project is at the halfway point, with work expected to be done by January, said Steve Clark, EPB’s vice president of strategic systems. Construction workers still have to perform structural modifications to the basement, add a loading dock and some doorways, and finish the interiors and exteriors, he said. The site, which is classified as a brownfield, also must be modified for stormwater management.
• Price: The project was originally bid at $5.8 million, but additional modifications and poor ground conditions have bumped the price up to $6.1 million. The cost includes the renovation of two buildings, one measuring 52,000 square feet and the other encompassing 141,000 square feet.
• Features: The complex will partially replace EPB’s operations at Oak Street and Greenwood Avenue, forming the new field operations headquarters for the utility. In addition to office space, the new site allows engineers to work on 10 trucks simultaneously, compared to barely four at the old location, Clark said. “We couldn’t even work on some of the taller bucket trucks over there,” he said.