Six years after it first issued bonds for the project, Chattanooga EPB opened a new, $30 million headquarters in October 2006.
At eight stories, the EPB building was downtown Chattanooga’s tallest building in two decades. The new edifice at 10 West M.L. King Boulevard replaced the one at the corner of Fifth and Market streets that had housed EPB since its 1939 creation.
“When you only move every 68 years,” quipped Harold DePriest, then the utility’s president, “you want to make sure you get it right.”
EPB had a three-year timeline for the project when it issued bonds in late 2000, but it was delayed when soil samples on the site revealed residues from a former gas station and dry cleaner. The cleanup took five years and 45 new injection wells under the building.
Even so, then-U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., pronounced the finished product “a beautiful building for Chattanooga.”