Two new retail centers are under construction near Lee Highway and Bonny Oaks Drive and then at Lee and Hunter Road.
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FAST FACTA new Dunkin’ Donuts bakery in Catoosa County, Ga., makes 50,000 dozen doughnuts weekly, according to area franchisee Bluemont Group.
Two new retail centers are going up as a developer tries to take advantage of growing areas off Interstate-75 near Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant and in Ooltewah.
The two centers, together estimated at $18 million, are under construction near Lee Highway and Bonny Oaks Drive and then at Lee and Hunter Road, said Pat Neuhoff, president of Neuhoff Taylor Architects.
Neuhoff said that Grace Construction Consultants of Chattanooga is developing and building two 9,000-square-foot buildings in Ooltewah, one of which will hold a Dunkin' Donuts. That development will be called Owls Nest, he said.
At Lee and Bonny Oaks, a three-story, 100,000-square-foot CubeSmart self-storage building will be constructed, along with a 9,000-square-foot structure to include a Subway restaurant, Neuhoff said. Grace also is developing that project.
Efforts to lease the rest of the space are underway, and both of the commercial centers will be finished within a year, he said.
Dave Baumgartner of area Dunkin' Donuts franchisee Bluemont Group said Ooltewah has been a target area for the company since it built its first store in the Chattanooga area in 2009.
"We looked at it a long time trying to get a site," he said.
The store should open in mid- to late November, Baumgartner said.
In fact, he said, Bluemont will have two additional Dunkin' Donuts stores opening in the area. One will be in Cleveland at 2428 Blackburn Road SE. The other is in Dalton, Georgia, at 300 Smith Industrial Blvd., according to Baumgartner.
He said Bluemont now has 11 Dunkin' Donuts in the Chattanooga area. Baumgartner said each store typically has 20 to 30 employees.
The Ooltewah-Collegedale area is seeing rapid growth. Since the 2010 census, the population of Collegedale has jumped by more than 40 percent to an estimated 11,659 residents in 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Census. That is the fastest growth of any city in the region and the second fastest of any city over 10,000 persons in Tennessee.
The Cambridge Square mixed-use development off Highway 64 near Collegedale has grown to 10 buildings and 27 tenants in the past few years. The 130-acre development has 11 new homes which are out of the ground and roughly 30 more planned this year.
Bluemont is the franchise holder for an area extending from Knoxville, where the company is headquartered, to Cookeville, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, and North Georgia.
In January, to help drive the company's expansion, Bluemont built a 28,000-square-foot bakery in Catoosa County, Ga., on a tract at Rollins Business Center, said Baumgartner.
He said the bakery, which was to cost nearly $3 million and employ about 40 people, makes doughnuts at night and are delivered by 4 a.m. each day to every store.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.