SYSTEMS

Three 21st century, high-tech industrial parks position the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley as a world center of green energy research and development and commercialization of new technologies.

High tech roots go deep in the five-county Innovation Valley. The region is home to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the collaboration of the University of Tennessee (UT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Department of Energy's largest energy research facility.

Pellissippi Place

The idea behind Pellissippi Place, a 450-acre research and development park under construction near McGhee Tyson Airport, is to create a complete community.  Business and research components are projected to open next year.  U.S. Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both Tennessee Republicans, announced plans this week to include $750,000 in federal funds for the two-county, two-city project part of the financial services appropriations bill for fiscal 2010. If authorized by Congress, it would mark the fourth round of federal funding approved for the project. Future plans include one million square feet of retail space capable of accommodating 100 merchants, six restaurants, a 14-screen cinema, a hotel and upscale loft condominiums. The development is LEED certified.

Cherokee Farm

The other park now underway, Cherokee Farm, will be located on University of Tennessee land on a bend of the Tennessee River near downtown Knoxville. The green R & D campus will focus on renewable energy, supercomputing, materials science, biomedical science,  and climate and environmental challenges. The first tenant will be the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, or JIAM, which studies ways to improve the conversion of solar energy into electricity and increase electrical energy storage. As part of the $62 million Tennessee Solar Initiative, JIAM will also house the Tennessee Solar Institute, which will take advantage of world-class DOE research assets housed at ORNL, including the Spallation Neutron Source, the Center for Nanophase Materials Science and the world's most powerful supercomputers.  JIAM is one of five UT-ORNL joint institutes. Other joint institutes include the National Institute for Computational Science, the Joint Institute for Biological Science, the Joint Institute for Neutron Science and the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research.

Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park

Located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and already operational, the Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park is the nation's first privately developed R&D park within the campus of a national laboratory. Phase I of the 40-acre facility contains Pro2Serve's National Security Engineering Center and the Halcyon Commercialization Center, which houses nanotechnology company C3 International and other tenants.

The park creates opportunities for private companies to work side by side with ORNL researchers and take advantage of the lab's world class physical assets. When totally built out, the S&T Park will support a total of 500,000 square feet of offices and laboratories in a campus environment.

For more information, visit www.innovationvalleyinc.org or contact Garrett Wagley at 865-246-2661 or gwagley@knoxvillechamber.com.