According to a news story in Thursday’s Knoxville News Sentinel (“Horizon park option runs out”), HN Properties (headed by former auto dealer Herb Newton) was the prospective buyer of the Horizon Center industrial park in west Oak Ridge, and HN’s purchase option has expired. I don’t know what this is going to mean in the long run — and I don’t know what to make of the story’s being released on Thanksgiving Day, when few people are paying attention.
The Horizon Center is a beautiful industrial park. It was established with much political fanfare in 1997 (or thereabouts) on about 1000 acres of DOE (federal) land, to become a high-tech private-sector industrial park as part of an ambitious program of “reindustrialization” in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. Only about half of the 1000-acre tract was determined to be eligible for development due to environmental considerations — much of the acreage is floodplain and riparian forest that has high ecological value. The lands earmarked for potential development are now owned by a subsidiary of CROET (although the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board holds title in order to provide a property tax abatement on the site, CROET is the real owner). To foster reindustrialization, the Department of Energy gave the land to CROET and provided about $11 million in federal money for the construction of an industrial park. I’ve lost track of the other public resources that have been plowed into it over the years. In spite of all those resources dedicated to the park, only two industries have ever located there: Theragenics (large facility that never really operated and is now closed and “available”) and Philotechnics (smaller physical facility including its main corporate offices, in active operation). The scuttlebutt I’ve heard is that CROET set the price of the property too high for the market, so industrial prospects headed elsewhere.
HN apparently hoped to convert the industrial park to “mixed use”, including retail and residential uses in addition to industry. Before this could be considered, DOE would have to relax the deed restrictions requiring industrial use, which would have required DOE to produce a new NEPA environmental assessment (I guess this might be the “exhaustive environmental report” that Newton refers to in the News Sentinel article). The City would also have to change the land use designation and zoning. Nevertheless, the available land in this fine industrial park could not be promoted to industrial tenants for the duration of the real-estate option.
I hope the expiration of the option to purchase will lead to renewed efforts to market the Horizon Center to businesses that will create “basic jobs” for our community — the kinds of businesses and jobs that form the backbone of a community’s economy. Considering all of the expensive public resources that have been plowed into this property, I think the public should get the benefits that those resources supposedly paid for. And although people sometimes assume otherwise, industry is generally more compatible with protecting wildlife habitat than retail or residential uses. (However, AFORR, of which I am an officer, would like for the westernmost “development area” in the Horizon Center to be returned to federal ownership for environmental reasons. This area of about 35 acres is isolated from the rest of the Horizon Center and has had no infrastructure development, and developing infrastructure would be very costly in dollars, environmental impact, and the loss of a large segment of the popular North Boundary Greenway.)
The Horizon Center has an impressive-looking website touting the benefits of the site (“centrally located in the Eastern United States,” “state-of-the-art fiber optic telecommunications system,” “unspoiled greenspace with creekside walking paths”, etc.) and Oak Ridge (“more than 5,000 engineers, 2,400 scientists, 2,300 Ph.D.s, more than 9,000 college students majoring in science, math, engineering or information technology,” etc.). I look forward to renewed efforts to recruit business to the industrial park, instead of merely trying to sell it at a price that will convert public resources into a real-estate profit for CROET.
Ellen: What is your feeling of the “35-acres” being returned to federal ownership? Sounds like there would be no impact to the use of the industrial park but there would be environmental benefits. Sounds like a win in both areas if it happens.
Yep, it’s a win-win, or at least it should be. Not developing that land looks like a winning proposition from an economic point of view (development of 35 acres would require turning about 1-1/2 miles of greenway into a roadway, including building 3 bridges — and that’s not to mention the need to run utilities in to the site). Meanwhile, protecting it would be big win for the environment — not only would it save the greenway, but the area connects the Horizon Center floodplain forest with the Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement, and cerulean warblers have been heard near the part of the greenway that would be disturbed.
Back in 2003, AFORR asked DOE to reverse the transfer of the 35-acre area called “development area 4.” It was deeded to CROET at no cost, so DOE should be able to reverse the transaction without much fuss. DOE said they might consider doing so if we could get CROET to agree — if we could negotiate a “swap” wherein DOE could give CROET some other land (land that would otherwise be reserved by DOE) instead. It seemed like a win-win deal should have been possible, but after nearly a year of discussions, AFORR concluded that CROET did not want to deal. (For what it’s worth, all this was reported in the Oak Ridger.)
What is your vision for Horizon Center and what are you, or City Council doing to fulfill that vision? Industrial parks are all over this region and municipalities are agressively marketing them. It seems like we are getting lost in the market. What is being done to seperate Oak Ridge from the others?
It just seems like AFORR’s attempt to preserve 35 acres is trivial considering the thousands of acres already being preserved. If some industry says they want to build on it, will you be against development?
Ellen: Has there been any movement in transferring the “35-acres” back to federal ownership? Thanks for pursuing this and thanks in advance for the update. Mike
As far as I know, DOE has not taken any action toward transferring Development Area 4 (the 35 acres) back to federal ownership.
More recent news is that CROET intends to donate the 35 acres for conservation. Details are still unclear. However, I think it’s good news for almost everybody — a public relations “gold star” for CROET and Oak Ridge, preservation of a popular greenway and valuable wildlife habitat, and avoidance of what would be disproportionately high costs for infrastructure if the tract were developed for industry.
The conservation value of land can’t be measured solely in terms of acres. On a map, this tract has been like a missing piece in a conservation jigsaw puzzle. Avoiding development of this tract ensures that there will continue to be “wildlife corridors” (valuable wildlife habitat connections) between the protected floodplain area inside the Horizon Center and the 3000-acre Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement (BORCE), as well as within the BORCE (the 35 acres connects McKinney Ridge with Black Oak Ridge).
As for my vision for the Horizon Center, I continue to hope that it will become the high-end industrial park that was envisioned back when the land was dedicated to industrial development. Marketing the park is not a job for City Council members, though — that’s a mission for CROET and the Oak Ridge Economic Partnership.