City of Knoxville readies McClung warehouses site

Feb. 09--Three years after a fire destroyed what was left of the McClung warehouses, the city is about to begin a cleanup project that should see the site ready to be marketed in another three years.

When it is ready, the 5-acre site, which occupies 400 and 500 W. Jackson Ave., will offer a chance to develop an important and highly visible part of downtown, said Anne Wallace, the city's deputy redevelopment director.

"It was such a significant downtown property," she said. "That is why the city made the decision to go ahead and purchase it and maintain it and set the stage for it to be redeveloped."

The city has $180,000 in Environmental Protection Agency brownfield cleanup grants for the site and has just received some inquiries from environmental firms interested in doing the work, Wallace said.

"The timeline associated with the grant is three years and the grant was awarded in October," she said. "It will be October 2019 before we put the project out for requests for proposals."

Although there are questions about what actions the Trump administration will take with the EPA, Wallace said Knoxville has been assured that its funding from the EPA is secure.

The property is highly visible to people passing through Knoxville on Interstate 40/75, Wallace said. A traffic study found that about 100,000 vehicles per day pass by the site, she said.

George Brown, president of Wood Properties Inc. and broker of a number of downtown Knoxville property deals, said whatever is built there will have an impact both on the Jackson Avenue/Old City area and the image of downtown from the interstate.

'It needs to be aesthetically pleasing from both sides of the building," he said. "From I-40, it is like the front porch of downtown Knoxville, so it is important that whatever is on the back of the building looks really good. At the same time, it fronts on Jackson, which is a really important corridor and is a side street to Gay Street."

Brown said the size of the property and its prominent placement offers a chance for Knoxville to do what he called a "home run" project, or one that will draw people to Knoxville from outside the area, the way the Tennessee Aquarium does for downtown Chattanooga.

"I think downtown could support something like that," he said.

The McClung warehouses site, which consisted of five buildings, was struck by fire on Feb. 7, 2007. Three buildings were destroyed in the blaze, which authorities said was set by vagrants. In 2013, the city bought the property with the goal of stabilizing the buildings that were left and finding a developer for the site. However, on Feb. 1, 2014, fire again erupted on the property, damaging the remaining buildings to the point that they had to be demolished. Two homeless men were charged in that fire.

Cleaning up the site is complicated by the fact that it contains elevated levels of toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, cobalt, manganese and thalium, plus amounts of asbestos and other materials, Wallace said. The cleanup will take place in conjunction with a three-year Tennessee Department of Transportation project to demolish and rebuild the nearby Broadway viaduct.

When the site is ready for market, the city will not just be looking for the highest bidder. Its request for proposals will consider the expertise of the developer, how much public benefit a proposal offers, how it will impact downtown and other factors, Wallace said.

Brown believes the potential offered by the site will draw interest well beyond just local developers.

"It will be on a scale that it will certainly attract interest from regional and perhaps national developers," he said. "It would be wise of the city to cast the RFP as wide as possible."

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