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The prototype for the 470-acre Pellissippi Place high-tech park blends business, residential and retail uses.

Alcoa City Manager Mark Johnson outlined plans for the park Monday at the Governmental Council of the Blount County Chamber of Commerce.

The projected openings for the different parts of the park range from 2012 to 2022. The park will focus on technology, corporate research and high-tech business development.

Called “festive retail,” planners envision a man-made river walk that cascades past shops and restaurants where patrons can dine outside. The water would be recycled.
It would likely not be as elaborate as the river walks in San Antonio, Texas, or Providence, R.I., but that is the basic concept, said Alcoa Assistant City Manager Bill Hammon after Johnson’s talk.

The park is being developed on the former Luther Jackson Farm at the intersection of Pellissippi Parkway and Old Knoxville Highway.

Working in a cooperative effort, four governmental entities are the working on the park — Alcoa, Maryville, Blount County and Knox County, Johnson said.

Blount County Economic Development Board will be the owner/developer of the project.

Phase I will involve the infrastructure for the park, a phase that is expected to cost around $10 million.

Johnson said it will take about a year to complete this work.

Engineers are finalizing infrastructure plans and will put the project out to bid next week.

Once complete, the cities and counties will be able to take potential tenants to see the property.

“If Pellissippi Parkway goes through, it will go straight through the site,” Johnson said. “We are going to move Clayton Drive over and make it a boulevard at the main entrance to the park.”

Pellissippi Place will have world-class educational and research facilities, retail and entertainment venues, hotel and office space and residences, Johnson said.

The park will be in the Oak Ridge Technology Corridor. Johnson envisions people from around the world coming to do research in the park, as they are doing at the Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge.

Phase II will be actual development in the park. There will be up to 2 million square feet of space for research and development in the park.

According to a brochure on the park, it will have 830,000 square feet of retail, including a major anchor store. The city planners expect up to six restaurants to locate there, a 14- to 18-screen cinema, hotels and homes.

There are expected to be 600 homes, apartments and condos in the residential area.
”We know there’s going to be growth and we want to embrace that,” Johnson said.

“We want to keep that vista (Great Smoky Mountains National Park). That’s what drew me here,” Johnson said.

The fact that it is located near McGhee Tyson Airport and an interstate highway will be other draws, he said.

On another topic, Johnson said Alcoa is in the preliminary planning stage of a new high school on the campus of the present one. The school would link to the gymnasium. A few years ago enrollment was declining, but now its growing again. The school now has 1,700 students.

“The plan is to build a new school that would accommodate growth in the future for 10 years,” he said.

“It’s going to be expensive,” Johnson stressed.

He expects the city to move into the new public works compound in the middle of July. “We’re finally wrapping up the punch list with the contractor,” Johnson said.