DOE Transfers 25 Acres for Reuse
WC Monitor
5/16/2014
The Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management this week transferred 25 acres at the East Tennessee Technology Park—the scene of major demolition of old uranium-enrichment facilities and cleanup projects—to the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee. It was the 12th time since 1995 that DOE has transferred ownership of government property to the Oak Ridge-based organization, setting the stage for more private industrial development at the site of the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant. Mark Whitney, DOE’s environmental manager in Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Young, president and CEO of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, signed the documents May 7. David Klaus, DOE’s deputy undersecretary for management and performance, was on hand for the ceremony, along with Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) and a gaggle of other dignitaries.
CROET was established almost 20 years ago to coordinate the reuse of surplus or “underutilized” federal land and facilities on DOE’s Oak Ridge reservation. Some of the 700 acres acquired from DOE has been sold to private companies, while CROET retained ownership of other properties and leased buildings to a variety of tenants, including waste processors. The reindustrialization program has reportedly saved DOE millions of dollars in maintenance-and-upkeep costs, while creating hundreds of jobs and additional tax revenues for Oak Ridge. There are no definitive plans for the new parcels, but Young said the latest transfer is “extremely important” because CROET had virtually run out of land to attract new tenants. “We had been stymied for a few years in getting additional properties,” he said.
Young said he believes CROET can compete for new businesses “One of the challenges that we’ve always had is that it’s an ongoing demolition-and-decontamination site [at ETTP],” he said. “It is by its very definition a brownfield site. So there are probably some potential clients we lose simply because they don’t necessarily want to go through the process. … So we lose them, but we’ve been pretty successful in being able to attract a variety of tenants.” He added, “Our hope is that with this property and some other properties we’ll get in the future that we’ll be able to get an even greater mix of tenants on site, and it truly will become the business park we envisioned a decade and a half ago.”
