New High Tech Parks Brighten Future of Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., July 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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.

SOURCE Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley

Garrett Wagley of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, +1-865-246-2661,
gwagley@knoxvillechamber.com