Edney building sold as hub for innovation district

The Edney Building, center, located at the corner of Market and 11th Streets, is photographed on Feb. 2, 2015, in downtown Chattanooga. Seen at left is Patten Towers, while Warehouse Row is at right.
The Edney Building, center, located at the corner of Market and 11th Streets, is photographed on Feb. 2, 2015, in downtown Chattanooga. Seen at left is Patten Towers, while Warehouse Row is at right.

A group of local investors have bought the Edney Building, the hub for Chattanooga's newly created Innovation District.

Jimmy White and Chuck Chitty led the team and closed on the sale last week, according to Ken Hays, president of the Enterprise Center, the nonprofit organization overseeing the district.

The property, which the Tennessee Valley Authority had owned for about 65 years, sold for $1.35 million, Hays said. That was the minimum purchase price required, Hays said in January, when Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke and Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger announced the district's geographic outline.

Reached by phone Thursday, Chitty declined to comment on the sale. Talon Office Opportunities GP, for which the Tennessee Secretary of State listed Chitty as the registered agent, earlier this year purchased a tract of land off of Riverfront Parkway from Alstom Power for $3.5 million.

Berke in April 2014 charged the Enterprise Center with creating the Innovation District. A year to the month later, during his State of the City address, he lauded the Edney Building as "the cornerstone of our Innovation District and our new economy," noting that a team of local developers now owned the building.

"It will connect entrepreneurs with creatives and existing businesses to ramp up our next successful companies," Berke said on April 27.

CoLab, the nonprofit organization and business accelerator, is expected to be the first tenant, moving in this autumn. The Enterprise Center will follow with office space of its own, Hays said.

The 10-floor building, located at 1100 Market St., will require some construction and updating. Floors of co-working space for small and new ventures are planned, along with "community serving areas programmed for collisions of people and ideas, for problem solving and for socializing," Hays wrote in an email announcement regarding the building's closing. "And so we don't lose sight of the grandeur of the city around us, roof-top gathering space."

The Innovation District is 140 acres and covers a downtown area that includes Lamp Post Group, Society of Work, EPB and the Public Library, among other key players.

"The Innovation Center was never meant to be an end in itself, but to be a multifaceted pump-primer for efforts already underway to take the Chattanooga economy to unprecedented levels of innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital equity," Hays wrote. "A building most people never noticed will become a vibrant emblem of Chattanooga's next bold steps into the 21st century."

The Enterprise Center's original contract with TVA regarding the building's sale called for a Feb. 23 closing. The Enterprise Center last November entered into an agreement to buy the building for $1.3 million and planned to find a private buyer as soon as it owned it. It put out requests for proposals in January.

Contact staff writer Mitra Malek at mmalek@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6406. Follow her on Twitter @MitraMalek.

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