Design Process Vote For Energy Facility

Cookeville City Council will consider Thursday an architectural agreement to renovate and expand the city’s electric department offices.

The design would add some 134,000 square feet to the facility on West Davis Road. City Manager James Mills said the city would also totally renovate the existing space to house the new Energy Department.

“Lots of work to the exterior buildings,” Mills said. “The goal here is to blend this all in to one new look that would offer as close as possible, all of this depends on cost when we get down to it, as close as possible to our PD and our new fire stations. So you can tell these are City of Cookeville facilities. That’s part of our goal here. And part of the design.”

Mills said the current estimate for the total project, some $17 million, paid out of gas and electric fund balance. Council will vote on a $500,000 proposal from AEI Thursday to do complete designs.

“For the past several months, we’ve been looking at different designs to come up with layouts for this,” Mills said. “AEI has done some preliminary work for us.”

The city combined the gas and electric departments in January to take advantage of synergies within the work. As part of that plan, Mills said his hope was to bring the departments together in one facility with the hope of returning the Gas Department facility off Broad Street back to the tax rolls. Mills said during discussions officials realized there was plenty of room to expand at the current West Davis Road facility.

In addition to the office expansion, the city would add new warehouses for the facility. The current 5,200 square feet would also be fully renovated.

“It’s exciting times,” Mills said. “Another huge project for us.”