Fentress Commits Funding and Land for Roane State

33 acres of land and up to $500,000 have been packaged together to show Fentress County’s commitment to bringing in a permanent Roane State campus.

This package was approved Monday night by the Fentress County Commission and will head to the Tennessee Board of Regents for consideration. Fentress County Mayor Jimmy Johnson said showing interest in the permanent campus puts the decision in the state’s hands.

“We’ll have all of our stuff taken care of that’s what we’re gonna offer and it will be there choice to say, ‘yes, we’re gonna go ahead and do it,” Johnson said. “We hope we can get this done in the next year or two or three and it will be great for Fentress County because it will be a centralized location, it will actually pull students from all direction.”

Johnson said the utility district is on board to make this site ready for a campus and Jamestown is prepared to extend sewer lines to the property. Also, Johnson said the location passed its soil test but was originally committed to a different use.

“We have some property that we’ve come about, that we couldn’t use it for what we had decided on,” Johnson said. “We’ve had the subsurface work done on it for the stability of the land.”

The property being committed to the campus is at 833 Old Highway 127 South. The potential price that was discussed Monday night was about $5 million for a campus site, which lines up with the funding being committed.

“When we talked with the state back in the Spring, our call meeting that we had, we asked the question in what we would need monetary and they said 8 to 12 percent, so we’ve come up with that.”

Although up to 33 acres are committed, it was discussed Monday night that the campus might only need five to six acres.