IDB Approves Cookeville/TTU Sublease For City Parking

The city of Cookeville will sublease property next to Regions Bank from Tennessee Tech to use as paved public parking.

The Putnam County Industrial Development Board gave written consent to sublease the property at Friday’s meeting, as consent was required in the sublease agreement. Some of the parking could be used for SAIC expansion. Board Attorney Kent Moore said this would be a good deal for the city and a vast improvement to parking on the west side.

“That’s really a no-brainer in my opinion,” Moore said. “We get now property that is overgrown and/or in bad shape turned into nice public parking.”

Moore said he has looked over the agreement and legal documents involved, and everything looks good. Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton said the Cookeville City Council would appreciate the IDB giving the project the green light.

“This is a huge need, obviously, for parking in that area,” Wheaton said. “And again, you know, obviously have a great partnership between Tech and IDB and everybody.”

Board Chair Bob Bell said the board has contemplated making this move for quite a while. He said this would be a big leap in satisfying the city’s need for public parking.

In other business, Highlands Economic Partnership Vice President Adam Poe said Aphena Pharmaceutical Solutions has agreed to move to a campus model for payment assessments.

Poe said he explored this option with Aphena in part because of the company’s growing employee count. This would make yearly assessments based on Aphena’s entire Cookeville presence rather than site-by-site. Bell said all parties have had time to look over the adjustment and are comfortable with it.

“Part of the conversation was to adopt this framework for a campus model that the intent for the board at the time was to create new jobs,” Bell said. “Not just to anchor them under a given flagpole, but create new jobs in Putnam County and the city of Cookeville, and that’s what this does.”