CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – A long-planned corporate office park, complete with two new hotels and a convention center, is set to move forward next year on Ted Crozier Boulevard, according to the Clarksville-Montgomery County Economic Development Council.
The project is set for a 69-acre parcel northeast of Tennova Healthcare, listed as site 27 on the EDC’s map of the Industrial Business Park.
While details for the project have yet to be announced, the site is expected to include two hotels, a convention center and up to 1 million square feet of office space to attract corporate entities looking for new headquarters, according to EDC CEO Buck Dellinger, who spoke with Clarksville Now about the project.
Dellinger called the goal of a million square feet “aspirational.”
“I think we’ll be a lot less than that, but we’re going to put as much business as we can into that space,” Dellinger said.
Another possibility is a new administrative facility for the Department of Veteran Affairs, though that project is still in the air.
A new convention center
Dellinger said the new convention center will likely be geared to trade shows and other corporate entities, focusing on ballrooms and meeting spaces.
“You’ve got rooms for people to come in and they congregate, mix and network, and then they go to breakout rooms for presentations,” Dellinger said. “You’re really not selling goods as much as you’re exchanging ideas and hearing presentations.”
Interest-driven conventions and events, such as outdoor shows and comic con events, would likely be more suited to the under-construction F&M Bank Arena downtown, Dellinger said.
A slow start
The project has long been in the works, but it was delayed due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic reducing demand for convention centers.
“(COVID) has extended the timeline on that because convention centers are not really operating, at least they’re not operating as designed or as expected. They’re not even having the conventions that attract convention seekers. Once a year, they’ve got to have a convention to host the people that want to have a convention,” Dellinger told Clarksville Now. “What it’s meant is that we’ve been on kind of a two-year pause.”
“Theresa Harrington would tell you someone has been promising her a convention center for years,” Dellinger added.
Harrington, executive director of economic development for Visit Clarksville, agreed that a convention center has been on her wish list for 25 years.
“When I was hired, within two years, they said they’d build a convention center,” Harrington said. “Clarksville is the fifth largest city in the state of Tennessee, and we don’t have a convention center. Anything we can do to bring big groups to Clarksville would just be a plus for us and our economy.”
Moving forward
Dellinger told local Industrial Development Board members at a meeting on Dec. 8 that he would be traveling to Chattanooga to meet with an investor for the project.
He told Clarksville Now he hopes infrastructure work to begin in the spring of 2022. This work would include initial surveying and preparing roadway access.
Dellinger said the EDC is watching the market closely and, once conventions begin to return and the EDC decides move forward, construction is expected to take around two years.