Blog: Safety Complex Updates

Public Safety Complex Move-in to Begin in January

Later this month, Fire Chief Stan Sharp and his administrative staff will be the first new tenants moving into the City's new Public Safety Complex in North Knoxville.

But the KFD vanguard won't be alone in the 200,000-square-foot complex for long.

A complete move-in will be staggered over more than three months, as the Knoxville Police Department, City Court, the back-up E-911 center, the Knoxville-Knox County Emergency Management Agency and the City Pension System office all will be relocated to the vacated former St. Mary's Hospital site, next to Fulton High School, by the end of spring 2023.

"We're happy and honored to be the first to move in," said Sharp, whose administrative staff is currently scattered over several locations, including rented space in the CityScape office park off East Hill Avenue. "It will be helpful and more efficient to have so many of KFD's administrative staff operating out of the same location.

"But there also is going to be a huge benefit in having multiple emergency service providers together in the same complex."

Chief Stan Sharp at the Public Safety Complex - December 2022

Next up on the boxing-up-and-moving-in schedule, after Fire Administration, would be City Court staff.

The new City Court courtroom still appears barren - no benches or furnishings - but court staff is expected to be in their new offices by early February. Court sessions would resume here at that point.

The Knoxville Police Department is the largest group of employees moving into the Public Safety Complex. Just by virtue of the logistics - and maintaining continuity of 24/7 police operations - the KPD transition will span February and March, and KPD will be among the last to fully move in.

Read this 2018 City Blog post to understand just how antiquated the 54-year-old current police headquarters on Howard H. Baker Jr. Avenue has become.

When the Police Department fully vacates the crumbling, cramped and sweltering-in-summertime Safety Building next to the Civic Coliseum, then the old police building will be demolished to make room for a new a $100 million state-of-the-art world-class educational science and discovery center, the Knoxville Science Museum. The museum will be built and operated by the Clayton Family Foundation.

Also in March: The City Pension System and Knoxville-Knox County Emergency Management Agency offices will be relocating to the Public Safety Complex, as well as the backup E-911 system.

So by late March or April 2023, the Public Safety Complex will be fully occupied.

The exterior facade repairs to the east-end former Professional Office Building will be completed in May. The brick envelope was not properly fastened decades ago, so the bricks with the potential to pull away and fall have been removed.

An Exterior Insulation Finishing System (EIFS) stucco-like exterior will be layered onto the affected portions of the complex.

Look for landscaping, sodding and City Court parking to be added this winter and spring as well. Some of the concrete sidewalks have already been laid in, set and poured earlier this year.

Posted by evreeland On 03 January, 2023 at 11:03 AM