CROET closing its doors after 25+ years in Oak Ridge
The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET), a regional economic development nonprofit focused on repurposing older U.S. Department of Energy facilities and property for private development and jobs, is closing.
The closing of the CROET Corp. and its affiliate organization, Heritage Center LLC, will commence this month and is planned to take up to two years, according to a news release.
CROET began in 1995 as a conduit to bring U.S. Department of Energy grant funds to East Tennessee. Grants to mitigate the impacts on local communities from the downsizing of the federal facilities in Oak Ridge after the Cold War totaled approximately $60 million. According to the CROET news release, grant funding enabled many accomplishments, including:
• Development of a skills retraining center at the Oak Ridge Y-12 facility to retrain those workers displaced by restructuring after the end of the Cold War;• The ability to defray expenses for planning, design, and infrastructure for numerous industrial centers in the region, including the Roane Regional Industrial Center, Matlock Bend Industrial Park, and Center Point Park in Knoxville;• Construction of the Horizon Center Business Park in Oak Ridge;• Underwriting various educational initiatives at Roane State and Pellissippi State communitycolleges; and• Providing loans to numerous small businesses throughout the region.
Within a few years after being organized, CROET was tasked with being the community interface for DOE’s reindustrialization program where the former K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant site would be redeveloped from a huge Cold War relic to that of a brownfield industrial center. Initially, facilities would be leased to CROET who would, in turn, market and lease the properties to private industrial firms.
CROET leased and sold property at the former K-25 site — now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park and Heritage Center — and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to companies. The transactions allowed businesses to expand their operations near ORNL while also providing new purpose for underused land and facilities that were previously owned and managed by DOE.
ETM&EC, a waste management service company, and Materials and Chemistry Laboratory, Inc. (McLinc) were two of the more successful industries who leased buildings from CROET, the release said.
“After a period of success with leased facilities the organization pivoted as more and more of the older facilities were demolished by DOE and its contractors, Bechtel-Jacobs and UCOR,” CROET President and CEO Teresa Frady said in the release. “This resulted in a handful of the most reusable buildings becoming owned and operated by CROET.”
CROET also spent many years operating - with CH2M Hill-OMI as its contractor - and making capital improvements to the Heritage Center infrastructure systems, such as roads, water, and sewer. The improvements enabled DOE to hand over those modernized systems to the city of Oak Ridge.
In recent years CROET has been selling its modernized buildings and improved land to private businesses with recent location announcements centered around a nuclear renaissance initiative. Major announcements have included Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp., Kairos Power’s Hermes demonstration reactor and Coqui RadioPharmaceuticals.
There are a few remaining capital projects that CROET will undertake to make the Heritage Center (K-25) a long-term, fully functioning industrial park, the release stated.
“CROET is fortunate to have capital reserves that will allow it, over the next two years, to undertake these capital-intensive projects,” Frady said. “Plans include repaving and possible reconstruction of numerous arterial and access roads on-site, landscape and visual corridor improvements, projects to support the planned General Aviation Airport and possible demolition of some structures.”
David Bradshaw, former Oak Ridge mayor and long-time CROET board member, said, “This is exactly the right time to undertake an orderly close-out of CROET activities. We are fortunate currently, through good past management practices and a little good fortune, to have the capital to undertake the needed projects to finish our mission.”
Lesley Cusick, long-time reindustrialization team member and CROET board member, said she seesthe closure as more of a transition.
"Community land became part of the war effort and remained in DOE control for decades. In recent times it was transitioned to CROET, who is now returning it back to the community," she said.
Incoming CROET Chair Nicole Merrifield said, “We have a history of having major impact on our service communities. With these last few actions, we are leaving a legacy of change and improvement resulting in quality industrial assets to which the community can benefit for generations to come.”
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: CROET closing its doors after 25+ years in Oak Ridge
