Blog: Safety Complex Updates

Week 54: Pouring Concrete - Lots of It

The last weekday in February was nicknamed "Pour Day," because that was the day when Al Blankenship Enterprises employees poured 100 cubic yards of concrete.

A hundred yards - that's the length of the nearby Fulton High School football field. Imagine the equivalent of 100 small boxes placed side-by-side the length of a playing field, each box 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall - that's how much concrete was poured on Feb. 26 at the Public Safety Complex. It was enough material to fill 11 concrete trucks.

Pour Day - Feb. 26, 2021

For weeks, Blankenship crews have been forming a new foundation wall near where a new City Court courtroom will be built, abutting the north side of the former Central Wing Annex, as it was called when it was part of St. Mary's Hospital in North Knoxville.

This week, Blankenship is forming and pouring more concrete wall, as the City's Public Safety Complex is definitely taking shape.

When it opens in summer 2022, the Public Safety Complex will house Police, Fire, Pension System and backup E-911 operations in the vacated hospital's repurposed Professional Office Building, Central Wing Annex and Women's Pavilion. A new single-story City Court is being constructed, adjoining the complex.

Meanwhile, Lincoln Memorial University is offering nursing classes in the Magdalen Clarke Tower, with plans for a formal west-end entrance and a lush quadrangle-style public green space.

The stately 1929 Building - free-standing and unobscured for the first time in decades - will anchor future private redevelopment on the northern end of the campus.

The iconic old building is being carefully preserved. Contractor crews are tending to everything from masonry work on the parapet in January to, last week, Renascent crews completing repairs to the alcove roof and Messer Construction completing the installation of exterior temporary partitions.

1929 Building, alcove roof repair

Posted by evreeland On 04 March, 2021 at 12:41 PM