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State officials at UTC highlight transportation projects, McDonald Farm park plan and quantum infrastructure funding
Summary
A panel including TDOT Commissioner Will Reid and ECD deputy governor Stuart McWhorter told Hamilton County leaders that TDOT's 10-year fiscally constrained plan includes an Exit 13 interchange design and that the legislature allocated $43,000,000 for quantum infrastructure concentrated in the Chattanooga region.
A panel of state officials who joined Hamilton County's State of the County at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga described how state transportation planning, economic development incentives and park investments align with local priorities.
Will Reid, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation, said TDOT's 10-year plan is publicly posted and fiscally constrained, and he identified major local projects in the plan. "If you go out and look, we've assigned dollars to that," Reid said of an I-75 widening and an interchange addition at Exit 13 in Ooltewah; he said the interchange access request must clear Federal Highway in 2027 and that the widening project is already in design. Reid also described a high-cost section of the I-24/Moxon bin project with $250,000,000 assigned and an estimated additional $300,000,000 needed to finish the work.
Stuart McWhorter, deputy governor and commissioner of Economic and Community Development, and other panelists urged Hamilton County to focus on creating "shovel-ready" certified sites with power, water and workforce capacity to compete for large private investment. McWhorter emphasized public-private partnerships and local entrepreneurship as complements to recruitment of large firms and said the recent state budget included $43,000,000 to build quantum-related infrastructure concentrated in the region.
Panelists also discussed McDonald Farm, a county-owned property that the state is evaluating for conversion to a state park connected to the Cumberland Trail. State parks officials said agritourism and trailhead development could create local economic benefits and that public-private arrangements would likely be used for amenities the state does not operate directly.
The panel repeatedly framed success as a product of state-local alignment: officials urged coordination on land-use decisions and workforce programs to reduce congestion, advance site readiness and leverage airport and freight connectivity.
Next steps mentioned on stage included continued design and federal clearances for TDOT projects, county-level decisions about site certification and a forthcoming County Commission review of the Riverport parcel-sale proposal described by the mayor.
