The Chattanooga Industrial Development Board (IDB) held a regular meeting on May 4, 2026, at 2:56 PM. The board approved minutes from a prior special call meeting, received quarterly updates on two major wastewater projects, approved a change order and a small business incentive grant, and heard a detailed presentation on the Bend development project, which sparked extensive discussion about capital structure, communication, and contractual obligations.
We have confirmation of the meeting advertisement, and we do have a form present here. Um we will approve the minutes for our April 20th special call meeting. Those minutes are in our documents here. I will entertain a motion to approve those minutes. Motion to approve. Thank you. Thank you. There's a motion and the second. All those in favor? Opposed. Thank you. The meeting, the minutes pass. Now we will recognize any persons wishing to address the board. Anyone here wishing to address the board? Yes. Good morning, yes. This is Michael Wright with Urban Story Ventures. Jimmy White with Urban Story Ventures. Well, I know you all are on our agenda further down, but did you have anything you want to do? Oh no, no, no, no. You are you brought yeah, no, we're good. We'll call you up here in a second. Thank you. Anyone else just wishing to um address the board for anything else? Good morning. Janice Gooden. Sometimes I represent Caleb, but today I'm just a community member uh with interest on the west side where my church is and also Newton Community Center. So looking forward to the update on the project, the BN project. Thank you, Ms. Gidden. Okay, next we'll move into the quarterly update of the E2I2 SSO abatement program in MBEC Class A Power Project, Progressive Power Design Bill. Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh good morning. My name is Mark Heinzer. I'm the administrator for the city's wastewater department. And uh you should have received uh quarterly update reports for the two projects that uh we have uh through the IDB. The first one is the E2I2 project, and for for those maybe not familiar, that is the large tanks that are being constructed along I-75. Uh the project is tracking on schedule and on budget. It has a substantial completion date of March 2027, uh, where we can hopefully start utilizing that facility and with the final completion of all the ancillary work to be later that summer of 2027. That project is proceeding as as prescribed. Um the other project is the class A power project. That is a project that is located at the Moccusin Bend Environmental Campus. Uh that project is uh right now it's currently eight months behind schedule because of redesign that we had to do. Uh the initial cost estimates exceeded the amount approved uh through the IDB, also exceeded our what what our budget was for the project. So uh in light of that, we we kind of went back and sharpened our pencils on the design side of things and tried to make sure we could still achieve the project's goals uh within uh a budget that was was affordable. And so that's that's why there is a delay there, uh but I think it it happened in the best interest of the city uh as well as the industrial development board that we're keeping that project within uh a reasonable amount of cost and a reasonable amount of time as well. Uh so that project is proceeding now uh with a new design, and we're still gonna get to that that end goal of what we were looking for, which was an uh increased biogas, which we can then convert into energy at the facility. Uh so that project again it's a little bit behind, but it's uh because of the cost, and we've actually you know saved the project as far as we can we can with the uh a little bit of delay on the front end means a better project on the back end, and so that's why we're asking for this uh uh I guess later on in the agenda you'll see a resolution for a change order for that redesign and uh and a schedule as well. So that's uh that's kind of the update on that one, but it is now proceeding as uh as we need it to questions.