David Westtrick

FedEx is set to open three facilities in Chattanooga in the coming weeks, including a new FedEx Freight facility on a former horse farm on Shallowford Road.

FedEx also is scheduled to open a FedEx Ground facility at 3021 Alton Park Drive on Friday, and a FedEx Kinkos Office and Printing facility will open soon at 1906 Gunbarrel Road.

Dayton-based Dillard Construction Co. is building both the FedEx Ground facility in Alton Park and the more than 42,000-square-foot freight terminal at 4250 Shallowford Road.

Staff Photo by Patrick Smith
A new Fed Ex shipping facility is being built on Shallowford Road. The facility is nearing completion.

Officials said the FedEx Freight facility will sit on what once was a 19.36-acre family horse farm, which was purchased for $2.5 million by Scannell Properties.

Officials at Scannell, a Indianapolis-based “build-to-suit” real estate development company, said it is leasing the property to FedEx Freight, but they declined to disclose the details of the lease agreement.

Rusty Lee, site superintendent for Dillard Construction, said Dillard is just weeks away from completion of its portion of the project.

He said the company is scheduled to finish Aug. 8.

Kathy Brooks, spokeswoman for FedEx Freight, said the terminal is more than 80 percent complete, but officials are uncertain when the facility will open.

“We haven’t set an opening date yet,” Ms. Brooks said. “We won’t do that until it is over 90 to 95 percent complete.”

Ms. Brooks declined to disclose how much the freight terminal will cost.

Mr. Lee said the facility will consist of about 5,000 square feet of office space and 37,280 square feet of loading dock and storage space.

The new facility will have 72 loading dock doors, which is more than 50 percent larger than the 46-door existing location on Polymer Drive.

Dillard received the contract to build the facility in January, but Mr. Lee said bad weather caused construction to be delayed until February.

Records show the Shallowford Road property was purchased for about $2.5 million.

Officials said the Polymer Drive location will be sold.

The $15 million FedEx Ground facility in Alton Park is expected to open Friday and will be home to two FedEx facilities that will combine their operations into one.

The 163,000-square-foot facility at 3021 Alton Park Drive will employ about 320 people, and FedEx anticipates hiring about 80 more workers in the next three or four years, said David Westrick, a spokesman for FedEx Ground.