Construction crews are hard at work on a 400-acre stretch of Midway Business Park along Thorngrove Pike in East Knox County, where Greenheck Group is putting up two 200,000-square-foot plants as the first phase of a $300 million manufacturing campus. The Wisconsin-rooted HVAC manufacturer is only months away from opening a damper plant and a separate architectural products plant on the site, with plans to employ 440 people in Knox County by 2029. Six more buildings are already in the works beyond those first two facilities.
Those figures come from the Knoxville News Sentinel, where reporter Mariah Franklin covers technology and energy. Franklin’s reporting notes that Greenheck already employs several workers in Knox County and received a tax break from the county’s industrial development board in exchange for promised investment there. The company has said its Knoxville expansion shows it is winning customers away from competitors and reflects confidence in its products and its people.
A Long-Fought Site Finally Lands Its Tenant
The ground Greenheck is building on has a complicated backstory. Knox County bought the 354-acre Midway Business Park site in 2006, then spent roughly 15 years fighting community opposition and legal challenges from residents trying to preserve the rural character of East Knox County before the park officially opened in April 2021, according to the Knoxville Chamber.
That long runway gave the county time to build out serious industrial infrastructure before landing a tenant. Midway Business Park includes an adjacent Tennessee Valley Authority electric switch yard and a Knoxville Utilities Board substation, giving it the power capacity heavy manufacturers require, Compass Knoxville has reported…