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Coffee County Mayor Judd Matheny spoke to the Health, Welfare and Recreation Committee recently with certainty in the likelihood that the state will purchase the Coffee County I-24 megasite this year.

Matheny said the purchase will shift infrastructure development into a new level of intensity.

“I think you will see major activity out there within a year,” Matheny estimated. “That doesn’t necessarily mean we will have a tenant. That means we’re preparing for it.”

Among the upgrades in the works are new railheads, new utilities and upgrades to the water treatment plant and potentially a new wastewater treatment plant “–once the state gets in gear to do it,

 Matheny said.

Matheny said a large shift in the community population is on the horizon.

“There’s going to be twice as many people moving here, twice as fast as any of us saw with a normal Census figures,” he said, noting that Rutherford County has eclipsed Hamilton County in population. 

According to the mayor, it’s Coffee County’s time. The site missed out on two major developments.

“We lost one to North Carolina and one to Georgia, 3,500 core jobs apiece, because we didn’t have didn’t site that was two years under production,” he said.

Transportation, infrastructure upgrades

In addition to the railhead conceptualized to be located where the Taylor homestead is now located and the related upgrades to the Caney Fork Rail spur and the mainline tracks in Tullahoma, I-24 will soon be widened to three lanes east and west from the Buchanan Road Exit in Rutherford County to the Pelham Road exit, according to the TDOT budgeting.

Matheny noted that the $980 million project is connected to US Defense Authorization Act to facilitate Arnold Air Force Base research into hypersonics.