From The Daily Times

When ProNova Solutions announced in February 2013 that the new company had selected Pellissippi Place to build its research and manufacturing facility, it was like a dream come true.

Blount Countians with the Blount Partnership had worked with area elected officials for years to develop the R&D Park that promised to be a magnet for high-tech businesses seeking to locate in a planned community with an emphasis on environmental quality.

Still, it was a dream, a promise, a hope of economic planners that had been pushed back when the Great Recession hit after Pellissippi Place infrastructure was completed.

There was a good news/bad news aspect to it all. The bad news was that companies held back on making major growth commitments until the economy — not just in Tennessee or the U.S. but the whole world — picked up.

The plus side? When the turnaround came, Pellissippi Place was ready. The partnership spadework was done. Blount and Knox counties were on board. So were Maryville and Alcoa. No easy achievement before the recession. During the slump? No way.

So when Terry Douglass, ProNova founder and chairman, was ready to move on growing this company that would produce devices with the potential to move cancer therapy to the next level, the infrastructure of Pellissippi Place was ready, too.

Two years after the original announcement, ProNova President Joe Matteo can walk through the gleaming new facility where the future holds so much hope for cancer patients. And so much economic promise for the region.

And Matteo can say, “You don’t have to go to California to be part of a leading, high-tech company.”

Merit Construction spent nine months building the 55,000-square-foot facility in the 450-acre research and development park located at Pellissippi Parkway and Old Knoxville Highway in Alcoa. The facility is Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certified as a green building. It has 30,000 square feet of assembly, research and development, and test space and 25,000 square feet of office space.

The building has five office suites, serving a range of business, manufacturing, R&D and science staff. For the next seven months, staff will continue their migration from Provision Center for Proton Therapy in Knoxville. Thirty employees already occupy the second floor. Nearly 100 employees will move into the facility by the end of August, 50 in April and 40 in August.

Just as key, ProNova has customers for its SC360 proton therapy system, SAM in Singapore and University of Oxford in England.

A report that analyzed the potential economic impact of ProNova Solutions described it as a “watershed” development with the promise of transforming the region’s economy.

Let the transformation begin.