Cookeville leaders broke ground on the city’s new $2.3 million Energy Department Facility Thursday afternoon.
The city began the process of combining the city’s electric and gas departments over a year ago. City Council Member Eric Walker said breaking ground is an exciting step for the city.
“Combining the Cookeville Electric Department and the Gas Department to create the Energy Department was something our council had worked really hard on,” Walker said. “It makes our services more efficient under one roof, and now we get to build that roof.”
The new facility is expected to be completed in late Fall or early Winter of 2026. Council Member Chad Gilbert said he is looking forward to having the facility completed.
“That’s the idea right,” Gilbert said. “You start with a concept, and you envision what enables that. A singular campus like this one building, one structure where everybody is under one roof, and the idea that getting them in one central location to serve the citizens of Cookeville and provide that energy, whether it be electric or gas, is ideal, and so we yeah, we want to see this be completed as soon as possible.”
Cookeville Energy Department Director Carl Haney said there are multiple aspects of the new facility that he is looking forward to.
“One thing is getting all of our employees at one facility is gonna be really nice,” Haney said. “You know, also, we are building an emergency control center for both divisions here, which that’s gonna provide us both outage management on the electric side, voltage management, but also on the gas side, you know, it helps us monitor our gas system as far as pressures and all of that. So that one I’m really excited about to get that all up and going, and so again we can provide those services to our customers.”
The city is also in the midst of transitioning its meter reading system into an automated meter reading system. Haney said the new facility will help support the new system and the growth that Cookeville is seeing.
The work will expand the current facility on West Davis Road, which houses the electric department. The gas department will move from its downtown offices.
