Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee Plant Begins to Take Shape

While other automakers across the globe look for ways to reduce expenses during this economic downturn, one German manufacturer hopes to use the current conditions as a springboard toward future growth.

Work on Volkswagen's new U.S. auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee now stands two weeks ahead of schedule. But that's not the reason folks around the construction site are smiling today. They're happy to begin a new phase, as work on the assembly plant gets underway.

A few weeks ago, the first above ground piece of the paint shop went into place. It took less than 15 minutes to set the first 58,000 pound steel-reinforced concrete column. Now, that column and others have been attached to steel beams, as the four-floor, 106 foot tall building begins to take shape.

Since so many different processes will take place in the paint shop, construction began on this building first, so it would be finished at the same time as the rest of the plant. "The welded body is coming from the body shop, going to the paint shop and then going through a lot of processes like cleaning, preparing coating, then painting and at the end waxing and conserving the body," explains Thilo Brockhaus, Volkswagen's Project Manager for the Chattanooga construction site.

While the paint shop will cover 665,000 square feet of space, it's not the largest building. That honor goes to the assembly shop, a sprawling 775,000 square foot facility.

Over the next couple of weeks, crews will reinforce the ground for the assembly shop before pouring the concrete. "The surveyors are coming out, they get the drawings, where the foundation will be, they survey and stick out and then they dig the holes and excavate the ground," says Brockhaus.

Work on the 634,000 square foot body shop will also begin soon, as will a training facility to be built by government partners from Chattanooga, Hamilton County, and Tennessee.

Volkswagen officials will host a wall raising at the site on May 14th.