KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — The location of the new Knox County Regional Forensic Center has been selected.
Chief Medical Examiner Darinka Mileusnic and Chief Administrative Officer Chris Thomas confirmed with WBIR that the new center will be in the Karns Valley Business Park in Northwest Knox County off Oak Ridge Highway.
"We have that top right quadrant which is 15 acres, only half of which we're going to be using for the facility," Thomas said. "The renderings and drawings we've come up with for the new facility are going to be right around 33,000 square feet, so currently we're pretty much doubling the office size and laboratory size of the entire facility."
Thomas said employee parking will be in the back and allow them to grow over the next 15 years.
The KCRFC first opened in December 2014, after outgrowing the existing space at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. They're facing a similar situation now. KCRFC processed roughly 1,900 cases in 2019, 2,300 cases in 2020 and 2,800 cases in 2021.
"There were several different times where we actually ran out of cooler space in our morgue," Thomas told WBIR back in 2023. "We were dangerously close to having to stack bodies in places that we didn't want to."
Groundbreaking is set for the first quarter of 2025 with an estimated completion by the end of 2026, Thomas said. The state set aside $20 million to help build a new facility and the county budgeted for an additional $10 million.
In addition to conducting all the autopsies for Knox and Anderson Counties, they assist with more difficult cases in 21 other East Tennessee counties.
