Mayor Ron Littlefield lambasted the Chattanooga Housing Authority and its staff Monday during a special meeting of the agency regarding widespread concern over a proposed $4.8 million housing development.

The latest evidence of the authority’s incompetence, he said during the hastily called standing-room-only meeting, is its proposed $4.8 million housing development on Fairmount Avenue, a dead-end street in North Chattanooga.

“I don’t want to embarrass the developer,” the mayor said during a frank exchange with authority members, “but . . . that design reminded me of the type of housing I saw in Eastern Europe.”

Further, he said, Fairmount Avenue is unsuitable in the extreme for such a development. The street is narrow, resulting in “nightmare” traffic, with virtually all homes there designed for individual families.

It doesn’t make sense to tear down the existing 28-unit CHA housing unit on Fairmount, which the neighborhood has proven it can handle, the mayor said, and replace it with an unsuitable new 48-unit project that will negatively impact everybody involved.

Monday’s meeting grew out of a blistering letter the mayor wrote to federal Housing and Urban Development officials approximately two weeks ago, which stunned CHA members who saw it as a personal attack.

They had no idea the mayor had such concerns, several said indignantly, indicating they would have preferred that the matter be handled privately.

“You’re asking for better communication,” one member said pointedly. “That should work both ways.

“I don’t know any one of us who wouldn’t have dropped whatever we were doing and come to a meeting to discuss this with you,” another complained.

But the mayor said he and his staff have reached out repeatedly to the authority and its employees, only to be rebuffed and have their suggestions rejected.

“I was angry when I wrote this letter,” he confessed. “Maybe if I had waited a couple of days to put it in the mail I would have changed some of the language . . . but I was very upset.”

“(T)he staff of (CHA) has taken action without any forethought as to the impact such an expansion will have upon the future residents of the (proposed) facility, the existing infrastructure and the quality of life of the community,” Mayor Littlefield said in the no-holds-barred letter.

“The Fairmount Avenue project is a throwback to the failed HUD policies of concentrating low income residents in an isolated, confined area without access to vital services . . . The unprofessional conduct of the housing authority continues to defy common sense and has become an embarrassment to the city,” the letter charged.

CHA officials at the end of September had announced that the agency had been awarded a federal grant for a "green" project in North Chattanooga.

Naveed Minhas, CHA development executive, said the local agency was one of only 36 public housing authorities in the nation to receive the federal stimulus funding. He said
CHA would be receiving $4,877,330.

Mr. Minhas said the entire Fairmount Avenue redevelopment project will be $5.27 million and will include some CHA funds.

He said the current units off Mississippi Avenue have a number of structural problems and had been slated for demolition.

Mr. Minhas said the current units would be razed and an environmentally friendly and energy efficient unit put up at the site.

It was to include 48 units in a three-story building designed by architect Craig Kronenberg.

Mr. Minhas said it would be the first housing authority property he knows of with solar panels on the roof. That will supply the equivalent of about 10 percent of the energy needs for the development.

He said it was hoped to get LEED certification for the project, which was slated to be completed by the end of 2011.

Afterward, a number of nearby residents spoke out in opposition to the project, saying it was at the end of a windy road with no sidewalks.