Residents Concerned Over 7-Story Building On The Southside

  • Wednesday, November 25, 2015
  • Claire Henley

Downtown Chattanooga residents expressed their concerns with the proposed seven-story apartment building on Cowart Street on the Southside at Tuesday night’s City Council Meeting.

The apartment building, originally zoned at four stories before Belle Investment petitioned for seven, has not been adequately publicized, residents claimed.  

Architect and planning professional Stroud Watson stated that since the 1980s the city of Chattanooga has built on the Southside’s quality of life by enabling the inhabitance of “a whole set of old buildings.”

Mr.

Watson said, “Cowart Street is a neighborhood Street. It’s not Market or Main. It doesn’t take huge buildings. It wants a beautiful sidewalk for people to walk on. It wants activity on it.”

He urged committee members to have a dialogue with the community to rethink some of the visions of the apartment building. Regarding the height of the building, Mr. Watson thinks five stories would be fine and that housing in that location is very important. However, his concern is that of the building’s ground floor being used for apartments rather than commercial spaces.

“We built the quality of this city on changing from building singular activity buildings to mix-use, so that we had live, work, and play in our neighborhoods…There’s no reason whatsoever to say that project should have no commercial or other kinds of activities on the ground floor,” Mr. Watson said.

He told members of the committee he thinks the apartment building on Cowart Street is a good project, but he wants the city of Chattanooga to do it right by talking to people and finding out what the issues really are.

The issue is that the city of Chattanooga has not followed the advice of the Planning Commission and RPA when they recommended against the seven-story height, said resident Garnett Chapin. “We’ve been trying to create walk-able, bike-able environments for a long time, and to put this giant block between the historic area and the Chattanooga Hotel with no commercial on the ground floor, no way to stimulate walking traffic through there, would be a big mistake.”

Another resident stated the issue is that development on Cowart Street has been negotiated without proper input from the public.

Councilman Chris Anderson stated the city held a neighborhood meeting for the Southside Cowart Place Neighborhood Association. “Every member of the leadership of that association voiced their support to me for this project.”

Resident Cynthia Stroud-Watson discussed how the downtown community is a very big one and that the neighborhood meeting was not publicly advertised. She examined how 80 percent of the 20 people who showed up to the neighborhood meeting voted in favor of the seven-story building. However, at least 80 percent of the entire downtown community of around 3,000 people did not know the meeting occurred, Ms. Watson said. 

Councilman Anderson stated, “The vast majority who contacted me do support this project.”

According to resident Helen Sharp, the development of this project is a key decision: “Yes we want housing downtown, we want density downtown, we want height downtown. But we need to recognize that there are discreet neighborhoods in the downtown area. And this is so close to the really wonderful historic district that I think whatever we do there, from the standpoint of height and the standpoint of the mix uses, is really important.”

The second reading of the Cowart Street apartment building is scheduled for December.

 

 

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