Chattanooga's ambitious riverfront development plans are the subject of a Sunday article in the Nashville Tennessean.
The article by writer Richard Lawson says:
CHATTANOOGA — Mayor Bob Corker's sport-utility vehicle bounces over a torn-up road near the city's marina on the Tennessee River. Construction material is everywhere.
For an hour, sounding more like the developer he was than a politician, he has been talking virtually nonstop about plans for the city's waterfront, punctuating his points with sweeping hand gestures. He has delivered the pitch a lot in the past 18 months.
''This is where it all started in '02, and (we) said, 'Man, we can do better than this,' '' Corker said, gesturing toward the small city-owned marina, Ross's Landing.
That discussion turned into a massive $120 million effort to redo Chattanooga's riverfront in three years. None of the money is coming out of the city's coffers.
Over a 90-day period, Corker led an effort that raised $47 million from Chattanooga's philanthropic community. A hotel-motel tax was instituted to pay back $56 million in city bonds sold for the project. An additional $3 million is being raised now from the community through private donations, and the rest is coming from land sales and federal and state sources.
Dubbed the 21st Century Waterfront, it includes expanding the 11-year-old Tennessee Aquarium, rerouting and narrowing a former state road along the river, creating more green space with public art, and building a pedestrian connector from the heart of downtown to an expanding Hunter Museum of American Art.
An additional $80 million of private development, which includes residential and retail, is planned for the riverfront area.
Like many cities across the country, Chattanooga has been ''reclaiming'' its waterfront. But cities rarely move as swiftly as Chattanooga.
Gavin McMillan, a principal in Cambridge, Mass., architectural firm Hargreaves Associates, said the city is moving at ''warp speed.'' His firm created the master plan for the project.
''The remarkable thing about Chattanooga is there has not been one day of delay or stopping,'' McMillan said. ''Usually projects sit on shelves for approvals or permits or fund raising.''
Louisville's waterfront redevelopment took eight years, he said, and Cincinnati's work is on hold.
Mark Schimmenti, director of the Nashville Civic Design Center, said the speed with which Chattanooga moved on the project is significant.
''Chattanooga is just not afraid to move ahead and do things boldly,'' Schimmenti said.
Chattanooga isn't some hidden gem no one knows exists. City planners and media from around the country have been to the city to see what it has been doing.
Schimmenti, also a University of Tennessee professor in architecture, said he has used Chattanooga as an example in classes.
''It's an absolute textbook case of what to do,'' he said.
Nashville hasn't seen the same focus on its riverfront, although plenty of ideas have been presented over the years. Most of Nashville's focus on downtown development has been more inland and scattered in the central business district.
Last week, the owners of the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team formally proposed a $38.5 million stadium next to the river where the Thermal Transfer Plant stands now. The plans include $40 million in residential and retail development.
Rolling Mill Hill, the former Metro General Hospital site overlooking the river off Hermitage Avenue, is undergoing new planning once again. Developers backed away from the project several years ago after a similar process under then-Mayor Phil Bredesen.
The Nashville Civic Design center did a study last year laying out ideas for the east bank of the river starting at The Coliseum and wrapping around the bend. Chattanooga was listed as an example along with other waterfront developments.
Generally, the ideas include housing, retail shops and green space and a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.
Schimmenti said riverfront development is happening in Nashville, but ''you just can't see it yet.''
Two cities
Though rivers run through them, Nashville and Chattanooga differ on many fronts, some obvious and some not so obvious.
Nashville's population is a little more than twice Chattanooga's. Nashville is flat — at least compared with Chattanooga, which definitely isn't. The slightly mountainous terrain in Tennessee's fourth-largest city has limited sprawl to an extent. The terrain, however, helped lock in the dirty air produced by coal-product manufacturing.
At one time, Chattanooga was considered a joke in the country along with Cleveland, Ohio, because of the pollution, a fact city civic leaders and politicians readily admit.
Nashville hasn't had such a history, and this sets the two cities apart. Chattanooga's attitude of rapidly moving on redevelopment may stem from a desire to erase the polluted image as quickly as possible.
''We've never really had a disaster,'' Schimmenti said of Nashville. ''We haven't hit bottom.''
Though the recent work in Chattanooga is occurring in three years, the seeds were planted much earlier.
About 30 years ago, a group of Chattanooga's leading citizens stepped up to reverse the city's course. By the mid-1980s, this evolved into efforts to revitalize downtown, a concept that was picking up steam all around the country, including Nashville.
In 1986, the first riverfront master plan was completed for 22 miles of shoreline. The Lyndhurst Foundation, a longtime philanthropic endeavor of the family of Coca-Cola bottler Jack Lupton, helped lead the effort with at least $10 million.
Lupton helped raise money from other parts of the civic community. The Tennessee Aquarium came out of the 1986 process. It opened in 1992 at a cost of $45 million.
In a colorful interview with a Chattanooga newspaper in 1986, Lupton, addressing the issue of criticism in the community, predicted that the fresh-water aquarium would be a linchpin for riverfront redevelopment.
''The aquarium is going to fool the hell out of all the critics,'' he said. ''They're having a good time sticking their tongue in their cheek right now, but I think it's going to be a meaningful thing, an exciting thing. … Everybody's saying, 'Who the hell wants to go down there and look at the bream and catfish.' Well, if that's where they're coming from, they are going to be truly shocked.''
The aquarium draws 1.2 million visitors per year.
''It really did create a tremendous renaissance in downtown,'' James Kennedy, a local businessman who has been involved with redevelopment planning, told a group last month during the Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit.
The aquarium's attendance is expected to double with the expansion, despite Atlanta opening an aquarium around the same time in 2005, Kennedy told the group.
These efforts have coincided with redevelopment of Chattanooga's downtown, where hotels have been built along with a convention center and apartments.
In all, there has been more than $1 billion invested in downtown redevelopment, including a new minor league baseball stadium near the river. The city provided the land, and Chattanooga Lookouts owner Frank Burke built the stadium using private money.
The historic Read House hotel is being redeveloped and will include the city's first Starbucks coffee shop.
Retail shops have moved into areas in the southern part of downtown where nobody would dare go a few years ago. New housing has sprouted all around town.
Electric-powered shuttles move people around downtown, one of the key elements in reviving the city's core, said Jim Frierson, who has been involved with downtown redevelopment planning and is a strong advocate of alternative transportation.
''Bad transportation can make a city harder to turn around,'' Frierson said.
Beyond the landing
Corker, finance and administration commissioner under former Gov. Don Sundquist and a one-time candidate for U.S. Senate, became Chattanooga's mayor in 2001.
He didn't run on a platform of transforming the riverfront.
''We had actually been doing pretty good with our downtown revitalization and actually were known for that,'' Corker said.
He and city leaders began looking at what to do to create more activity around the cobblestoned Ross's Landing.
''Ross's Landing was nothing but hot pavement with litter blowing across it,'' he said.
A longtime impediment was Riverfront Parkway, a wide road that passed between downtown and the river and wasn't pedestrian-friendly.
The state owned it and no matter what was proposed — narrowing, medians, trees — it was nixed because of some state or federal rule.
''It just became exasperating,'' Corker said.
During a meeting with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, he said, he finally just asked the state to give the city the road, which happened in October 2001.
About 300 people attended a public meeting in February 2002 to help with a vision. And the ideas expanded beyond just redoing Ross's Landing.
Hargreaves was hired and the firm created the $120 million plan.
The question then was how much of the plan to implement and how quickly.
It was only a part of the mayor's state of the city address in May 2002, but he said it changed often up to the time he delivered the speech.
Instead of piecemeal, Corker decided it all should be done at once, sending some shock into the community.
''My initial reaction was that it was going to be difficult to do,'' said Robert Kret, Hunter Museum's director, a benefactor of the redevelopment plan. ''I think in retrospect it was a huge motivator.''
Chattanooga sold $56 million in bonds that will be paid back with hotel-motel tax revenue. Then, Corker and company went to the community for donations.
In the offices of the RiverCity Co., a non-profit organization heavily involved with redeveloping downtown, Corker presided over 74 meetings with the centerpiece of the pitch being small-scale models of how the finished product would look.
''People told us it was the worst time ever to do this,'' he said.
The country's economy had been driven into a recession with the Sept. 11 attacks. People's stock portfolios, as a result, were down.
''In the first 20 presentations, I don't think we had a turndown,'' Corker said.
Donations ranged from $100,000 to $10 million for a single fund that was created to pay for the entire redevelopment. Corker said the single fund was created to have more focused fund raising, with the different constituencies sharing donor lists.
Nashville's philanthropic community has been generous with downtown projects as well. But the efforts have been separate. Nashville billionaire Martha Ingram has been easily raising money for the $120 million symphony hall being built downtown.
The Frist family and its foundation put up $25 million, with the city providing $20 million, to renovate the old Broadway post office location into an arts center.
Philanthropic activity has been somewhat uneven, however. The Adventure Science Center couldn't raise the $35 million it wanted to move downtown.
The Fourth Avenue site at the foot of the Shelby Avenue Bridge, where the symphony hall is going, was one location the museum considered.
In Chattanooga's plan, the Tennessee Aquarium is expanding with a saltwater facility, an expansion representing $30 million of the $120 million.
A pier with public art will extend from what is now a parking lot out into the river. Residential development is planned near the beginning of the pier. The parkway is being rerouted to allow for additional residential and retail development.
The entire waterfront will be made easier for boaters to hook up and walk into downtown. Summer concert series will get a permanent venue, The Chattanooga Green.
With the plan, the Hunter Museum, which sits on a bluff adjacent to the arts district, will be tied to downtown better. It is going through a $19 million expansion.
With more than 1 million people visiting downtown each year, the Hunter was getting only 45,000 visitors, about half of what it should.
Part of the reason was difficulty reaching the museum from downtown. The plan calls for creating a public walkway that includes a pedestrian bridge over the parkway.
''It will be a straight shot up First Street,'' Kret said.
Corker is already moving forward on another layer he and others hope will improve the city and make it more livable and attractive to visitors.
Last Monday night, 800 people gathered in a ''visioning'' exercise, much like what had been done with the riverfront, to make the city more of a destination for outdoor activities — kayaking, hang gliding, biking, hunting, canoeing, fishing.
''We want to be known as the Boulder, Colo., of the East,'' Corker said, a statement he has made often in pitching the idea.