Scott Martin at Kiwanis
photo by Thea Marshall
The new city Parks and Rec Director Scott Martin told members of the Kiwanis Club on Tuesday that Chattanooga 'has great parks if you are a visitor but we need to be delivering that same level of service to all residents, equitably across the city."
Mr. Martin said, “Chattanooga has always been on my list of cities where it would be great to be a parks and rec director,.
This job, that I’m very fortunate to sit in, is one of the top jobs in the nation. When you think about the great parks jobs in the nation you think of the director in New York and San Francisco, but in my opinion Chattanooga is in that space because of what y’all accomplished on the waterfront.”
Mr. Martin said most of the growth within the next 50 years is projected to be in cities with fewer than 300,000 people. He said officials are planning to prepare for a Chattanooga with 300,000 people.
Mr. Martin said when he lived in Boise, Idaho there were 100,000 people at the time and now they are pushing 500,000. He said he sees the same trends and urgency here. He said Chattanooga is getting an older and younger population simultaneously and he wants to create parks to serve that.
In fact, Mr. Martin said Chattanooga has a significant amount of green space that is unused right now - upwards of 1,000 acres, where nothing is being done with it.
“We are becoming more urban and we understand a very strong impulse to get green space lockdowned so in 50 years when there’s 50,000 new residents out there they have the option,” he said.
The speaker said there will be a parks plan drawn up over the next nine months and then it will become a capital document for City Council. He said he will present council members with a “rational roadmap” and then the community will decide what investment to make.
“We know great parks last,” said Mr. Martin. “I have yet to find a community that bought land for a park and comes back20 years later saying that it was a bad idea.”