County Mayor Wamp Gives Vision For New Elementary Campus In Hixson

County Mayor Weston Wamp opened up about his vision for the new elementary school at the Dupont Elementary site at the Friends of Hixson meeting Wednesday.

“We want to take it to another level,” he said.

“I want it to be the most beautiful school,” he said. “It’s a beautiful spot tailor-made for a school.”

The “tired” and “modest” Dupont school could be a community hub and park in the heart of Hixson and the heart of the county geographically, he said.

County Mayor Wamp told the group the campus would attract and revolve around physical activity inspired by the North River Family YMCA next door and the Cleveland T. Grimes soccer complex on North Access Road, constantly pumping with motion of students, families and the community 365 days a year. “People try to find their way into it,” he said.

Without giving details, the speaker said the school facilities team will coordinate plans alongside renovations already planned at North River YMCA.

“We’ve talked to the YMCA extensively about this,” he said.

County Mayor Wamp painted a picture of a school campus in “constant activation” in the physical sense, a community center for exercise, recreational teams, summer camps and after-school activities. A member of the audience suggested connecting the campus to the Riverwalk via a new greenway.

The property’s intersection-facing corner, which has the look of a country estate filled with mature oak trees, could be the show end of a community park, he said.

“It’s like an afterthought today,” he said.

County Mayor Wamp said he’s planned for the site to be the county’s “next great school” for 18 months, with Chattanooga Commissioner Ken Smith (District 3), who introduced the county mayor to the group as a “Hixson hometown guy.”

“We’re now full speed ahead toward that school being funded,” he said, and that it’s “right at the front of the list.”

The county-wide school facilities plan merges three area schools, Dupont, Rivermont, and Alpine Crest, into a new school at the Dupont Elementary site at Hixson Pike and Access Road. The merger has been criticized as an unmanageable megaschool that gobbles up neighborhood schools, a characterization County Mayor Wamp said was made in “bad faith.”

“That is a merger of three schools with different identities,” he said. A new, diverse school would represent the city’s diversity, all in the middle of the county and the middle of Hixson, he said.

Hixson is the heartbeat of Hamilton County’s middle class, he said.

“We all go about like the trajectory of Hixson goes,” he said.

County Mayor Wamp said Hixson has the most active civic engagement of the unincorporated county, even though it has no defined boundaries.

“That is very much the Hixson way,” he said. “No single community has contributed more civic leadership.”

County Mayor Wamp said city government pays “disproportionate attention” to urban Chattanooga.

A member of the audience expressed concern at losing 10 years of fundraising and volunteering to build Rivermont’s new playground and outdoor space.

“We’d be crazy not to protect that and preserve that, for a growing part of our county,” County Mayor Wamp said.

Rivermont will probably be converted to an early childhood learning space, he said.