Emily Mack Enjoying Once In A Lifetime Job In Chattanooga

To say that Emily Mack has become fully connected to the pulse of Chattanooga since arriving in town as president and CEO of the non-profit River City Company only four years ago might be an understatement.

As an example, during a recent unveiling of some riverfront redevelopment plans around Ross’s Landing to make the area even more park friendly, she paid tribute to the Native Americans of yesteryear who had settled there and mentioned some of their past challenges. And just a few minutes later, former Chattanooga Mayor and former U.S. Senator Bob Corker was saluting her and what he called River City’s recent edgier work to make downtown Chattanooga better.

For Ms. Mack, this high-profile position that is considered important in aiding downtown Chattanooga is an opportunity she is greatly enjoying. And she admits it is a rare chance.

“It’s an incredible opportunity to be a part of and to lead River City Company,” she said. “I truly believe that Chattanooga has the opportunity to be the best mid-sized city in the United States.”

As Ms. Mack recently talked in the River City offices at Miller Plaza for more than an hour about this unique position that has long been important in downtown Chattanooga’s well-being almost to the level of an elected official, she had a genuine and sincere manner.

This was true as she honestly recounted the various jobs in government and in other realms she has had in Indiana and elsewhere, all of which were upbeat experiences in fulfillment, despite the hard work involved. The conversation quickly showed that she has had quite a diversity of jobs that prepared her for the one in Chattanooga.

On a lighter note, about all she has not honed is a Southeast Tennessee accent, with her Midwestern vocal cadence still obvious amid the Chattanooga perspective she also obviously now has.

And in this era of changing roles throughout America, she is also one of several women in Chattanooga who have hardly reached early middle age but already hold prominent positions in various realms. That could not have been said for the most part here a generation ago.

Ms. Mack’s path to her current position in Chattanooga began in the Southern Indiana town of Huntingburg, where she was reared. “I grew up in the Ohio River Valley,” she said. “I did my undergraduate work at Bradley University (in Illinois) and then lived in Chicago for a couple of years and worked in corporate finance.”

While working for Dean Foods and having access to all its ice cream products were rewarding, and she admittedly had a great manager, she began wondering if working at such a company or in such a career was palatable long-term.

“I had one of those moments in life where you evaluate if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life,” she said.

She had volunteered some at the home museum of noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Il., and found an interest in historic preservation. So, after a lot of self-examination and talking to her then-boyfriend, Brian Mack, she decided to make a change.

“I quit my job in corporate finance and got a master’s at Ball State in Muncie, Ind.,” she said, adding that she went through the school’s noted College of Architecture and Planning studying a variety of topics including architecture, historic preservation, and planning. She even learned to do some architectural drawings by hand.

She was also sketching out her future in her mind, and because some of the college’s internships took place in Indianapolis, she found her first full-time job there in 2003 post-degree.

“My first job was for the city of Indianapolis as a preservation planner,” she said. “I worked on the preservation plans for 18 locally protected historic districts. That’s how I started working with neighborhoods.”

Her work caught the eye of then-Mayor Bart Peterson, but he wanted her to focus more on the future than just the past as the mayor’s neighborhood liaison. It helped her learn how government works, and she learned to work across government to solve problems, she said.

In 2009, she got a call from the next mayor, Greg Ballard, who wanted her to start a new department consolidating such departments as permitting, licensing, inspecting and zoning into the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.

“That doesn’t happen often,” she said of that opportunity. “It was a ton of work. It was one of the most incredibly socially fulfilling jobs and very challenging. It had really long hours – 12 hours a day and some on weekends for years. I learned a lot and grew a lot, but it was exhausting.”

Also during this time, she was on a special committee helping downtown Indianapolis host the 2012 Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium. Although the Colts did not reach the Super Bowl that year, she did get to observe up-close in Indianapolis while there someone familiar and beloved to Tennessee Vol fans – quarterback Peyton Manning.

“He was really, really involved in the community,” she said, adding that he and his family had two residences there.

After taking some time off around 2013, she went to work for some private planning firms, but in January 2016 got another call from new Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett asking her to serve as director of the Department of Metropolitan Development.

This one was maybe even more encompassing and drew on her past experiences, as it involved city planning, long-range planning, transportation planning, historic preservation planning, community investment, economic development, real estate, homeless issues, and brownfields.

“Every element of my career, it all kind of led up to that,” she said. “It was kind of daunting and intimidating at times, but I was really thankful that every job had some component of what I had previously done.”

While it was also time consuming, it was rewarding, and she had no plans to leave. But then came an aspect of her job she had never previously experienced – a shutdown of normal work due to the COVID-19 outbreak of March 2020 that soon became a pandemic.

“I was working at home from March to May but still working long hours,” she said.

During that time, she received a text one day from her sister, Kate, but did not get a chance to investigate it fully until the end of a busy day. Her sister had told Ms. Mack that the River City Company in Chattanooga – where Kate and her family had escaped to from growing Nashville in 2019 - was looking for a new president and CEO to replace the departing Kim White.

“All I saw was River City Company, and that did not mean anything to me,” she said with a laugh, admitting that she initially wondered if it was a coffee house.

However, that night she looked on the River City website, and her interest perked up. “I read it and realized this is actually everything I love to do,” she excitedly said.

She did, and what followed were several initial Zoom calls and phone calls with several dozen people before a fourth-round, in-person interview held in a big conference room with 18 people all social distancing.

Despite the distance part in the interview, the idea of this job quickly grew close to her heart, and she gladly accepted the position after being offered it.

She and her husband, who works in real estate sales and marketing, relocated to Chattanooga, and she began working at River City on Sept. 8, 2020.

While it might be easy to assume that the River City Company was started simply through the philanthropy of the late Coca-Cola bottler Jack Lupton about the time he was also benevolently giving several million dollars for the Tennessee Aquarium and other riverfront projects, its founding has a more detailed story.

Ms. Mack said it was a recommendation of the Tennessee Riverpark Master Plan that was completed about 1984 that a non-profit agency focused on redevelopment and reinvesting in downtown Chattanooga be formed. So, with $12 million in philanthropic and donated corporate funds, it started in 1986.

It spent from then until about 2005 focusing mostly on the riverfront area, but in recent years has focused on revitalizing such areas as the Southside and later the city center, including the area around M.L. King Boulevard and the TVA complex.

“River City Company is downtown Chattanooga’s non-profit economic, development and redevelopment organization,” she said.

She added that River City’s work has also come full circle, as they are turning their attention back to the riverfront and focusing along with other interested parties on ways to add amenities and enhancements to the park area around Ross’s Landing. The group is also working on redeveloping Hawk Hill when the Lookouts leave AT&T Field after next season.

Ms. Mack said she believes she is at the River City Company at an exciting time, as in the 1980s planners were trying to figure out ways to bring people back to downtown Chattanooga and almost take it off life support. That has obviously been achieved and then some, and the new work is more focused on how to make downtown Chattanooga even better or to make it everything local residents want it to be.

“I think Chattanooga offers an incredible quality of life to many of our residents, although we certainly can improve upon that and should improve upon that for all Chattanoogans,” she said. “I don’t think we have reached our full potential and must strive to offer the best quality of life for each of our residents.”

Besides the typical work her job entails, she has also gotten to enjoy some of her passions in Chattanooga simply by observation. She knows downtown Chattanooga has saved some nice historic structures, but she also knows it has also lost some structures throughout the history of the city. This has been due to everything from floods to the political decisions that led to urban renewal and freeway construction here and elsewhere, she said.

“Chattanooga has lost a lot of historic buildings due to no fault of its own,” she said. “The city kept rebuilding, and mother nature or politics would take it down. But I feel like people value and respect and recognize our historic fabric and understand buildings were here long before any of us and they have stood the test of time.”

Regarding new construction, while the outlying residential growth in the local suburbs that has brought both praise and criticism is not part of her work, she thinks downtown is an area where growth should always be focused. And she is very positive regarding that realm in terms of future quantity and quality.

“This has been the heart of the city and has been since 1839” (when the city was incorporated), she said. “This is where folks have been investing. When it comes to growth and redevelopment, that’s where it should happen.”

While she worked with three mayors in Indianapolis as part of her job and peripherally with two sets of city and county mayors here, she has also received some help and support from another former mayor who is right now the best known on a national scale. That, of course, is former Mayor Corker, who also later served as U.S. senator from Tennessee from 2007-2019.

She said that he has been a gracious supporter of River City Company and has periodically visited the offices and gladly shared his institutional wisdom. He has even encouraged the firm not to worry that the latest redevelopment plans add to and maybe slightly alter some of his 21^st century riverfront plans that were a highlight of his mayoral term from 2001-2005 and which he proudly highlighted during his 2006 senatorial campaign.

“He said that downtown was very different in 2000 from now and how you respond to the community needs is very different,” she said. “He has been a really awesome supporter and champion, and he continues to be an awesome advocate for downtown. I can’t express my gratitude enough.”

Despite working for 20-plus years around elected officials and even following former River City CEO and mayoral candidate Kim White, Ms. Mack wholeheartedly said she has no interest in running for any office in the future.

She enjoys her current job, even though it keeps her quite busy, she said. In her down time, she likes spending time with her husband and hiking and walking and occasionally cooking, although she jokingly added that she prefers eating out and trying various restaurants, including new ones.

Among the places she currently enjoys are the Han Mi Thai restaurant on South Broad Street, Easy Bistro at 801 Chestnut St., and Champy’s, where she likes to get the crawfish.

She also enjoys traveling, which in a roundabout way helps with her work. “I love seeing and experiencing different cities and countries and parks,” she said. “It’s really inspirational to me.”

And while she and her husband currently do not have any children, she enjoys being a doting aunt to her sister’s and brother-in-law’s children as well as snuggling up with their two rescued basset hounds.

Her parents also located here in 2021 to be near their grandchildren, and they had actually passed through Chattanooga while on their honeymoon back in 1974. Ms. Mack said she learned he had made a prophetic statement at the time.

“My father said, ‘I think I can move here,’ “ she said. “The mountains and river, they thought they were beautiful, and he was not wrong.”

Ms. Mack has found out she can live – and work – in the Scenic City, too.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said in summing up her job.

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Jcshearer2@comcast.net