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Chattanooga: Cowart residents hope redevelopment spreads

By: Joan Garrett
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Tony Peoples

The white, Queen Anne style house appears idyllic and aged in the burning afternoon sun. A large Clydesdale hangs his nose over the wrought-iron fence and two dogs run around fruiting peach trees in the yard.

It’s the type of home young children picture their grandparents in, but it seems out of place on the Southside of Main Street in downtown Chattanooga.

Several variations of three-story urban chic condominiums and townhouses surround the old house. One angular, beige complex is being built only a few feet away, and on weekdays workmen drill and hammer loudly throughout the day.

Yet, Tony and Linda Peoples, who own the home, don’t complain about noise or obstructed views. They enjoy the hum of development and can remember when their neighborhood, Cowart Place, was little more than bombed-out shotgun houses and a stage for illicit trysts and drug deals.

“This was the worst neighborhood in the county,” said Mr. Peoples, 49, eating grapes he picked from his yard. “It has gone from a rotten egg to a golden egg.”

The Peoples have had a front-row seat in one of the biggest neighborhood makeovers in Chattanooga — one that downtown boosters hope can spread into other neighborhoods in and around the inner city, said David Unruh, project director at RiverCity Co., a downtown nonprofit involved with the redevelopment of the neighborhood.

“It is a model,” said Mr. Unruh. “With the new revitalization of the Main and Market area, it has really become an attractive place. Ten years ago, I was one of the biggest skeptics.”

At least 135 condos and townhouses have been built or are planned in the Cowart Place area, rising up along parts of Cowart, Market, Main, 17th, Williams and Jefferson streets, said Karen Hundt, director of the planning and design studio at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency. In a neighborhood formerly known as Rustville, some new units are priced as high as $450,000, she said.

Horse and house

The Peoples came looking for a house on the Southside of Main street about 10 years ago because they wanted to have a horse-and-carriage business downtown. At the time, the neighborhood was classified as a manufacturing zone, which allowed them to keep a horse at their residence. And it was close to riverfront tourist attractions, said Mr. Peoples, who works as an emergency medical technician in addition to driving a horse and carriage.

Before the Peoples began renovation and reconstruction, the house, which has timbers and brick that date back to 1885, was a dilapidated shell. More than a dozen individuals rented rooms in the house before the Peoples bought it and it was filled with trash, said Mrs. Peoples, a nurse and teacher at Virginia College.

The couple bought the house for under $100,000, she said.

Their first neighbors were a house full of Guatemalan immigrants who worked for cash and got robbed at gunpoint nearly every week, said Mrs. Peoples.

“We called the police once a week,” she said. “Tony patrolled the street with a cowboy hat and a duster.”

Mr. Peoples reached into the closet to reveal a dusty 22-gauge shotgun he said he carried from time to time.

Robberies and assault were commonplace in the Peoples’ neighborhood, along with drug trafficking, said Jim Hedrick, an officer with the Chattanooga police department who patrolled the area for several years.

“Street sales were high,” he said. “It was a concern. It was a hot spot.”

For several years, the nonprofit Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprises, in partnership with the city and the Lyndhurst Foundation, worked to buy up land to revitalize the neighborhood, said Bob McNutt, former vice president of development at CNE.

The first 40 new units on the Southside of Main — a mix between single family and low-income housing — were built by CNE, and not long after developers began to call, he said.

“We wanted to make it mixed income, not just condos for rich people,” he said.

Over the next few years, CNE sold land to developers who built 160 more units, he said. The real estate market took over and prices rose, he said.

One of the condos across from the his house now is being sold for around $300,000, Mr. Peoples said.

Police officers have fewer calls from residents in the neighborhood and incidents of robbery and assault have decreased dramatically, Mr. Hedrick said.

“Foolish” investment

In 1998, almost everyone thought the Peoples were crazy for buying an old house in a dead-end neighborhood, but today the couple sits on a real estate gold mine, said Mr. McNutt. Only a dozen homes that existed before Cowart Place became a trendy up-and-coming district still stand, he said.

“There was no rational reason for them to invest in those years because there was no guarantee of any return,” he said. “It was foolish, but it was their investment.”

While some may say the Cowart Place renaissance has pushed the neighborhood out of many homebuyers’ price range, the housing units being built are more affordable than developments on or near the Tennessee River, said Mr. Unruh.

“It is an answer to the criticism we have had from people who say, ‘I can’t afford to live downtown,’” he said.

Several people and developers have called or come up to the Peoples’ front door, asking whether they would sell the house. At one point, Mr. Peoples said he and his wife put a for-sale sign in the front lawn to see what would happen. Calls flooded in, he said.

The couple says they won’t take a penny less than $500,000 — more than five times their original purchase price — and admit there may be no offer that could entice them to sell.

There is really no amount of money that can repay the years of sleepless nights and the feeling of accomplishment they feel seeing the neighborhood revived and revalued, said Mrs. Peoples.

“If a couple of people like Tony and I didn’t drag our heels in and say ‘This isn’t acceptable,’ this wouldn’t have happened,” she said. “I totally believe in change. We love it.”

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