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Shopping downtown Chattanooga promotes planting trees, healthier living

By: Anne Braly
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Amy Walker Cherry

An initiative that encourages shopping and eating downtown is now helping plant trees.

For using a Buy It Downtown gift card, a donation will be made to Take Root, a grass-roots organization that hopes to plant 1,500 trees.

Buy it Downtown began last year and is exceeding business expectations, said founder and CEO Amy Walker Cherry, with than 50 shops and restaurants accepting the card.

“Take Root seemed like a perfect match for us,” she said. “It quite literally helps to grow a healthier city and environment that affects people’s desire to live, work, play and buy downtown.”

Some 575 trees have been purchased to date and are planting begins in November during the trees’ dormant cycle, according to Preston Roberts, Take Root project coordinator.

Buy It Downtown is partnering with the city of Chattanooga’s Forestry Division in the tree-planting program. The projected price for the complete project is $450,000.

“Some retail activities can actually contribute to excessive congestion from cars and traffic,” Ms. Cherry said.

By encouraging people to shop where they work or live downtown, Ms. Cherry said, it will reduce air pollutants and fuel expenses.

“In a way, the partnership is like our own local ‘carbon credit’ program. It helps local residents offset the negative effects of their shopping activities with a positive one,” she said.

The trees will be planted from the Tennessee River south to Interstate 24. East and west boundaries are Central Avenue and Riverfront Parkway, respectively.

Shawna Lewis, owner of Main and Mocha, a coffee/sandwich shop in the Clark Center that accepts the Buy it Downtown card, said parts of the neighborhood could use more trees.

“In some areas, they’re rather sparse,” she said. “Planting more trees is only going to make the area more attractive for more people to come, including tourists who may want to walk around the Southside. Trees make it feel somewhere I should be walking.”

More than 30 species of trees will be planted, including crepe myrtles, red buds, pin oaks and black gum trees. Mr. Roberts said that, when planted, they will be large enough to withstand an urban environment.

Money for the plantings has come from private donations as well as a $100,000 grant from the Benwood Foundation.

“Our hope is to raise enough money to continue over the next two to three years, and we’re certainly up to expanding out of the current zone after that,” Mr. Roberts said.

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