Moccasin Bend park advocates crack door over firing range

FACEBOOK FEEDBACKA sampling of responses to the questions: Do you think the law enforcement firing range on Moccasin Bend should be moved?* Carla Fairchild: It needs to go. Should never had been put there in the first place.* Garnet Chapin: We hear every shot that is fired in Hill City, and it is past time for it to go !!!!!!* Bill Mundy: NO. Its just fine where it is. We don't need to waste money building something we already have.* Dottie Curvin: To where would you move it? That has been tried before and everybody says the same thing, "Not in my backyard"!

Cooler heads may be prevailing on the ill-conceived plan to leave the police shooting range open and operational on Moccasin Bend.

County Mayor Jim Coppinger and Chattanooga Chief of Staff Travis McDonough met Thursday with Moccasin Bend Park Superintendent Brad Bennett and members of Friends of Moccasin Bend and Chickamauga Military parks.

Kay Parish, interim director of Friends of Moccasin Bend, said the park advocates came away from the "cordial and productive" meeting with a feeling of encouragement.

"The meeting went longer than we had expected. That was a sign that healthy conversation was going on," she said. "The door is still open. We really did all think it was a good meeting."

Recently, park supporters were stunned by an out-of-the-blue city and county announcement that officials were abandoning a plan to close the 33-acre police firing range, give the land to the National Park Service and build a new indoor firing range. City and county leaders said that instead of building a new $5 million facility on East 12th Street, they would upgrade the existing firing range -- the one that sits on a key piece of land on the Bend and future park.

The property, snugged between the Tennessee River and Stringer's Ridge on the toe side of the Bend, offers the only logical acreage to give visitors an entrance, a visitors center, a view and a North Shore greenway access that also does not compromise Native American burials, Civil War gun mounts and other archeological resources. It's also the piece of land that would keep a park experience completely separate from our sewage plant.

But if the firing range doesn't move, any extension of the Tennessee Riverwalk from the North Shore to Moccasin Bend would have to steer clear of the bullets and noise. It means those greenways and the park's primary access would be Hamm Road and Moccasin Bend Road with no views of the river.

Parish said the county and city officials were unaware -- as are most Chattanoogans -- that Moccasin Bend is at the top of the National Park's priority list right now and that it is in line to get funding to complete a general management plan. That work is expected to take about two years, and then the park will finally begin to take shape.

That means the continuation of a firing range on the Bend would really set back the clock on a park transformation that apparently local officials had felt was already stalled. In fact, Parish said, the park's management plan was started several years ago but had been interrupted by the country's economic slowdown and cuts in the Parks Service budget. That's about to change, she said.

Bennett also was able to show local leaders the time tables for opening trails and greenways, and the Friends again offered to help raise money for the environmental cleanup of the firing range, since the Park Service cannot accept polluted land and the county has balked at the estimated $1.2 million cleanup.

"They know what our interests are, and we know what theirs are, now," Parish said. "It's obvious they have a respect for the park. ... They're concerned about timing and the fact that they have not found what they feel is an appropriate place to move the range to with the money they have."

City and county officials also termed the meeting productive, but they made no public commitments except to say that law enforcement and public safety are their top priorities.

Certainly, moving the firing range is complicated. The property on Moccasin Bend also serves as a detonation and demolition range for law enforcement -- something that an indoor range can't provide. But if Chattanooga could clean up its air, entice an auto assembly plant to build not one car but two, create the Gig, and re-invent downtown, North Shore and Southside, surely we can find and build a place where our police can train, learn and relax.

Upcoming Events