The Chattanooga History Center at 2 W. Aquarium Way has been reclaimed by the River City Co., which held the mortgage on the 2-story building for the past decade while the museum tried to raise funds to open the downtown attraction. The words of Robert Penn Warren remain on the wall of the ill-faded museum site.
The Chattanooga History Center at 2 W. Aquarium Way has been reclaimed by the River City Co., which held the mortgage on the 2-story building for the past decade while the museum tried to raise funds to open the downtown attraction. The words of Robert Penn Warren remain on the wall of the ill-faded museum site.A decade after landing near the Tennessee Aquarium with hopes of building a state-of-the-art, interactive attraction, the Chattanooga History Center has given up its downtown site before the museum ever opened.
The downtown development agency River City Co. took back the two-story building on Aquarium Way last week and helped the history center pay down about $800,000 of debt as part of a $2.5 million deal for the facility, River City Co. President Kim White said.
"We're actively marketing the property and have brought several parties through the complex already," White said. "We feel like it's such an important asset for downtown Chattanooga that we wanted to make sure it stays in friendly hands and we take our time to make sure we get the right kind of development for this high-profile space."
River City, which owns the structure originally built in 1993 as a Visitors Center for the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, helped finance the history museum's attempt to buy and renovate part of the 23,000-square-foot facility in 2006. Although the museum raised and spent millions of dollars on the facility, it failed to raise enough money to finish the original concept and the museum never opened other than for special events and courses.
The Chattanooga History Center is now studying the possibility of housing its exhibits and regional artifacts in a much smaller space in the Chattanooga Public Library, if an agreement with the library can be worked out.
Carl Henderson, a Chattanooga accountant who serves as treasurer of the Chattanooga History Museum, said the agreement with River City paid off the remaining mortgage to River City and provided funds to repay other borrowed funds "so we are now virtually debt free."
"We're starting to talk with the library to see if there is a place we may locate there," Henderson said.
But Henderson said the history center will need to raise more money to erect any exhibits at the library.
White said River City worked for years to try to help the Chattanooga History Center to open at 2 Aquarium Way, giving the museum more time to make its mortgage payments when it defaulted on its loan payments and ultimately working to help the history center pay off most of its borrowed funds.
"We wanted the history center to succeed at this location, but it's time to move on and to think of whatever users we might get to use this unique space," White said.
The space vacated by the history museum is next to and above the Puckett's restaurant and the Tennessee Aquarium ticketing facility.
In the shadow of the Tennessee Aquarium - Chattanooga' most visited attraction with more than 750,000 visitors a year - the former history center site is ideal for another downtown attraction or retail facilities, White said.
White said River City has bought and developed a number of properties downtown to help ensure key sites get the right kind of development. River City took three years to redevelop part of the 200 block of Broad Street after the Bijou Theater closed its first floor theater in CARTA's Shuttle North parking garage.
"The Block is one of the largest adaptive reuse projects in Chattanooga's history, turning the old Bijou Theatre into a vibrant urban centerpiece," White said. "We've taken our time with other downtown spaces to help get the right tenants or buyers and, as a result, we have the very popular climbing wall (on the CARTA shuttle north parking garage) and the adjacent Majestic Theater (with 12 movie screens). I feel like we hit a home run with the Block, something no one would have imagined a few years back."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.