Chattanooga’s growing business reputation coupled with a more robust economy means now is the right time to make a new push to redevelop a gateway tract in the city, its landowners say.
The 141-acre parcel on Chattanooga’s Southside that for many years held the U.S. Pipe and Wheland foundries will garner a multi-faceted marketing effort from a pair of national companies, said Mike Mallen, a partner in owner Perimeter Properties.
Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate services company, and Baker Storey McDonald Properties, which focuses on retail properties, will help steer the site’s redevelopment, Mallen said.
“The time is right to put together a team,” he said.
Mallen said he and partner Gary Chazen are hopeful of finding a “catalytic opportunity,” a big project that would spur other development at the parcel that sits along Interstate-24 at Moccasin Bend.
He said there has been talk of a multi-use stadium or sports arena on site. In the past, Erlanger’s Children’s Hospital took a look as did UTC’s SIMCenter.
Mallen said some type of commercial project could lend itself for construction of a town center. Early on when the property was bought nearly a decade ago, the Atlantic Station mixed-use project outside of downtown Atlanta was seen as a potential model.
Another factor making the timing right are plans to overhaul I-24 exits in the Southside, Mallen said. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is looking at making upwards of $40 million worth of changes to improve access to the Southside and Lookout Mountain.
In addition, an extension has begun of the Riverwalk toward South Broad and St. Elmo from downtown.
Peterson Hostetler, president of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce’s Southside Council, said he’d like to see something that could serve as “a flagship” for the city as motorists enter from the west.
For other parts of the property, he’d like to see mixed-use development with multifamily residential and retail.
The site could be “the tie that binds from St. Elmo to South Broad,” Hostetler said.
Mike Harrell, president of the South Broad Redevelopment Group, said he’d like the site to mark Chattanooga’s renaissance over the past decade and a half.
“When you come around the corner at I-24, it will make a statement of ‘This is who Chattanooga is,’” he said.
Harrell said Volkswagen’s proposed new planning, research and development center for North America could be a fit.
“We’re cheering for the right thing,” he said.
Harrell said he also likes the concept of a place where people live, work and play. He noted that a small foundry run by Stemco and employing about 70 people still operates on the site.
Mallen’s group bought Wheland Foundry, set between South Broad Street and I-24, after the business shut down in 2003 following 136 years of operation.
Three years later, the adjacent U.S. Pipe business closed after more than 100 years. Perimeter purchased that property and since has looked at redevelopment options for both parcels.
The Great Recession that began in 2008 slowed the effort. Mallen said the economy is improving enough now that a master plan earlier crafted to redevelop a 100-plus-acre site is relevant again.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.