River City President Kim White helps bring record investment to Chattanooga's central city

When Kim White and her husband Joe Dan moved downtown more than a decade ago, the housing, restaurant and entertainment options near their home were far more limited than they are today.

"There wasn't much going on after 5 o'clock downtown in those days, but downtown is a much different place today," says White, who has headed the downtown development agency, the River City Co., for the past seven years. "We're seeing a total transformation of the central city."

White, a former Alltel Communications manager who went on to eventually head both the Corker Group and Luken Holdings before being named president of the River City Co. in 2009, has long been a downtown cheerleader. A native of Chattanooga, White is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which she believes to be a key resource for the continued growth of downtown.

The nonprofit, privately-funded River City Co. celebrates its 30th birthday this year after coordinating the work of developers, foundation leaders and city of Chattanooga officials to help create millions of dollars in parks, riverwalks, streetscapes and other attractions to create a scenic downtown. Those early investments are now paying big dividends, White says.

Nearly $1 billion of apartments, hotels, student dorms, offices and stores are being added to Chattanooga's central city in one of the biggest building booms in the city's history. River City estimates over the next couple of years the number of people living downtown will double with the addition of 2,599 apartment units, 268 condos and townhomes and 1,461 beds for college students. With the drawing power of the Tennessee Aquarium, Chattanooga Choo Choo and other tourist attractions, hotel developers also are adding 748 rooms for overnight guests.

White insists there is a growing demand for such housing. Among the 55,000 people who work within a 1.5-mile radius of downtown Chattanooga, only 3.2 percent now live in the city center, on the North Shore or the Southside. Even at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the urban campus houses fewer than one in three students.

But White said surveys indicate 62 percent of millennials want to live in an urban environment and a growing number of empty-nesters want to shorten their commute to work. Other cities that have built attractive downtowns such as Charleston, S.C., and Asheville, N.C., have nearly three times the share of city-center workers who choose to live downtown.

"If we match those cities, we can sustain even more downtown housing, and that in turn should help bring even more places to eat, shop or entertain all those people living or coming downtown," White says. "It's an exciting time downtown right now."