Haven't we done enough for VW?
Since 2008, Tennessee lawmakers from Chattanooga to Nashville have given the German automaker nearly $900 million worth of incentives and tax breaks to locate its plant at Enterprise South.
Nearly $900 million.
Chattanooga is the gift that keeps on giving.
This week, we learned that VW is finalizing its plans for a downtown welcome center, and city and county leaders are helping the company try to locate the center in one of the primest patches of Chattanooga real estate.
The downtown riverfront area.
"It's going to give them maximum exposure," Bob Doak, head of the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Times Free Press.
The welcome center should cost around $12 million, and roughly half of that will be paid by city and county governments, which was agreed upon last June.
Consider it the cherry on top of nearly $900 million worth of icing: $6 million and some of the most coveted land in the county.
I'm counting at least four problems with this.
* That money belongs elsewhere.
Six million would pay for three years of full-time art teachers in every elementary school.
It would pay for more SROs.
Or teacher health insurance.
Or a $6 million block of downtown apartments that is entirely and solely devoted to affordable housing.
Or upgrades to the crumbling College Hill Courts.
Or a new building for Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts, which has been asking for one for the last 25 years.
Or more staff at the jail, which has become our county's default mental hospital.
VW's needs are not greater than the long list already before us.
* The welcome center belongs at Enterprise South, not in the heart of downtown.
Sure, it could be bells-and-whistles interactive, courting more tourists. Yes, it could link downtown with the new innovation district. It could be lots of things, but rest assured, it will most certainly be this: an act of self-promotion for VW. Dress it up however you want, but a VW welcome center will still serve as a form of advertising, a welcome center created by and for VW.
Read for yourself.
"The Downtown Welcome Center will enhance the Company's connection to the city by providing a place where residents and tourists can appreciate the Company's history, its leadership in innovation and the role of the City in the Company's continued success," reads the legal agreement between VW and Chattanooga.
Why should we hand over $6 million and the primest of downtown property for that?
And why was there no democratic process involving the rest of us on that decision?
* Yes, we've received many things in return from VW: thousands of jobs, a satellite of suppliers and national, if not global, attention.
But placing a VW welcome center in the heart of downtown riverfront sends a clear message that VW is part of our identity. When Chattanooga looks in the mirror, part of what we see is VW.
And that's impossible. We are not VW and VW is not us.
Companies aren't human. Companies have no soul.
Throughout history, communities have built things to honor their belief in humanity and verticality. Architecture reflects values. Think chapels, temples or burial grounds. Picture the great statues of gods or fallen heroes.
By placing a VW welcome center in the midst of downtown, we send a subtle message to visitors that we are a corporatized community. A company town, if you will. Instead of architecture that reflects the transcendental power of humanity, we bow, ever slightly, to the gods of capitalism and materialism.
* Last, but certainly not least: Will legislators try to prevent workers at the welcome center from unionizing?
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.