There can be little doubt that the RiverCity Co.’s decision to drop the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership will mean some significant changes in how things are done downtown.
How drastic, or even noticeable to the average person those changes are will not be known for some time, I don’t believe. But make no mistake, it is a big change in how things work.
I’m not here to say it is a good or bad change or that it didn’t need to happen.
Not that many years ago, if you wanted to put on an event or get something done, it was as simple as a phone call to the right person. In many cases throughout the city, the decision makers were either related, lifelong friends or neighbors. This made getting things done fairly easy, if you knew the right people.
Chattanoogans for years have complained or happily acknowledged, depending on which side of the hill you were on, that most major decisions were made on Lookout Mountain. When the majority of the large businesses in town were locally owned, it was possible to find enough event sponsors in one church parking lot on a given Sunday to make your gathering a success.
Some have argued that was a bad thing, but from where I sit, we have a beautiful aquarium, Riverwalk, parks, movie theater and dozens of restaurants in places that were ugly, unused eyesores a few years ago.
I lived, worked and went to college downtown in the early to mid ’80s. I remember what it was like to be able to walk down the middle of Broad and Market streets after 6 p.m. and not worry about traffic.
For 20 years, the RiverCity Co. and the CDP have been big players in making things happen downtown and in making people want to live, work and play there. Events like Winter Days & Lights, Nightfall and Pops on the River all went into making downtown what it is today.
There is a good chance most, or all, of those events will still take place this year and beyond, but what has changed, or what will have to be answered is, who will fund them, who will present them and who will be the driving force behind them even asking that they be done.
Already, organizations like Chattanooga Market, Quiddity Entertainment, Friends of the Festival and Chattanooga Presents, the new company formed by former CDP Executive Director Carla Pritchard and Ann Ball, have shown some interest or have stepped in to help in part or in whole to run some of the events once presented by CDP. Chattanooga Presents will produce Nightfall for RiverCity Co., for example.
All of these organizations are perfectly capable of putting on great events. The point is the process and the people involved have changed.
RiverCity Co. President Kim White told Rotarians this week that her company has a new plan and will be refocusing its energies and resources away from developing new projects and putting on events and onto recruiting new businesses and residents to downtown. Given the state of downtown and the economy, it would appear to be the right decision.