A headline in Saturday’s Times Free Press read, “Brainerd debates buoying business.”
The “debate” should be very brief. That’s because Brainerd is an important and populous business and residential section of our city. We all should agree that we want Brainerd to serve all of our people well – and much more attractively.
The news story mentioned that many billboards and vacant buildings are part of what could otherwise be a more attractive landscape of an area with about 10,000 residents.
Isn’t it obviously important for us to “do something” about remedying undesirable conditions?
Brainerd is centered on a fortunately wide main street. It carries heavy traffic to and from downtown and serves many people with countless services. But just “look at it!” It is not exactly “scenic” for the thousands who drive through Brainerd each day. Think what a wonderful thing it would be if there were just some “basic” and useful beautification efforts!
It’s not really necessary to list all the possible suggestions: We all are aware of the needs. Meeting them would not necessarily require a large expenditure of money by the city, or by merchants and civic organizations. But a good plan carried out tastefully could pay off economically, as well as aesthetically.
Chattanooga is a wonderful community with many magnificent features – our mountains and ridges, river and lake, to mention just a few. But unfortunately, we must admit we have spoiled local nature in several ways with careless and unsightly development.
Sadly, Brainerd Road is not alone in that respect. Downtown Chattanooga and the riverfront have been tastefully beautified. But consider all of the “spokes” on which we travel between downtown and our varied residential sections. All of those spokes need some remedial “visual-attractiveness attention.”
For economic reasons, we don’t suggest we “do something” for all of them at once. But if we started with, say, Brainerd Road and McCallie Avenue, then followed over several months with beautification attention to South Broad Street, Riverside Drive, Cherokee Boulevard, Rossville Boulevard – you can name the others – we could make not only great scenic progress but also important economic progress.
Don’t you believe sensible attention to overhead wires, proliferating signs and other such obviously unattractive things could begin to do wonders to resurrect our wonderfully scenic area in a delightful way that would be encouraging to Chattanooga residents and businesses, as well as our visitors?
We call Chattanooga the “Scenic City of the South.” What happened? Why don’t we wisely, reasonably, tastefully and economically begin to live up to that slogan – for the benefit of us all?