Hamilton County Commissioner Warren Mackey, D-Lake Vista, is often abrupt and sometimes obtuse during commission meetings, but he also is consistently supportive of growth and development in Hamilton County.
On Wednesday, he seemed to have a better understanding of the aim of the revitalization of acres of riverfront property in his district than some of his Chattanooga City Council counterparts did during discussion about the development during a council meeting a day earlier.
The potential of what has been tabbed The Bend has the opportunity to be transformative, Mackey said.
However, on Tuesday, Councilwomen Jenny Hill of North Chattanooga and Marvene Noel of Orchard Knob seemed concerned that the new development would be “an exclusive neighborhood for a privileged few” — Hill’s phrase — and threw out the inflammatory terms of “apartheid” and “Jim Crow” as discussion ensued about the possibility of special tax financing for the area.
Clearly, more homework needs to be done by leaders if fair votes are to be taken on, first, the economic impact plan for the project being proposed by Urban Story Ventures and, second, the tax financing plan.
Part of the problem is the proximity of The Bend to Westside Evolves, which is a separate revitalization of public housing being undertaken by the Chattanooga Housing Authority (CHA) and its partners. Indeed, only Riverfront Parkway separates the two.
Mention was made in both the council and commission meetings of people being displaced, and perhaps that’s where the confusion began.
As we wrote when the Westside project was unveiled more than a year ago, in 2004 CHA sought and received a federal Housing and Urban Development grant to demolish the 188-unit Maurice Poss Homes in South Chattanooga. Residents had to find other places to live while the 275-unit Villages at Alton Park affordable family rental community was built. Some residents of the Poss Homes eventually moved into the new community; many did not.
Then, beginning in 2011, some 300 residents were relocated from the crumbling Harriet Tubman Homes in East Chattanooga, and the 440-unit housing project was sold to the city and razed in 2014.
Aspects of those projects eroded trust in city and housing leaders. But CHA authorities have insisted from the beginning the Westside project will be different. Not only did they get buy-in on their plan from the Westside community, but they put these words in their project manual: “Considering the history of displacement in the area, it is crucial that the residents who called Westside home before this process can continue to call it a home in the future.”
CHA Executive Director Betsy McWright reiterated that point to this newspaper’s David Floyd Wednesday, saying that all public housing residents who have to move off site (with vouchers for temporary housing) will have the right to return as new units are completed.
As to The Bend, it is not displacing residents, as Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp confirmed in an email to this page Thursday. It is only revitalizing the former 120-acre Combustion Engineering and Alstom site along the Tennessee River.
The housing portion of what will come in its place, developer Jimmy White said when initial plans were unveiled in 2019, would include single-family attached condominiums and townhomes, including “workforce[-rate] housing,” and apartments.
Seemingly speaking to 2023 concerns, urban planner Victor Dover, whose South Florida-based Dover, Kohn & Partners drew up initial plans for the area, said in 2019: “If everything is gold-plated and expensive, we will have failed.”
Developers said this week The Bend would include some 1,500 residential units, 10% of which would be affordable for households earning 80% or less of area median income.
In other words, the neighborhood won’t be Hill’s “exclusive neighborhood for a privileged few,” nor will it be solely for — as she also suggested — those pouring beer or using the cash register at the local grocery store.
Such a development should be accessible for all, and that’s what developers intend since they say it also will have retail, entertainment and recreation venues. There’s also this: The $800 million to $2.3 billion in development is expected to create at least 2,000 jobs and millions of dollars for schools. Plus the special tax financing would help pay for the Westside Evolves project.
“This is a development for Chattanooga designed by Chattanoogans,” White told the county commission. “This is not a developer coming in to impose their will. This riverfront is too special, too important for our community.”
Mackey compared it to the arrival in the county of Volkswagen’s manufacturing plant, saying VW and ultimately The Bend will offer the area a degree of financial security.
We think he’s much closer to the truth than any suggestion a developer revitalizing downtown Chattanooga — in 2023 — would try to cordon off a significant area of the riverfront with velvet ropes to keep anybody out.