Many Chattanoogans who live here today don’t remember the Tennessee River waterfront at Ross’s Landing as it was before the turn of the 21st century.
Broken liquor bottles were everywhere. The smell of urine was pervasive. The cobblestones at the riverfront were pocketed with weeds. Unless you were attending the Riverbend Festival in the midst of bands, friends and cotton candy, it was not a place you wanted to be.
The Tennessee Aquarium had been built, but it was it nearing a decade old. The city’s downtown clearly needed a shot in the arm.
Enter Mayor Bob Corker, a developer who was elected mayor in 2001 and offered in 2002 a plan — based on a previous River City Company design — for the “21st Century Waterfront.” By the end of his term, he said, the city would have a transformed waterfront with public spaces (including The Passage, which would pay tribute to the Cherokee Indians who were in the area at the city’s beginnings), a second aquarium building, a Hunter Museum of American Art addition, and improvements at the Creative Discovery Museum, among other things.
The $120 million project would be financed by a bond issue paid for by a hotel-motel tax and by private donations.