Fort Oglethorpe Mayor Lynn Long has said that one major area of focus for the city will be sprucing up this section of LaFayette Highway (U.S. 27) from Battlefield Parkway to the Chickamauga Battlefield. Walking along the sidewalk is Adam West.
Staff Photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free PressThe tourists who stop by Gloria Lee’s optical shop in Fort Oglethorpe are only a few yards away from the Chickamauga Battlefield. But driving south on LaFayette Road surrounded by vacant buildings, they sometimes don’t know it.
“I say, ‘You just keep going a little bit,'” said Lee, owner of A&A optical, who is used to visitors stopping by to ask directions.
The fading strip of shops along LaFayette Road may not look like the gateway to the nation’s oldest military park, but Fort Oglethorpe leaders plan to make a few changes.
“We need to have flags; we need to have something that just jumps out and bites somebody as they drive by,” Mayor Lynn Long said. “Something that makes the wife say ‘Stop’ and gets the kids excited.”
Last week, the City Council heard from a panel of local leaders, fresh from a seminar on downtown development, who said the city needs to draw on its past to capitalize in the future.