The CARTA Shuttle Park on Broad Street in downtown Chattanooga is located near the Tennessee Aquarium, where the Bijou Theater was located. The Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau is moving into offices on the 18th floor of the SunTrust Building, while also moving the Visitors Center to the ground floor of the former Bijou Theater building.While Chattanooga’s Visitors Center is staying in The Block, officials will create new space at CARTA’s riverfront garage that will “look like an Apple store,” an official said.
Plans are to build the new Visitors Center in a part of the breezeway where CARTA’s electric shuttles pick up and drop off passengers, said Bob Doak, who heads the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“It will be chic, sleek, very modern,” said Doak about the new space that will have floor-to-ceiling glass walls. He said plans are for the 3,000-square-foot center to hold high-definition TV monitors.
“We plan to do higher tech-looking brochure racks,” Doak said.
The visitors center already operates on the ground floor of the garage on the Broad Street side in space that had at one time housed the Bijou Theatre lobby.