By this time next year, the old Clemons Bros. building on Chestnut Street downtown could house at least 50 urban loft-style apartments in the top four floors and retail space on the ground level.
A young Chattanooga company has an ambitious, $7.5 million plan to retrofit 730 Chestnut St. as an apartment building dubbed The Clemons.
“We loved the bones,” Vic Desai, principal partner at ViaNova Development, said of the nearly 100-year-old brick building that has stood the test of time and the coming and going of BlueCross BlueShield.
He said there will be primarily two-bedroom floor plans, with some one-bedroom options and one three-bedroom unit per floor.
Pricing for one-bedroom units will start around $900, and rent will top out for larger units at around $1,600, he said.
The Clemons will use partnerships with the Mountain City Club and Citi Park to provide parking for residents.
“We were always looking to do an apartment complex downtown,” Desai said.
There’s tremendous growth and prosperity going on below in the Southside community. There’s continual growth along the riverfront and in the North Shore neighborhoods. Meanwhile, in the central-west heart of the city, fortunes have been a little worse.
“Our business dropped off about 30 percent because of that [BCBS] move,” said Larry Jackson, owner of Figgy’s Sandwich Shop. “It dropped. We could feel it.
“We need more people in this two-block, three-block area, really.”
Amy Donahue, marketing and communications director at River City Co., said ViaNova’s Clemons project is an exemplary model for bringing balance back to the heart of downtown, saving historical buildings, repurposing existing commercial space and creating residential development – especially in the neighborhood so affected by BlueCross’ departure.
“Honestly, it’s an incredible opportunity for these buildings to, in ways, kind of diversify and offer something different than just commercial space,” she said. “So when we get people living in this area, then this is their home.”
Desai said it’s a surreal opportunity, and responsibility, to have such a potential game-changing project on his plate.
“When we actually took hold of this building, it really opened up our eyes to the future,” he said, one hand on the wooden guardrail of his favorite staircase in the Clemons building, where you can stand on the sixth floor and look all the way to the ground.
He thinks renters will come, when it’s finished. There are thousands of employees within six blocks of this building, Desai said, “and we only have to attract 55 of them.”