While we have urged the city to use caution in doling out tax breaks for housing developments, we like one that will come before the Chattanooga City Council today involving the former Standard- Coosa-Thatcher mill.
While a few of the breaks over the years have gone to wealthy developers who promise but do not deliver on projects with affordable housing units, the planned Standard-Coosa Arts Lofts will restrict tenant income levels to 60 percent of the area’s average median income.
For Hamilton County, that median income is $61,300. Sixty percent of that amount is $36,780.
City Council members should satisfy themselves before voting that the 19-year agreement includes significant clawback language that ensures that if the affordable housing for whatever reason doesn’t come to pass that the developer must pay all prior taxes. If there are questions left unanswered, the project should be pushed back.
We hope all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted, though, because we would like to believe the 170-unit, 350,000-square-foot complex might revive the former largely industrial area just west of Missionary Ridge and between East Main Street and East 23rd Street. The complex, developers said a year ago, would offer a rooftop terrace with stunning views of Lookout Mountain, an interior garden and perhaps a gallery space, dance, painting, music and rehearsal studios, and community spaces.
If the complex, focused on artists, is a hit, perhaps similar projects would spring up nearby, along with attendant businesses, re-making an entire community from the many unused and underused buildings in the area.
The first buildings were erected on the mill site 100 years ago, and until 1922 the Standard, Coosa and Thatcher yarn and thread plants were separate operations. The mills closed in 2003, and the site – complete with its iconic water tower – was added to the National Register for Historic Places in 2015.
The National Register designation also gives the developer, St. Louis-based City Property Co., eligibility for historic tax credits. A fire damaged the site in July but did not destroy the nearly block-square complex originally designed by J.E. Sirrine, a South Carolina industrial architect and engineer who designed mills, mill village housing, tobacco factories and storage facilities in the East and Southeast but also as far away as Maine and Texas in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for use of “mushroom”-type concrete columns, which the local mill complex has.
The developer said with a City Council go-ahead, ground potentially could be broken for work to begin early next year.