No one has played tennis for a while on trash-strewn tennis courts built years ago by Tennessee Temple University on Union Avenue in a blighted part of Chattanooga’s Ridgedale neighborhood.
But a handful of new single-family homes could sprout up on the old tennis courts just east of S. Willow St., under a development planned by Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprises (CNE).
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise plans to build new homes on the site of the former Tennessee Temple tennis courts on Union Avenue.The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission on Monday approved a rezoning sought by CNE to allow 50 to 70 new residential units to be built on three blocks at Bailey and Union avenues just east of South Willow Street – the street that divides Ridgedale from up-and-coming Highland Park.
“You don’t see any opposition here,” said City Councilman Yusuf Hakeem, who serves on the planning commission. “[CNE] has met with both Highland Park and Ridgedale on more than on occasion.”
CNE, a longtime nonprofit organization formed to promote housing and neighborhood redevelopment, hopes to reinvigorate Ridgedale in the same way its investments help spark development in Highland Park, and before that, Chattanooga’s Southside neighborhood, said Bob McNutt, real estate development manager at CNE.