The developers of what could become the largest new residential and commercial project in the city of Chattanooga in decades say they want to build more than 400 homes around a 45,000-square-feet town village with neighborhood restaurants, stores and medical offices.
Plans for the 155-acre development near the former Dixie Yarns mill in Lupton City will be presented to the Chattanooga/Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission next month. But the preliminary plan for a town center, recreation trails and community gathering spaces in a “New Urbanism” design is already earning praise from local residents.
Lupton City at a Glance
› Chattanooga businessman John T. Lupton in the 1920s bought 1,000 acres of farm land on the Tennessee River to develop a manufacturing community called Lupton City for the yarn and thread maker then known as Dixie Mercerizing Co. As business grew, houses, a post office, church, gym, movie theater, swimming pool and golf course were built.› R.L. Stowe Mills acquires Dixie Yarns in 1998 and operates the mill until it shuts down in 2009.› BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee bought 210 acres near the mill in 2001 for a new corporate campus, but abandoned those plans in favor of building its headquarters downtown on Cameron Hill.› Lupton City LLC, a real estate partnership connected to the Dockery Group in Peachtree City, Ga., buys the 12-acre mill site in 2012 and tears down the mill to recycle usable bricks, metal and wood. But the reclamation effort stops after several months before the mill site is cleaned up and after wood planks treated with creosote are exposed, leaving the mill as a Brownfield site.› In 2017, the city acquires the mill site after Lupton City LLC fails to pay property taxes. Chattanooga budgets $1.5 million for cleanup.› Riverton Development Group bought 210 acres in Lupton City in January 2018 for $8.1 million and began preparing plans for housing, commercial and recreational complex
Known as “Riverton” for the riverfront site in Lupton City, the proposed $200 million-plus development is expected to be built out over the next five or six years if the layout and zoning is approved by the planning commission and City Council. The first phase will include the Village Center at the entrance to Riverton on part of the current 9-hole Lupton City Golf Course. The town center off of Lupton Drive is being designed to include retail, dining, recreation and office space options with space for 70 residential units on the top floors above the new storefronts.
About 58 townhomes will surround the village center, and about 355 single-family homes are planned throughout the entire Riverton neighborhood, extending to the banks of the Tennessee River.