What next? With deep regret I heard about more terrible decision-making and rezoning plans for our unique city, specifically the historic district of St. Elmo. In the works are a hotel and high-rise parking lot. This gentrification started a few years back with high-density housing and other ostentatious clear-cutting for development projects that now scar the view of Lookout Mountain. Enough is enough.
In case the planning commission, the mayor, and whomever else has their hands on branding, marketing and selling the heart and soul of Chattanooga have forgotten, St. Elmo is not a “destination,” nor is it a commercial district, but a mixed-race neighborhood appropriate for small businesses. It also has a complicated and major traffic artery running through its center, a two-lane road where a large volume of residents from North Georgia commute back and forth daily.
It been sickening to watch the apartment complexes littering North Chattanooga as well as the proposed rezoning of Mountain Creek Road for commercial development. Now the lucky new residents beneath the Incline Railway will have total strangers walking their streets at any hour of the day or night, guests of an inappropriately-placed hotel.
Megan Spooner
Chickamauga, Ga.