Over the past five years, Chattanooga homebuilder Ethan Collier has successfully redeveloped the site of the former Scholze Tannery into more than 60 new townhomes in the One Hundred South Broad development.
With the completion of that industrial site redevelopment on Chattanooga’s Southside, Collier has set his sights on a far more ambitious vision.
Over the next five to six years, Collier plans to convert some of Chattanooga’s oldest and biggest textile mills and nearby properties into a $160 million residential and commercial development in East Chattanooga. The 37-acre complex is branded Mill Town and will be developed in and around the century-old Thatcher mill built by the former Standard-Coosa-Thatcher or S-C-T, a yarn and thread maker that began in 1892 and ultimately shut down in the 1980s.
On the site where more than 1,000 S-C-T workers once made yarns and threads at the Standard and Thatcher mills, Collier plans to build more than 350 new single-family homes and apartment units and convert 300,000 square feet of an abandoned, 105-year-old factory into office, retail and residential use.
Sprawling over nearly 10 city blocks, the project is one of the largest residential developments in Chattanooga’s urban core and is among more than 1,000 additional residences being planned or built along and around Main Street stretching from near downtown to Missionary Ridge.