We are embarking - for better or worse - on a new era in Chattanooga. We're betting a lot of the farm on a minor league baseball stadium to be built with mostly public money and approved by all but one of today's sitting city and county officials. In less than a month newly elected county leaders will inherit the success or failure of our race to build the Chattanooga Lookouts a stadium on the hope that it will bring a rush of new development to the city's long deteriorated Southside.
Hopefully, what all of us will see from this is success. Chattanooga's south-westernmost neighborhood needs our long-withheld love.
But the success or failure will sit largely on the backs of seven people - seven unelected folks who, as best we can tell, have never had a public vote cast for them. Never sought public office. But they have said they are willing to serve on the new Sports Authority board.
Those seven people now become responsible for both the Southside future, and for our tax dollars - dollars that will be used to build a new Lookouts stadium and, hopefully by extension, be the catalyst for at least $350 million in new development in the 470-acre tax increment financing district drawn through the streets and neighborhoods that flank the now-vacant U.S. Pipe/Wheland foundries site.
These seven, appointed with terms varying between two and six years, will borrow the money for the stadium's construction, receive from the city and county the future property and sales tax dollars from homes, apartments and businesses expected to be built there and use that money to pay off the debt incurred by the borrowing - the city and county approved bond issue floated to build the nearly $80 million Lookouts Stadium.
Thus, we will move from the electeds to the appointeds, as one local stadium machinations observer noted. They are:
' Randy Smith, previous sports director at Local 3 News.
' Matt Patterson with the Brickyard accelerator.
' John Shearburn, managing director of Warburg Pincus.
' Local developer Mitch Patel.
' Rudolph Foster, a property owner in the South Broad Street area.
' Edna Varner, a senior adviser at the Public Education Foundation.
' Ann Weeks, South Broad Redevelopment Group's president emeritus.
We don't know much about these seven people as a group, and we know even less about how this board will operate.
According to the Chattanooga City Council resolution unanimously approved last week - and another one like it passed 8-1 by the Hamilton County Commission the week before - the Sports Authority is "a governmental authority" the county and the city formed - as allowed under state law - "to own the Stadium."
Chattanooga's Economic Development Officer, Jermaine Freeman, and city spokeswoman Kirsten Yates say the board members will work together based on their schedules to determine the exact date and time for their first meeting. The board members also will be responsible for electing their officers and adopting bylaws. Among their first tasks will be signing an interlocal agreement with the city and the county.
As we understand this ever-evolving plan, the Lookouts will have no money in the project until they take up residence and begin paying a $1 million-a-year lease and begin collecting parking fees and sales taxes on concessions. The Lookouts are expected to pay only 22% of the debt. The rest will come from the city and county governments - $1.4 million each - as well as the future property and sales tax revenues from development in the 470-acre zone around the stadium covered by the tax increment financing zone. The taxes collected from that future development are earmarked to go to the sports authority and pay for the stadium - all but for the tax revenues that will continue to flow to Hamilton County schools.
Chattanooga City Council member Chip Henderson, who represents Hixson, Lookout Valley, Moccasin Bend and Mountain Creek areas, added what he called a transparency and oversight amendment, requiring the sports authority members to report annually to the council on the amount of outstanding debt remaining on the stadium bonds. The measure also makes certain the council is notified once all debt coverage requirements are satisfied and if there's excess tax increment financing revenue available beyond what's needed to pay down the loan.
"Council can then decide, do we want to put that back in the general fund, or do we want to see it continue to be used in the district," Henderson said during an agenda review meeting Tuesday.
"If" is a very small word with a lot riding on it. Riding on the shoulders of the seven appointed to form and operate the sports authority.