As proponents seek to reserve up to $115 million in public funds to support the revitalization of approximately 300 acres in Chattanooga’s Westside, they will have to address concerns from members of the City Council comparing the plan to past eras of segregation.
“When the Westside was built, it was intentionally a segregated neighborhood,” Council Vice Chairwoman Jenny Hill, of North Chattanooga, said during a meeting on Tuesday. “We created apartheid with that.”
She said she has no desire to use special tax financing to build a community that is “an exclusive neighborhood for a privileged few.”
Although she was also complimentary of the plan, Hill said the resulting community must be affordable for working-class people — those pouring beer or using the cash register at the local grocery store — and not just higher-income employees working at new businesses attracted to the site.
Councilwoman Marvene Noel, of Orchard Knob, said the housing part of the plan “has Jim Crow sprinkled over” it, referring to legalized segregation in the post-Reconstruction South.