When the new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium opens on the former Wheland Foundry site in two years, the master developer for the project hopes to offer far more than a playing field for players and fans.
Jim Irwin, the Atlanta developer who has successfully redeveloped other abandoned industrial properties in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Atlanta and Nashville, said Thursday he hopes to bring a mix of residential, office and retail development along with unique community and public spaces around the new minor league baseball stadium planned on Chattanooga’s Southside.
“When you can bring the public and private sectors together and capture the energy and potential of a community with the best architecture and place making, you can really harness lightning in a bottle,” Irwin said Thursday in a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club. “Not only will this result in economic development, but more importantly to me, it will result in spectacular places.”
Irwin, the founder and president of New City Properties, is working with architects in Chattanooga this week to continue planning for a new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium and other reuse of the 120 acres once used by the Wheland and U.S. Pipe foundries before they shut down more than two decades ago.
The new Lookouts stadium, which is expected to seat from 5,000 to 6,000, will replace the team’s current ballpark on Hawk Hill by the 2025 season.