A building going up on East M.L. King Boulevard is slated to hold 18 apartments and a commercial space, adding dense housing to a growing corridor.
The building, next to Olivet Baptist Church and Uncle Larry’s, is across the street from the edge of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s campus.
That makes it ripe to house college students who want to live near campus, said Patrick McNeil, chief financial officer for Wise Properties.
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“People all the time are coming to us talking about getting some housing over here,” McNeil said in an interview at the site. “We need more housing in this area — that comes from people in the neighborhood, it comes from people at the city.”
Apartments will be rented at market rates, McNeil said, to be determined when they’re closer to being done. The units will range from around 550 to 650 square feet.
Chattanooga has around 14,000 fewer one-bedroom units than single-person households, according to city data, meaning there’s a need for more smaller apartments.
The 39-foot-tall building (1 foot under the maximum height allowed) is set to finish construction by this summer, McNeil said. The apartments will be available for pre-leasing before then.
Parking will be available thanks to an agreement with neighboring Olivet Baptist. There are also free street parking spots out front and a UTC lot across the street.
“How walkable it is — we’re hoping that that plays a factor into the marketability of the project as well,” project manager David Fidati said at the site. “It’s downtown living.”
The commercial space on the ground floor is still awaiting a tenant.
“It’s being built to where it could flex into a little bar, a little restaurant, you know,” Fidati said. “We had a couple of other folks wanting to talk to us about other uses, like an office.”
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Plans for the space include a small courtyard area that could be enclosed or left open for patio seating. Garage-style rolling windows, similar to ones used at other M.L. King businesses like Oddstory’s Greenhouse or Champy’s, will also make the space more flexible, McNeil said.
We’re keeping track of the development changing the face of the Chattanooga area — but we need your help.
If you spot something and wonder, “What’s going there?” submit that question to us at egerst@timesfreepress.com. A Times Free Press reporter will look into the location, find out what’s happening and how the project is progressing — or how you can participate in the planning process.
Then, the location will be added to an interactive online map that tracks development across the region. You can find the map at bit.ly/whatsgoingthere.
“Leave it open for people to dream, right?” McNeil said.
Whatever business lands on the ground floor will be extending the commercial corridor along M.L. King toward Central Avenue. It’ll also add to the city’s growing stock of mixed-use buildings, more common on the North Shore or on Main Street.
“A lot of people are wanting to move businesses down this way,” McNeil said. “This is a good neighborhood to start investing in and pushing in. We’ve had a lot of people come to us about this neighborhood and investing in it.”
Development on the parallel Main Street has been headed the same way, now extending past Central Avenue with businesses like Shady’s Corner and Oddstory Brewing Co.’s larger location.
“McCallie, MLK, Main Street, you know, the arteries in and out of downtown,” Fidati said. “You’re seeing new construction and renovation all the way from here to the downtown corridor.”
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.