If you drive by downtown Chattanooga on U.S. Highway 27 and look to the opposite side of the expressway, you’d quickly notice a cleared lot where a former Youth and Family Development Center long stood.
It’s the beginning of the long-awaited remake of the Westside community, which is eventually to replace the College Hill Courts public housing units — the city’s oldest — and Gateway Towers.
The first phase of the One Westside project will feature a 230-unit apartment complex on the five acres of land that once held the razed center, which was previously a Head Start center and before that Second District Elementary School. Other phases are to follow, and among the first of those is the renovation of the former James A. Henry Elementary School building on Grove Street into a multi-faceted community center.
But there’s a problem. A $2.9 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant, which was to fund energy-efficient and self-sustaining features of the elementary building, may not come through, and DOE officials caught up in the chaos of the early months of the Trump administration are not communicating with city officials to let them know what’s what. Another $5 million for the project requested by the city through U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Southeast Tennessee, was never formally approved since the 2025 federal budget containing the appropriation never passed but was funded through continuing resolutions.
Suddenly, the money currently being used to pay for the project — $2 million of which went to remediation and removal of contaminated foundry sand — feels very lonely. And the project is 51% finished, officials said.