WHAT’S NEXT
Planners will return to Chattanooga early next year with a draft and have a final 10- to 20-year blueprint by the third quarter of 2019.
Planners who met in Chattanooga last week to start crafting a blueprint for the Alstom site's future are talking about better connecting the huge tract to downtown and the Tennessee River.
"These are big opportunities," said Meredith Bergstrom, project director and revitalization specialist with Dover, Kohl & Partners. "It's a large site. It's important to Chattanooga."
About a dozen people with the Miami-based firm and its partners who are developing a master plan for the 112-acre parcel met with local officials, property owners and others for several days.
They'll come back to Chattanooga early next year with a draft, gain more public input, and have a final 10- to 20-year plan in the third quarter of 2019.
Victor Dover, a principal in the company, said the site will remain a place where there are lots of jobs as it has held in the past.
In addition, the expansive parcel could offer people a place to live as well as to visit, he said.
"It's the next new neighborhood," Dover said, adding that he sees the property as part of downtown.
He mentioned the site's close proximity to the Blue Goose Hollow trailhead of the Riverwalk.
"Blue Goose was a neighborhood," Dover said. "It's a continuation of its long history."
Dover said there will be a part for the city to play in the execution of the new plan.
"All development is a public-private partnership," he said.
Jimmy White, a principal in West End Property LLC, which bought the former Alstom property this summer, said the firm is looking at mixed-use including industrial, office, housing, retail and recreation.
"It will be a live, work, play experience," he said about the parcel located between Riverfront Parkway and the Tennessee River near downtown.
White and Hiren Desai, both Chattanooga businessmen, bought the factory property from GE Power for $30 million. They're planning what they termed the city's biggest waterfront revitalization project since Ross's Landing was remade a decade ago.
Jill Allen of Urban Story Ventures, which manages and markets the real estate holdings of White and his business partners, said job creation is a key part of the planning effort.
"Manufacturing jobs," she added. One side of the property includes a former turbine manufacturing plant on which Alstom spent about $300 million to construct a little more than a decade ago.
But planners are also looking at incorporating the industrial side of the older part of the Alstom property, with one thought to try to save the skeletons of the massive hangars which made up the site's heritage.
"The first thought was to tear them down - that's changing," said Allen. She said planners are eyeing clear corridors across the site to the riverfront.
Allen cited a "fan-like street grid that will take eyes to the river."
Bergstrom said Dover, Kohl & Partners helped devise the plan to redevelop downtown's Southside more than two decades ago. Today, the revitalized Main Street area, which cuts through the Southside, leads into the Alstom site.
Bergstrom said planners are looking at introducing "a walkability environment" to the property.
GE Power shut production at Chattanooga's former Alstom manufacturing site last year. The property formerly owned by Alstom and Combustion Engineering held nearly 6,000 workers three decades ago.
While the employee headcount fell sharply over the decades, a revival was expected in 2007 when Alstom announced plans to build the $300 million plant to make new turbines for an expected renaissance of the nuclear industry.
However, shortly after that plant opened, an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and its Fukushima nuclear plant and the nuclear resurgence failed to take hold.
Contact staff writer Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.