Chattanooga developer John Wise is renewing efforts to redevelop a parcel on the North Shore with new plans calling for apartments on the Tremont Street site, but the proposal is drawing worries.
Plans are to put 16 apartments on the vacant tract which sits around the 200 and 300 blocks of Tremont off Frazier Avenue, said Dave Fidati, project manager for Wise Construction.
Fidati said the proposal is to build the one-bedroom, one-bathroom units on three levels in a $2.5 million project. He said work calls for putting parking in the rear.
Three retaining walls will need to be built, Fidati said, noting the tract backs up to a hill.
"There's a lot of site work to do before we get into building," he said.
Heather Degaetano, who lives in North Chattanooga, said that digging into hillsides where trees fall and roads are destabilized above them "feels like a runaway train" in that area of the city.
"The city council passed things that don't help here much," she said about new rules the panel put into place regarding steep slopes earlier this year.
While she said she's glad the panel looked at steep slopes, it seems as if there is development "without any real thought of how it impacts neighbors, land, runoff and the river."
The Tremont Street project will need to gain approval from the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission Oct. 11 related to the abandonment of a right of way.
Wise has sought to build on the lot in the past. In 2019, he proposed 14 new townhouses with seven on Tremont and an equal number on the hill behind it on Tucker Street.
The Planning Commission staff had recommended then that there be a pedestrian connection between Tremont and Tucker. But Wise said then that people in the neighborhood decided they didn't want the connectivity.
Fidati said the development group has met with two neighborhood associations about the newest proposal.
"The North Shore is always red hot," Fidati said. "People are looking for a place to go."
In August, the Chattanooga Form-Based Code Committee gave approval for a South Carolina development group to put up a pair of 5-story apartment buildings on a tract off Manufacturers Road on the North Shore.
Approval came despite opposition from residents of the adjacent One North Shore condominium complex, who complained that one of the proposed buildings would be too high for Manufacturers Road and block views from their structure.
That proposed apartment complex by Middle Street Partners of Charleston, South Carolina, would go on a vacant tract at 430 Manufacturers Road. It's the same site where a $30 million assisted living facility was planned in 2019, but nothing was ever constructed. For many years, the tract was owned by Chattanooga developer Allen Casey.
Meanwhile, new condominiums were recently proposed in the North Shore. A developer plans to build 25 units on the site of the former Nikki's Drive-Inn restaurant.
Chattanooga-based Fletcher Bright Co. is to start construction later this year on a three-story condo complex at Cherokee Boulevard and West Bell Avenue.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.