The downtown Chattanooga draw: Central city appeals to differing age groups

We wanted to be downtown in the middle of all the action, to walk to restaurants and events.

David Wiles says his wife, Lea Anne, grew up in Hixson but moved away from the Scenic City for about 30 years.

Still, she'd periodically travel from their Johnson City, Tennessee, home to Chattanooga to see family, and she'd return excited about the revitalization of downtown, the neurosurgeon says. When the couple decided to move to Chattanooga last year, they rented a home in Cameron Harbor downtown and later bought a townhouse at the Walnut Hill complex near the Walnut Street Bridge, Wiles says.

Dr. David Wiles and his wife, Lea Anne, pose for a portrait near the Cameron Harbor development.

While the Scenic City's renewed downtown has garnered a reputation as a hip place for millennials, the central city is attracting older residents, too, according to local developers and real estate brokers.

"It's what we were looking for," Wiles says of the couple's new residence in the city's core. "We wanted to be downtown in the middle of all the action, to walk to restaurants and events."

It is estimated that more than 3,000 apartment units, nearly 2,000 student beds, and 250 condominiums and town homes have recently opened or are coming online within the next year in the downtown area.

Chattanooga developer Matt McGauley, who is building a new town home complex on the North Shore, says he foresees buyers spanning generations.

"I could see a range - anywhere from a young couple who wants to have urban living and a family on their minds, all the way to an empty-nester or more affluent couple," he says.

The older buyer is one who may want a smaller more manageable home "in the heart of the action," says McGauley. "That's what we hear and others have seen that. They want a far more manageable living situation."

Carlyn Voges, of Mountain Girls at Keller Williams, says some people who want to live downtown these days are moving from a residence on one of the mountains around Chattanooga.

"They want to be where they can walk," she says.

Charlotte Price, also a broker for Mountain Girls at Keller Williams, says homebuyers who live outside the Chattanooga area and are moving to the Scenic City often want to live downtown.

"Chattanooga is a destination," she says.

Amy Donahue, of the nonprofit redevelopment group River City Co. says that during last year's tour of downtown living, which showed off many of the housing options in the central city, there were more people age 50-plus than those who were younger.

While urban living is appealing to young professionals, it's just as attractive to people in other stages of life, says River City's director of marketing and communication.

"A great downtown is one that attracts people regardless of their age," Donahue says.

Downtown's riverfront area is poised to hold one of its biggest-ever apartment and commercial projects as a developer plans to build on a pair of Unum Group parking lots. Some 151 apartments and a dozen rental townhouses, along with 16,000 square feet of office and retail space, are to go up on the lots between Third and Fourth streets, says Alan McMahon, development manager of The Beach Company of Charleston, South Carolina.

"People want to live in the downtown area where they can walk to things like restaurants, stores and outdoor spaces," he says. "There's really a demand for that lifestyle that transcends generations."

In the growing Cameron Harbor area off Riverfront Parkway, a developer has started building 200 more apartments in that neighborhood that has mushroomed this decade.

On downtown's Southside, a Knoxville developer is planning to open a $15 million apartment and retail project near the Pilgrim's Pride chicken processing plant on Broad Street. Developer John Murphy says 139 apartments along with a parking garage will open at the corner of Broad and West 17th streets.

Also on the Southside, 17-unit condominium complex is slated to start going up soon. Fletcher Bright Co. officials expect the three-story project to begin in April on a vacant lot at Long and West 16th streets behind the former Grocery Bar building, says company Vice President Cardon Smith.

Donahue says River City's goal is to have housing options for anyone who wants to live downtown. Still, she says, a lot of cities, including Chattanooga, are heavier on the younger and older ends of the age spectrum.

"It's trying to figure out how to capture the middle-age market," Donahue says. "The more residents you put downtown, the more density you create, more retail and service options you can put downtown."

Dr. David Wiles and his wife, Lea Anne, pose for a portrait near an art installation at the Blue Goose Hollow trailhead next to Cameron Harbor.