NASHVILLE -The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga would see funding for a new $98 million multi-story residence hall housing up to 900 students under a massive $2.66 billion amendment to the state's budget that Gov. Bill Lee is recommending state lawmakers adopt.
The residence hall provision is accompanied by an additional $18 million appropriation for a 600-car parking garage.
And the Booker T. Washington State Park on Harrison Bay would see a $3.9 million makeover of a dilapidated bath house that would transform it into an event venue that can be rented for weddings, anniversaries and birthdays.
Lee's asks are among hundreds of additional expenditures the Republican is recommending to his originally proposed $52.6 billion fiscal 2023 budget.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, said UTC can use both the additional residential space and parking.
"They get a lot of people from other parts of the state. Up in upper West Tennessee, they want to get out of the Martin area," Gardenhire said during an interview in his legislative office. "They sure want to get out of Memphis."
UTC Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Tyler Forrest said in a telephone interview the new student residence hall is slated to be built along Vine Street on the site of the former Frist Hall, which was demolished earlier this year.
The approximate bed count is 900, Forrest said.
"It'll be a large facility, but it will serve two purposes," the vice chancellor said. "One, it will grow the residential capacity on campus, but it will also allow us to demolish Boling Apartments, which is in need of a demo. It's a facility at end of life. So the ability to do both of those with this one facility makes it a really attractive build."
Lee's original budget already provides $60.8 million for a long-sought health sciences building for UTC. There's also a second major project in the original budget that would provide $40 million to renovate the seven-story, 174,000-square-foot former Interstate Life Insurance Building at 540 McCallie Ave., a 1950s-era Art Moderne-style structure that later became a state office building before it was ceded to UTC.
The governor's latest inclusion of a new residence hall is among hundreds of expenditures listed in the amendment provided to the House and Senate finance committees Tuesday. Funding hinges on final legislative approval. It comes as Tennessee experiences record revenue surpluses amid increased consumer spending.
Bath house
Another new item in Lee's amendment would provide $3.9 million to renovate or replace the bath house at Booker T. Washington, a 353-acre park on Chickamauga Lake. The park was originally built in the 1940s and opened in 1950 for use by Black Tennesseans during the era of racial segregation.
Plans call for the building to become an event center that members of the community can rent for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and similar activities.
It fills what Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, the lone Black member of the local legislative delegation, said in a text Tuesday is a gap at the park after closure of the swimming pool.
Booker T. Washington's pool and nearby Harrison Bay State Park's were closed along with others in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 issues. State parks officials later said reopening some pools, including Booker T. Washington's, was unfeasible due to aging facilities, lack of use and high maintenance expenses.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson, R-Hixson, said in a state Capitol interview Thursday that he and Hakeem put together a group of community leaders to discuss the pool's challenges and whether a new one should be built or whether to close it and consider suitable alternatives.
"What they came back with was, 'Look, we'd like to have a facility on site that people could rent or use on a daily basis and not have to rent it for a weekend or whatever,'" Watson said. "Because there are a lot family reunions and that kind of stuff. So they wanted to take the bath house or where the bath house was located and either renovate it or build a new one that gave a facility to the park that allowed for birthday parties, anniversaries, that kind of stuff."
Watson said he and Hakeem then turned that into a proposal.
"I brought it to the administration and said I think this is a really good alternative that was developed by the folks who use the park," Watson said. "And the administration funded it in their amendment. And it's a really good use of resources for that park."
Hakeem agreed.
"I believe it is a great investment for the long term, to develop a funding stream for the park," he said in his text, adding that the proposal envisions rentals for events. "That lessens the dependency on state funding. It provides a venue for community use."
The park is named after Booker T. Washington, a Black educator, author and adviser to presidents who was a dominant leader in the nation's African American community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Scholarship program
Lee's budget amendment also includes $1 million to fund minority engineering scholarships at UTC and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a program pushed by Gardenhire.
The senator previously succeeded in getting $500,000 for a similar program in 2016. But he said UT system officials didn't operate the program to provide full scholarships as he intended, sometimes waiving tuition for students in their senior year when he intended for the program to provide students' entire education tuition-free in order to encourage Black students and other minorities to seek engineering degrees highly sought by employers.
The scholarship program is named after James Moreland, a Black Chattanoogan and community activist who never attended college due to lack of financial resources. Moreland has long been active in civic and church affairs, winning a city leadership award and a Hamilton County distinguished citizen award in 2018.
Local entities slated for grants include Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation, which would receive $500,000 under Lee's recommendation. The foundation works to strengthen public schools and has implemented programs such as one that helps train new teachers in some of Hamilton County's hardest-to-staff schools.
Other items
Another would-be grantee under Lee's proposed amendment is Smart Factory Institute in Chattanooga, which would see a $400,000 grant under the governor's recommendation.
"We are excited and thrilled about that," said Denise Rice with Peak Performance, which is involved with the Smart Factory Institute. "We're really focused on Industry 4.0 and technology and how it's impacting the manufacturing industry."
The institute's efforts include providing manufacturers with connections to technology companies and promoting collaborative relationships and certifications for improving manufacturing processes.
"We're really trying to focus a lot on small and medium-size enterprises," said Rice, who noted one of Smart Factory's outreach partners is UTC.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.