If condos come, say bye to Head of Hooch
Wednesday's TFP article about the two last remaining "open parking lots" on Chattanooga's waterfront raises some challenging issues for the future of our great city.
As this community looks for solutions to confusing state right-of-ways, unpaid parking revenues and competing consultants, we would like to urge everyone involved to think carefully about how we can best build on our city's "renaissance" of the past three decades.
Last November, The Head of the Hooch rowing regatta came back from a pandemic year off, attracting a record number of participants. This event is now the largest single weekend tourism revenue generator in Chattanooga's history.
As the group that manages this world-class event, we listen with great concern to proposals to build luxury condos for a few fortunate citizens on the precious grounds that brought the rowing world to our hometown. If these two parking lots are developed as proposed by RiverCity, our event will be impossible to conduct in Chattanooga.
If we need more luxury condos downtown, why not build them where today's baseball stadium is - leaving the waterfront lots open for more community events and celebrations?
As the organizers of the "Hooch" regatta, we strongly urge city leaders and planners to "first do no harm" and always remember that Chattanooga's waterfront is what caused our city to be here and holds our success for the future.
Ulrich Lemcke, Mike Connors, Fred Robinson, Chris Thomas and Ron Harr
Friends of the Hooch board of directors
Waiting for Clinton, paper to apologize
The Times Free Press mission statement is "To give the news without fear or favor." That is a sad joke.
The TFP, along with the left-wing media, has consistently lied in its "hard" news stories and in information constantly used in opinion pieces and presented as fact.
The Trump/Russian collusion story was patently false and used to affect a political outcome. Now we find that lie was initiated by Hillary Clinton to affect the Trump presidency. Also, they spied, as Trump said in 2020, by breaking into servers at Trump Tower and even the White House ... and you people don't care because of your obsession and hate of Trump. Pam Sohn, Clay Bennett, and even David Cook, to some extent, repeated lie after lie about this subject.
If this was a "mistake," where is the correction or the apology? You won't get one from these people. They are just as corrupt as Hillary Clinton, without shame, integrity or any sense of fair play.
As always, the end justifies the means.
Tim Price
Hixson
Likes Wamp courage in telling Jan. 6 truth
The Sunday (Feb 13) Free Press editorial describes Weston Wamp's saying, "a lot of my friends and fellow-Republicans still question the results of the 2020 election. ... I just happen to have a real interest in the truth."
Yes. That candor will cause right-wing Republicans to "reject Wamp," but, moderate conservatives like me, who refuse to support a lie, and are appalled by the Republican National Committee describing the violent Jan 6 insurrection as "legitimate political discourse," are ecstatic to have a local conservative option who doesn't "cringe before (Trump) power" (as Congressman Chuck Fleischmann clearly does).
Sabrena Smedley and Matt Hullander are decent people, but avoiding the responsibility to take a courageous public stand against "The Big Lie" and the Jan. 6 insurrection doesn't demonstrate the moral courage shown by Weston Wamp.
Truth matters.
Oliver Campbell