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Recycling a Downtown
By Ann Coulter
Shelley Poticha, now President of the Congress for the New Urbanism, first came to Chattanooga in 1994 as project coordinator for the Southside planning process. Her team included, among others, Peter Calthorpe, Chris Leinberger, Paul Hawken and Bill McDonough. On this first trip back since then, she learned that the underutilized site designated in the plan for community use is now the location of one of two new downtown magnet elementary schools.
A key part of RiverCity’s strategy of attracting residents back to downtown, the schools opened in fall 2002. Significantly, half of the 16 million dollar price tag for these public schools was paid for by the private sector. There are other important goals for the schools; create high quality neighborhood schools for residents, provide more amenities for downtown employees and create strong educational partnerships with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as well as other downtown cultural institutions. Until the downtown residential population grows, more than half of the students will be the children of downtown employees. The buildings are on formerly vacant or underutilized properties, they are energy efficient and designed to be community centers as well as schools. They break the school building mold that says schools must be only one story on large acreage with lots of parking. These are urban schools in every way.
The Tennessee Aquarium at the riverfront has been studied by other cities that seek to find their own catalyst for revitalization. Peter Chermayeff, the aquarium’s principal architect, said the project differed greatly from other aquariums he designed in Baltimore, Boston and Osaka, Japan. “It was an interesting challenge, to create a cultural resource that would draw from a wide demographic area in a way that celebrated this particular spot, its cultural history and ecology.” Chermayeff noted when he arrived in Chattanooga to design a “catalytic attraction” he realized he was part of a “whole community of people who had been preparing the ground for an extraordinary intervention.” Just a few years earlier, Stephen Carr with Carr, Lynch & Sandell of Cambridge, Massachusetts had been asked to engage the community in the visionary development of the Tennessee Riverpark Masterplan. “The time was right, the people were right, and I quickly knew that this was going to go somewhere,” Carr noted. “It has been a great experience to come back to see the results for myself. The measure of a city is its quality of life on a day to day basis,” he adds. “If I came back in another ten years, and saw sides of the mountain with development or high rises downtown, I would be disappointed. Don’t wrap your hearts and minds around growth as the primary measure of your city,” he warned. “It is important to grow in an organic way. The real goal is to achieve a balance.” The freshwater aquarium has proven beyond all our initial hopes to be a catalyst for the City’s resurgence. It has been an important source of our understanding of our history as well as our dependence on the natural environment. It continues to expand its exhibits, research and community involvement. It is a partner with other downtown museums to serve two new museum magnet schools, the only ones in the nation to partner with five cultural institutions for interdisciplinary learning in the arts and sciences. In addition to the Aquarium, downtown boasts a string of influential projects such as the Creative Discovery Museum, The Bijou Theatre, Coolidge Park, the Walnut Street Bridge and the Chattanoogan Conference Center that add up to record setting levels of investment and help create an exceptionally high quality of life downtown.
Five blocks north of the Southside school site, in the heart of the Central Business District, Loveman’s Department Store attracted shoppers for decades from all over the region. Known for its line of women’s dresses, Lovemen’s helped maintain downtown as a commercial attraction well into the era of suburban mall development. Even so, it could not survive shopping trends. It was the last of downtown’s department stores to close. Vacant and deteriorating for years, an ill-fated attempt to redevelop it stalled in 2000. Actually several buildings cobbled together over time, the original building was built in 1885. Until a non-descript metal skin was installed to cover the building in the 1970’s it was one of the downtown’s most identifiable and architecturally significant buildings. Its age and deteriorated condition, as well as the declining fortunes of the district itself, made its renovation extremely unlikely. Ironically, thanks to the vision and tireless energy of a former developer of suburban commercial properties, Loveman’s is now under renovation as upscale condominiums and commercial and office space. Last year, as the previous attempt to renovate Loveman’s failed, Buck Schimpf began to study the building and, buoyed by RiverCity’s efforts to reinvigorate the Central Business District and promote downtown housing, he formed a partnership to buy the building. With unmatched enthusiasm and dedication, Schimpf managed to convince state officials that the building was eligible for historic tax credits and to persuade Fannie Mae to invest heavily in the project. Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker says this project will do more to jump-start the revitalization of the Central Business District than anything else the public or private sector could do. Historic buildings such as Loveman’s and the natural setting of the city helped attract Stroud Watson to Chattanooga 22 years ago. He has since used the city as the “living laboratory” for teaching architecture and urban planning classes at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He is the founder of Chattanooga’s Planning and Design Studio and was recognized in 2001 with the Thomas Jefferson Award for public architecture by the American Institute of Architects. “Our idea from the beginning was to think collectively of streets, plazas and parks in the design of our city. It is actually a relatively simple concept, to never look at one thing, but to always consider the context. I see the city every day,” says Watson who also lives downtown in the historic Fort Wood neighborhood. “What I marvel at is how we have managed to create a common vocabulary. We are in agreement that every decision we make reflects something about our past and predicts the future.”
The Development Resource Center, which opened in late 2001, had a multifaceted mission. As the new home of all the City and County’s development and permitting agencies, from long range land use and transportation planning to engineering and building inspections divisions, it was to exhibit the best of building practices and materials, including energy efficiency and maximum use of recycled materials. It was designed to help catalyze further development in the Southside, enhance the role and attractiveness of Market Street itself and complement adjacent development. This was a tall order for Artech and its partner in the project, Croxton Collaborative of New York, but the DRC is serving well as a tangible showcase of options for developers and builders. The DRC has been rightfully described as a model 21st century building on a classic 19th century block.
Considering that up to one third of any downtown is given over to roads, streets, bridges and parking lots, how cities recycle their transportation infrastructure is one of the most important aspects of their future. In the last ten years, there has been a profound rethinking of how highways, roads and streets impact cities. This questioning of the established practice of building larger and faster roads through densely developed areas and out into the countryside has drawn fire from both downtown and smart growth advocates. Cities as far flung as Fort Worth, Cincinnati and San Francisco are moving, burying, downsizing and eliminating highways that no longer contribute to city building efforts because they serve only one purpose, to move more cars faster. A national leader in this new holistic approach to managing surface transportation is Walter Kulash of Glatting, Jackson in Orlando. He has worked on a number of issues in Chattanooga, including the redesign of Riverfront Parkway, a four lane limited access highway built in the 1970’s that separates Chattanooga’s downtown from the Tennessee River. A public planning process funded by RiverCity Company in late 2000 examined how changes to Riverfront Parkway could enhance the development and attractiveness of the Ross’s Landing entertainment district and improve pedestrian access to the river and the Bluff View Art District. We wanted to make Riverfront Parkway a full partner in the resurgence of downtown, rather than a hindrance. The resulting plan calls for four new intersections downtown off of Riverfront Parkway to make it more connected with the existing street network, landscaping the edges and median, and narrowing it to two lanes in the most pedestrian heavy area of downtown. Given local public support for the changes, Mayor Corker was able to persuade the Tennessee Department of Transportation to give the Parkway back to the City so it could make the necessary improvements without having to deal with the cumbersome and inflexible state policies governing urban thoroughfares. Governor Sundquist received not one but two standing ovations from a crowd assembled to hear this news last year. Importantly, this pending change in the nature of Riverfront Parkway helped spur city leaders to call for a comprehensive look at Chattanooga’s waterfront. Dubbed the 21st Century Waterfront Plan and jointly funded by the City of Chattanooga and RiverCity Company, a talented team of professionals led by Hargreaves Associates of Cambridge have involved hundreds of citizens and stakeholders in creating a new vision for public and private investment along the Tennessee River downtown.
Dozens of delegations from other cities come to Chattanooga every year to study the revitalization of our downtown and they ask us what we have learned that might be of use to them in their own efforts. We give them practical advice that continues to guide us. Simply put, although not always simple to do, we encourage other cities to make whatever they build be the highest quality, to engage citizens at every stage in substantive ways, and to be willing to take risks. Ask that everything you do, from a new street to a pocket park to a private development, be the most it can be. Underlying all of this is the belief that if you make a downtown where your own citizens want to be, where they want to live, work and play, then others will come as well. “The changes that have resulted in Chattanooga are a lesson for all cities,” said architect Chermayeff. These words were echoed by his fellow panelists that gathered to evaluate Chattanooga’s progress over the past decade. Fred Koetter, head of the Boston firm that designed Miller Plaza and Waterhouse Pavilion in the heart of the city, added, “We work in a lot of cities. Chattanooga’s example is the most formative.” Poticha adds that Chattanooga’s success involves our ability “to cut through to the essential and retain those remarkable values that came from the community. Much of what you have done is inspiration for my work [with the Congress for the New Urbanism]. You’ve continued to evolve in a very sophisticated way—and while embracing sustainable solutions.” We also tell those who want to revitalize their own cities that diligent, concentrated efforts are necessary, day in and day out. Cities will change, whether they change for the better has everything to do with the efforts of the people who love and understand them. This is why you can never think you are finished. |
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