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21st Century Waterfront
How the city of Chattanooga re-created and re-connected with its riverfront

By Julie Jeffers

Mayor Bob Corker’s vision for his city, Chattanooga, Tenn., was very simple -- open up and re-create the city’s riverfront. Or in his words, “ Bring the city to the water and the water to the city.”
After all, Chattanooga is, first and foremost, a river town. And, it goes without saying; a river town is only as good as its river. Keeping the waterfront closed and isolated…separated from the downtown by a four-lane highway was like opening Christmas presents in July. It might be nice, but it just wasn’t practical and it wasn’t right.
So Corker created the Waterfront Commission and gave it 36 months to fund and complete the project – 36 months to give the river back to the city.
It was an ambitious goal. Of course, he planned to help – a lot.

Community Support And Master Planning
Like all public projects, this one started by reaching out to the community, asking for input in sessions staged across the city. As Dan Kral, Director of Parks and Recreation, noted, “ We not only made sure to incorporate our citizens’ ideas in the master design, but by tasking our parks and recreation department with upkeep and maintenance of the property upon completion, we provided for the long-term care of the property.”
This went a long way towards convincing the various stakeholders to jump on board a project destined for greatness – this year and beyond. Of course, the master plan itself was impressive. It called for the following:
·Renovation of the city pier -- increasing hardedge docking space to 2,000 linear feet (from 200 linear feet) and outfitting a significant portion of those spaces with utilities
·$30 million expansion of the Tennessee Aquarium
·$20 million expansion of the Hunter Museum of American Art
·$3 million renovation of the Creative Discovery Museum
·The addition of North Shore Park -- a reclamation project of a G.E. Roper stove manufacturing plant site -- cleaned up and transformed into an environmentally friendly wetlands park.

In addition to this impressive laundry list, the plan also called for the integration of several local, cultural components:
·Creation of an underground passageway to the river, marking the beginning of the Trail of Tears
·Public art lining the First Street Pedestrian Walkway – 14 murals, and a variety of three-dimensional sculptures, including a giant lollipop and an enormous paper stack
·A new walkway connecting the Hunter Museum of American Art to the Tennessee Aquarium.

Raising The Funds
Of course, when you’re talking about raising $120 million, you need more than good faith gestures and an impressive plan to get the project green-lighted. You need vision. You need buy-in.
The city of Chattanooga had that, in spades. Shortly after revealing the master plan, several public sources, including the state legislature with its hotel and motel tax, came forward with a $66 million pledge. Another $54 million from private and group donations quickly followed – a direct result of the more than seventy private fundraising meetings led by Mayor Corker.
According to Pete Cooper, Executive Director of the Community Foundation, “The way you raise this kind of money is you get one person, a dynamic public champion, a high visibility person -- somebody with high credibility, and then simply let him loose. In this case, (Mayor) Bob Corker raised the money in about 90 days.”
Yes. He said, 90 days. Wow!

Let’s Get To Work…Together
So, with funding secured, the project was turned over to RiverCity Company – a private, non-profit organization formed in 1986 specifically to assist local governments and private companies in stimulating economic development, creating public spaces and keeping downtown Chattanooga attractive.
On the waterfront project, the company’s role went beyond that of a traditional project manager. According to Jeff Pfitzer, Director of Special Projects at RiverCity, “ We put a great deal of effort into coordinating the various stakeholders and insuring their input was utilized in the waterfront design.”
One of the most important pieces, according to Pfitzer, was bringing all of the key regulatory agencies and consultants together at the beginning of the project to work out a master agreement – one that detailed what permits would be required, from whom and when, as well as how the project would flow from phase to phase.
“Having that level of cooperation and coordination enabled us to move forward together,” said Pfitzer, “making sure we were appropriately considering all of the facets and potential hurdles up front.”
As any public official knows, speed and government aren’t often seen in the same sentence, but in this case, the use of one master agreement seemed to grease the skids a bit, speeding up a normally prolonged process.
The project is now in its final phase – with only the Renaissance Park and the Market Street Bridge still under construction (expected to be completed September 2007).
Or, as Kral said, “It all came together. Now, we have a marquee park and marquee waterfront for the city.”

The Secret Of Our Success
Each capital project is unique – with its own goals and objectives but, in each case, Cooper said that communication was the key to success.
“The secret to (our) project,” said Cooper, “was getting everybody at the table and talking for what seemed like forever. Everybody provided input (non-profits, banks, city council, etc.), everybody got into the conversation and, as a result, everybody was on the same page from the beginning. Nobody needed to grandstand (partway through the process) to make their objections known because their objections had already been heard and dealt with.”
Of course, as Kral said, “You’re not going to please all the people all the time, so you’ll have to work to integrate your stakeholders’ needs with reality.”

Julie Jeffers is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Parks & Rec Business magazine. She can be reached at juliejeffersdavis@yahoo.com. For more information, visit www.rivercitycompany.com or www.waterfrontchattanooga.com.