Back in the back Rick.

We are ready.

Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the City Council Historic Preservation Town Hall meeting.

I am a city councilman for District Five.

And I just want to welcome you all and kind of give context and purpose as to why we're here.

We only have four areas that are currently registered as protected historic zones.

That's Battery Place, Fort Wood, St.

Elmo, and Furger Place.

And we have one house on Missionary Ridge and Councilman Elliott's district called the Shaven House.

We have heard through so many community people that we still have work to do as a council.

The perception is that once you register a site and you note that it is historic, is it protected?

And the question is it is not, meaning that developers can come in and change the interior and exterior of the building.

And so we believe that our role as city council is to, as uh which is exactly what a town hall meeting is.

Let me put this on silent.

Um, is to do our duty, our civic duty, and that is to hear from you and the experts about your input about what we can do.

So tonight we're joined by the president of Preserve Chattanooga, which is our local historic preservation organization, which was formerly cornerstone, and we have some consultants and some panel members that you'll hear later in the program.

This event is being streamed live through our city of Chattanooga YouTube channel.

It can be referenced after the event is done.

So thank y'all again for coming.

Again, this is an opportunity for city council to be in the room with you.

And the purpose, I'll just be really frank with you, is that once we leave here, the three councilmen that are here currently, and I'll introduce them.

We have Councilman Cody Harvey for District 4, which of East Brainerd, and we have Councilman Vice Chairman Ron Elliott in the back here, uh, who is um representing District 9 with some historic areas in his district, including Missionary Ridge.

After this meeting, we will do our formal process legally to be able to be in the room with each other to take your feedback and to do an official application to the Historic Zoning Commission of areas and sites that you would like to hear or see preserved.

I want to recognize some special people in the room, starting with Preserve Chattanooga.

We have the chair of the board of directors, Dalton Chen right here in the back.

You can just wave or stand Dalton, thank you for being here.

Some other preserved Chattanooga board members.

We have Miss Dana Moody wave Dana, and I think to the left, we have Natalie Phillips of the board for Preserve Chattanooga.

Are there any more board members here for Preserve Chattanooga?

Thank y'all for being here.

We're also joined by State Representative Greg Vidal of District 29, who is a super cool guy and ally to the city council and a conservation uh guru and his daughter Tess is here.

Thank y'all so much for being here.

We're also joined by Anthony Byrd, who's our former councilperson who is currently serving as our city court clerk.

We're also joined by my dear friend and my mentor, uh former councilman Russell Gilbert, who's joined by his daughter right here on the front row, who you'll hear from later.

We also have our deputy chief of staff, Darren Leffer, who's also a former councilman for District 4, who's also here.

Thank you so much, Dan, for your presence.

We have one of our neighborhood gurus, Dr.

Evelyn O'Holmes, who's on the front row, who keeps us all informed, and thank you so much for helping get the word out.

And of course, we also have John Edwards here, who's a dear friend of mine as well, local historian who owns Chattanooga News Chronicle.

So I just wanted to kind of point out some really cool people in the room.

I know I've missed out on some people because you all are special, but these individuals have been very instrumental in our journey on how we create policy around preservation.

Do you all have an agenda?

If not, uh, when we break, I'll be able to pass this out.

If not, I'll bring some into the chambers.

But before you leave, make sure you sign in uh so that we can have a record and put you on the preserved Chattanooga uh mailing list.

If you have to use the restrooms, the bathrooms are on the other side of this wall, uh please feel free to go out through this last door and it goes to the restroom.

If you have a cell phone, because we are streaming live, please either mute it or turn it down to its lowest level, okay?

So I think I have completed my welcomes and introductions.

And again, you'll be hearing from Cody Hart Councilman Cody Harvey and Ron Elliott at the end to do our closing remarks.

But now I'm gonna introduce Todd Mark Morgan, uh, who's gonna bring us greetings from Preserve Chattanooga.

Thank you, Councilman Clark, and thank all of you for being here tonight.

Uh, this is such an important moment for Chattanooga and really Hamilton County, uh, not every community gets to have an opportunity to do a preservation planning process.

We had one back in 1977.

That's quite a while ago, and you know, a lot has changed since then.

More things have come historic, and some things were not identified at all back in 1977.

There's been other plans, of course, that have happened over the decades as well.

This will give us a chance to tie all this together and kind of a hopefully a beautiful bow, no pressure to our consultants who are working on this.

But it's really important for everybody to understand that this is a community process.

That's why we have wonderful events like this that are a town hall opportunity for folks to voice their opinions, their concerns, what they would love to see happen in Chattanooga, because we have something, we have a hot commodity in Chattanooga.

People want to be here, they want to invest in this city, and we need to let them know that there are things here that are important to us as a community.

These are historic places, neighborhoods, buildings that have been vetted all the way to the National Park Service.

And we've been told these are architecturally significant, they're historically significant, but it's up to us to decide where we go from here.

So this is an opportunity for us.

You know, you can't get anywhere without a good plan.

And what we're gonna have is a preservation plan that will guide a lot of decision making in the community for the years to come.

It's meant to inspire us, to challenge us, to provide us with best practices from across the across the country.

And I know as the executive director of the preservation organization serving the community, I'm super excited, you know, about the feedback that we're getting from people about their enthusiasm for what we do.

Um sometimes it's more enthusiasm than I can handle in a in one day.

But I I wouldn't trade it for anything because it shows me that people really care about Chattanooga and they care about where we're going.

The thing to remember is that if we lose what makes Chattanooga special, you know, as the people who are from here, it hits us hard.

But then when you really start thinking about the impact preservation has on economic development, on heritage tourism, on everything from mental health and well-being to the environment, we lose if we don't keep this in our foresight going forward.

And that's what we're going to do today.

So I'm excited for you to hear from everyone.

We're excited to hear your questions and hope that you leave here being really uh enthused and excited about where we're going together as a community in this process.

So thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Todd.

You know, let me give a quick story, and then right as we're cueing our video uh for our community historic highlight, I'm gonna ask Tiffany Rankin to come on this side of the building because I need you this is where you're gonna be speaking from, so you're in the camera.

Uh but when I started uh learning about uh historic preservation, and when Councilman Elliott and Councilman Harvey were new council people, we we get hit up by a lot of people asking us for money for different agencies, and I didn't know about per per preserve Chattanooga.

And I met with Ty, probably my second month as a council person, and I was like, what is all this preserve and save and build and stuff?

You know, I've got other stuff that I need to focus on in my neighborhood, you know, who cares?

Yeah, blah blah blah.

Um then it was I went to a breakfast with another consultant that came in and I learned that historic preservation is not about just saving buildings, it's about creating economic development opportunity, right?

Every it's environmental justice, meaning that when we tear down a building and put it in the landfill, what it does to us and what it costs the city.

It's affordable housing.

How do we repurpose buildings that are big that are currently dilapidated into housing, affordable housing opportunities?

It's it's justice work.

How do we look at neighborhoods that are whose history has been erased because we have not preserved neighborhoods like Lincoln Park?

It's also honoring our masters and architect like R.

E.

Chunt, who is a legend out of Chattanooga who built our courthouses, our schools, many of our churches, both black and white.

And so I fell in love with preservation because someone took the time to educate me about what we can do other than just save buildings is beyond that.

So Ty, thank you for being our inspiration and for coming to Chattanooga and for sharing your love for that.

And now you have council members and state representatives who are asking how do we support you?

And as a result of that, and Darren Leford, who works in the mayor's office, uh, we were able to find preserve Chattanooga at their requested amount.

And I want to commit, thank you, Darren, for the work and you do with the budget that we were able to uh preserve some money for preserve Chattanooga for them to do the work that we're so passionate about.

So we can't government can't do it all, but we can't start here.

And I again I thank my colleagues, Cody Harvey, and Ron, for also being partners in uh uh setting aside that money.

We're not gonna watch a quick video uh that's gonna be cued.

It's about 10 minutes regarding the historic legacy of Lincoln Park, just to kind of put in framework what historic preservation looks like uh from a community justice perspective.

And then we'll hear from Tiffany Rankin, who's a resident of Lincoln Park, and she just wants to share with you briefly about why she's here and why this is important.

Yeah, that was a good film.

Uh good evening, everyone.

My name is Tiffany Rankins.

I am the president of Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association.

In fact, that lady that was talking on there was my mother, and she was the president at the time.

Um she doesn't look like that anymore.

Believe me, because uh when she turned it over, and in fact I asked her tonight, do you want to come with me?

She said, Lord, no.

She's been fighting this for us trying to attempt to get Lincoln Park um on a historical reservation, preservation and everything else.

So uh I guess it's my time.

Um but we've received uh no, we read the newspaper in twenty eleven when the little field was in office that a road was going through Lincoln Park.

And we said, who knew what happened?

Why didn't you inform the community?

So they came and informed the community this been in the works for 40 years, get ready, it's going through, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Say, whoa.

Um not go through.

Um the city council said progress, this is progress, and this is what's gonna happen.

So we got the writing papers to the interior at the federal level.

So um, but it's been a rough road.

Um like I say, we still don't know where it is.

I'm glad to obtain CLG, certified local government.

We asked about that for years with the last administration, and no one knew about it, knew what it was.

And my mother was nowhere around.

The community took care of the kids out there.

It was a safe place.

Hopefully, um when uh it is preserved without a road going through it, and uh and uh basically uh messing up the historical preservation.

I'm hoping that we can come back to that as a community, but it is sad that some generations don't even know about it.

We have to reteach them what Lincoln Park was all about in the community.

Every nine now, every year we have a community event, and um the first thing a young person is saying hey, my grandmama told me about this place.

Hey, my mom told me about this place.

I never knew where it was.

I'm not for sure if that was by design or what, but as soon as you stop finding uh a place, it generally falls into disrepair, and they start closing in and making uh room or making um plans for something else.

Um, like I say, we do have to get permission from Erlanger, as far as uh using the park.

Hopefully, in the future, it would be a better outcome than that.

But um, yeah, we want to save Lincoln Park, we want it reserved, and uh yeah, that's all for me.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Give Tib New Rankins a round of applause at Tibet to come to Lincoln Park is just an example of lots of places and buildings and communities that we can preserve.

So now to have that conversation, I don't know what's going on with our mics.

I'm gonna introduce to kick up our panel discussion.

We have Ray Bassett with UTC who will go and introduce all these wonderful people you see sitting up on the dies.

Ray we're gonna find out.

There we go.

Thank you again, Councilman Clark and to the other counselors here, council member Harvey, Councilmember Elliott.

I'm Ray Bassett, host and producer of Scenic Roots on WUTC, the public radio station on the campus of UTC, just up the road.

And I am here to introduce our guests on this panel, Todd Morgan, of course, executive director of Preserve Chattanooga.

Also on this panel, we have Phil Walker of Walker Collaborative, Phil Thomason of Thomason and Associates, Linda Moss Mines, Chattanooga and Hamilton County historian, and Irvin Overton, historian, formerly of the Bessie Smith Cultural Center and of Erlanger.

I'm told that we have something to present as part of this discussion.

Yes.

Yeah.

Um, does it okay?

I was just gonna wait for that to kick in.

All right.

Well, thank you.

It's great to be here.

Uh appreciate the introductions, and let me uh forward this.

Well, we went through the introductions.

Um, what we're gonna talk about for this segment of the meeting is just a little bit of an overview of the preservation planning project that we'll be doing.

We'll talk a little bit about just some of our initial findings, and then really have a conversation with you to get your thoughts on preservation in Chattanooga.

And so, first of all, you know, what is a historic preservation plan?

Well, it's really a it should be a blueprint that looks at how you can preserve and enhance and interpret your historic resources, historic resources includes a lot of things, it could be buildings, objects, places like districts.

Uh we'll look at things uh issues like your design review process in your local districts, incentives for historic preservation and so forth.

But any good plan, whether it's a preservation plan like this one or any other kind of community plan should really be able to address four overarching questions.

Number one is you know, where are we now?

You know, what are your existing circumstances, conditions for preservation?

Where are you headed?

In other words, what are the trends for preservation in Chattanooga?

Thirdly, where do you want to go?

And that's really where you come in because it's you know, we're technical people that are gonna put a plan together, but we need to be pointed in the right direction of where you want to go.

And then finally, how do we get there?

And that is the technical part where once we know what your vision is for the future of preservation in Chattanooga, then we'll figure out how to get you to that point.

Um so why would you want to prepare a preservation plan?

So there are a lot of reasons, but here are just four right here.

First of all, to build consensus.

So you're avoiding a lot of competing agendas.

You know, you want to get everybody on the same page.

Secondly, as a basis for public policies, so in other words, you've got historic uh preservation ordinance, you've got districts, and maybe some of those need to be kind of re-looked at.

Maybe you want to designate new local historic districts.

Um, thirdly, securing funding for projects, you know, whether it's the city of Chattanooga, preserve Chattanooga, um, whoever might pursue grants for some kind of preservation project, and you're competing with other entities for that money, right?

And if you have a project that's part of a bigger picture, a plan, you're much more competitive with other people that are going after those those same dollars.

So that's another reason.

And then finally, just enhancing the quality of life, which really speaks more not so much to the preservation plan, but just a preservation in general.

You know, it's it enhances quality of life first and foremost for citizens, you know, for tourists who bring in dollars and leave money behind, and then you know, for business uh recruitment efforts.

So those are just some of the reasons why it's important to do this preservation plan.

And as you can see from the the cover of your last plan, 1977.

Think about just you know, 50 years.

Think about what's changed since then.

So that was a good plan, by the way, we've looked at it, but clearly we're ready, I think, for a new one.

So I won't get into the weeds on the process, but basically, there are five general steps to this planning project.

Number one is the project kickoff and research.

Todd gave us a phenomenal tour.

You know, we'd all been to Chattanooga before, but but seeing it through Todd's lens and understanding all the preservation issues, just the the wealth of historic resources, neighborhoods that you have was was pretty uh pretty impressive.

So we're doing the background research, of course.

This task 1.6 is what we're doing right now with the kickoff.

We've already initiated a public opinion survey.

It's on SurveyMonkey.

One of the, I think the last slide here actually will point you, and you can go to preserve Chattanooga's website, and I encourage you to take the survey.

In fact, we've already, we're up to 285 right now.

It's going to end at the end of this month.

We we want to at least make 300.

Um, so that's ongoing.

We'll put together a background report.

The next time we're here, we're gonna do some kind of a workshop.

We haven't figured out.

It may have a little bit of a charette type feel to it where it engages the public stakeholders in a really hands-on way, and we'll come up with the main ideas for the plan.

Then we'll go away, put the plan together.

Uh, everybody will be able to look at a draft, we'll present it, and again, we'll get more feedback and revise, you know, what needs revising so that it meets the expectations of the community.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Phil.

So this is just a very short sort of uh overview of uh Chattanooga history.

Again, uh Native American um resources, we're looking at that, and then you go into the uh the Cherokee occupation, uh Ross's landing established in 1816, and then you have the forced immigration of the Cherokee to the West.

And then 1838, uh, the city's name uh becomes Chattanooga, uh 1850, the Western and Atlantic Railroad begins, the uh city's prominence as a uh railroad hub, uh town incorporates 1851, and then we get into the the Civil War with the battles of Chickamauga, Chattanooga.

Um flooding was always an issue uh until TVA stepped in uh in the 20th century.

But between uh 1880 and 1890, uh the population of Chattanooga tripled.

And so you have a lot of resources that remain from that time period.

This is uh when Chattanooga becomes a leader in uh industry in textiles and other manufacturing.

Uh the Walnut Street Bridge opens in uh 1890.

Uh the park for the uh uh Chickamauga and Chattanooga uh National Military Park established in 1890, 1899, the Coca-Cola bottling plant begins uh operations, and that's uh a major industry in this area, as well as the second bottling plant was Atlanta, and the third bottling plant uh getting a license was in Nashville.

So we're taking a look at our old bottling plant in Nashville these days.

Then after 1900, you get this growth in tourism as uh folks uh get into automobiles more in the 19 teens and 1920s, uh Rock City, Ruby Falls, all those uh uh tourist attractions uh that began bringing a lot of money into uh the uh community.

You have uh the creation of TVA when the construction of the Chickamauga Dam and reservoir.

And then with all the industries going on, uh Chattanooga is recognized as one of the more polluted cities in the United States, and uh uh as that information comes around and that designation, then there's really this change in lookout in terms of uh you know, trying to clean up the city, uh looking at uh ways of ameliorating the pollution in the area.

And so you work you move into the desegregation of public schools, the city leaders focus on uh beautification, pollution control, opening of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, and then 1975.

There's this interest in creating a preservation organization.

So you have a landmarks Chattanooga, which comes along, it uh evolves into cornerstones in 1994, and then preserved Chattanooga in 2022.

Uh I started working in uh Chattanooga back in the 1980s uh and um uh worked on the re rehab of the warehouse road complex, and there's a lot of other rehab projects that really started in the 80s and 90s.

Uh you have the opening of the Tennessee Aquarium, the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, which is quite notable.

And uh since uh around 2000, you've just had a lot of recognition of uh Chattanooga for all the revitalization efforts it's been doing and and uh you know attracting so many people into the uh community.

Uh historic resources types, uh just an example of your national register sites, uh Brown's ferry tavern associated with the Trail of Tears, as well as uh the Civil War, uh industry with the Chattanooga Plow uh Powerhouse, the Price Evans Foundry, uh Native American resources uh with the archaeological district in Maucus and Bend, uh the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway and Tourism, the Walnut Street Bridge, Fountain Square.

And again, we have these themes that we'll be uh moving through in the preservation plan.

Again, just everything that I mentioned, and um uh we'll be looking at all the National Register Historic Districts in terms of their consistency and quality these days.

Uh but the National Register districts you have now are St.

Elmo, downtown Chattanooga, and that's very important.

That was done in um the National Register nomination was completed in 2020, and what that did was uh provide large sections of downtown with uh the potential for historic tax credits uh for doing substantial rehabilitations of buildings.

So we're staying in the Waymark Hotel, which is uh one of those kind of projects.

Market and Main Streets, Market Street Warehouse, MLK Boulevard, Fort Wood, Fergor Place, Glenwood, Missionary Ridge, and Stonefort Land Company Historic District, which is right in right in this area.

Uh again, you only have four locally designated historic districts, uh, Fort Wood, Battery Place, Fergor Place, and St.

Elmo, and we certainly think there's probably more kind of uh areas that would be eligible for overlays, uh, whether they're historic zoning or possibly conservation zoning, and we'll be talking about that in the preservation plan.

So this is uh Fort Wood, just the uh boundaries and wonderful collection of late 19th, early 20th century architecture, battery place, smaller area, about 20 uh buildings, uh Fergor Place, uh a great planned development uh of the early 20th century, and uh you can see again, these are designated in uh the 1990s for the most part, and um, there's just a long gap between then and now in terms of the kind of protective uh overlays that are uh possible out there.

And then St.

Elmo, which uh is your uh largest historic district and one of the largest in uh in the state of Tennessee.

So as so we look also at the existing preservation policies and programs.

Uh again, we're taking off from the 1977 historic preservation plan.

Uh we're looking at your historic zoning and the overlays that you have, and preservation easements, uh preservation uh preserved Chattanooga has a number of uh preservation easements which provide property owners with uh some tax incentives uh for donating uh easement on their building so it can't be demolished.

And these are your new uh Chattanooga Historic Guidelines that uh you're now utilizing uh in your uh design review areas.

I'll think we turn it over to Ray at this point.

Yeah, so here's our questions.

And here we go.

Thanks to Phil and Phil and Todd, and we'll start with the first question for our panel.

Why is historic preservation important for Chattanooga and its citizens?

Oh, that's for us.

Yes.

What I put that together is really more for the audience, but uh I guess we can chime into it.

Well, it's important for us to hear from everybody.

I think you know, I've lived in Chattanooga full-time for about four and a half years now, spent many, many years visiting before that.

I grew up in the Knoxville area, and one of the things that I'm so impressed about Chattanooga is just the the extraordinary neighborhoods and architecture that's here.

And I didn't set out to work professionally in the field of preservation.

I've taken a long route that this included working in city government, state government, architecture, and so forth.

But what I've realized in visiting places throughout Tennessee and across the country, I can always tell when I'm in a place that has a high preservation ethic.

Um they have a community that is really proud of their history.

They're really proud about how they tell the stories of their history, and there's these physical places that we can have a connection with.

Because you know, it's one thing to tell a story, but when you can go and sit in a building, visit a museum, or just you know, be in a neighborhood that's intact.

That does so much to connect one generation to the next.

We need that as a community.

We can talk all day long about economic benefits and tourism benefits, like real dollars.

Like there's people that study this professionally, and so we know that what we're talking about pays benefits back to a community.

But what I really want people to understand is that you know, when we're talking about the future of Chattanooga, we need to make sure how we protect and preserve our historic resources while balancing that with growth and opportunity.

You know, that needs to be at the table, and everybody needs to be a part of that discussion.

And that's why we ask so often is just for tools and resources that just bring people to the table so we can talk about what options are out there.

Yeah, I mean, I think the historic, and this is probably the only one I'm gonna chime in on because until we dig more, even though I've been to Chattanooga a lot of times, I've not been this is our first trip to really focus on the historic resources.

So, really, I think the opinions of the audience or some of the other panel members will be much uh more on point than than any I would have.

But I will say that I've always really been uh impressed with Chattanooga as a community.

I mean, the planning that's taken there's a great planning culture, as you know, all the charrettes that have occurred over the years and and just your and the focus on historic resources, and that is your character.

You know, there's the old saying that every increment of development either reinforces or dilutes community character, and I think it's important to think about that when um you know it in other words, you need to save what you have because that's so much of your characters, what you have historically, but you also want to make sure that when you do have new development occur, especially in these historic areas, that it's consistent with the character of what you've already got.

And I will add one more one more thing to that conversation because this is a very special year across nationwide.

So well, and and obviously I come from it from the topic from a totally different standpoint.

I I am a historical preservationist, but I'm a historian first, and I I find it really interesting that here we are as America 250.

It is the 250th anniversary celebrating the signing of the Declaration of the Independence leading to our constitution.

Only 13 years later, we the people, having a community gathering like that is so indicative of what we imagine ourselves as a republic becoming.

And I think when I, you know, when I say I'm a historian to people, I think people first see their high school American history textbook.

Everybody remembers your high school American history textbook, don't you?

But what I what I try to remind people every day in conversations is place and story tells you more about history.

Textbooks are wonderful, but the stories that really matter to us are our stories, the connections we have with places.

I love cemeteries.

I serve on the Tennessee Cemetery Commission, and what I tell folks regularly is every one of those tombstones is a textbook.

Every one of those tombstones tells a story of someone who can no longer speak for themselves.

Each historical building tells a story of a particular period in time, a moment in our history, and to think that our last preservation plan occurred only one year after the 200th, the bicentennial.

Many of you in the audience are not old enough to have remembered the bicentennial.

I'd like to say that I was a very, very small child of them, but I would be lying.

I was already teaching, um, you know, already sharing the story of the Republic.

But what's important for me always is there is a balance between preservation and progress, but we have to be very careful that we know what must be preserved.

So once it's gone, it's gone.

And this community, this community has such a rich, diverse heritage and history from the Cherokee, from the USCT troops who were here.

Not only was Chattanooga the gateway to the South during the American Civil War, it was the gateway to freedom for those coming from the Southern Confederate states who had formerly been enslaved.

If they got to Chattanooga, they became part under the protection of the U.S.

Army, and that was the first step to freedom.

We have, we're the dynamo of Dixie.

We are now the first national park in a city in North America.

There are so many stories to be told here, but place, building, memories, all of that weaves together, and our historical plan, whatever you choose for it to be, working with Preserve Chattanooga, working with their consultants, has to preserve those stories in whatever form they are.

Lincoln Park is a passion of mine, has been ever since I got here.

I I am an unabashed baseball fan.

But you know, the there from political to social to economic to military history to cultural history, all of those are important elements that determine who we as a people are.

And that's important.

And right here is the person who can tell us an awful lot about that movement toward preserving.

I think.

Absolutely.

Not just the part that may be appealing to this group or that group or this group, but we have to tell the whole story.

Is because our young people need to understand from whence they come and the proud tradition that they came out of and how they all kind of contributed to this melting pot here in the city of Chattanooga.

I think it's real easy at this dead time because of all this DEI mess, okay, uh, to kind of forget, okay, uh, that African Americans and Latino Americans and Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans play a real fundamental growth role in the growth and development of the city.

So we have to tell, we have to preserve the whole story.

Not that part that we just like that supports our political philosophy or our conservatism or our progressivism.

We have to tell the story of Chattanooga, who made this city, what it is, and why it is, what it is, and where it can go, where it can go if we continue to work together to preserve the history.

Um I'll have a little bit more on that, but right now I think that I'm very emotional about this, about this preservation issue because the Lincoln Parks and the Orchidobs and the Alton Parks and the Avondales, these places get left out of the whole story a lot.

And that we're focusing on the diversity of our community because that is what will take us to the next level of community.

That's it.

And in taking us to that next level of community and always centering story and place, I want to fold the next two points together because I also want to get through some of the other points, but also give the community a chance to weigh in as well.

What's one way that you see historic preservation has achieved success here in Chattanooga?

And what's one way that further progress with preservation can be achieved here in Chattanooga?

Well, I'd certainly say that you know the efforts that uh began in the 1980s, 1990s in terms of the downtown, a lot of downtowns across the country had you know out migration, uh businesses closing.

Uh, but you know, Chattanooga was able to really focus on some good rehabilitation projects that became some good anchors for the downtown area.

So it's always been, I think, an active and and vital area.

So that's one one of the achievements I think to be proud of.

And I would say, you know, just look at a neighborhood like St.

Elmo, uh, Fort Wood, you know, these are neighborhoods that people walked away from.

You know, they had beautiful architecture that had great history.

Takes your bread.

Significant investment, but people left.

And those are just neighborhoods that came into local historic designation in the early 90s.

We have so many neighbors as neighborhoods, as was just mentioned.

And, you know, they just they've existed and they've continued to go on, and people have loved them, you know.

But I think when you can elevate a place and acknowledge it in a way, my declaring it a local historic district, this is really significant to a community of people, and we need to be pay attention to how it goes, grows.

We have so many good examples of how that works, not just in Chattanooga, but across the country.

So when I look around Chattanooga and I see things that have happened a lot of times by accident, you know, we were just fortunate that people chose to invest in this or chose to take care of this particular place.

We benefited from that, and you see it really throughout the city.

Some of the most recent things we've seen is mentioned, you know, the Waymark Hotel going into a building that sat empty for so long.

It's a huge amount of infrastructure that's already invested that isn't generating the tax revenue and the things that we need, or the new Erlinger Park, you know, and the investment that's happened there, and how we're going to have something that stands out nationally that's just so different from everybody else.

When I see these places here in Chattanooga or in other places that I visit, it just makes my heart happy because it makes me feel like people can see a higher vision for where we can go versus allowing just growth to take over.

Again, we want to make a quick buck, we want to turn things around quickly.

You know, I want the city to grow, and I think that's very, very important.

But we want to grow in a way that people respect who we are, respect our history, and also allows us to basically curate our own community for how we want to experience as the residents who are the taxpayers, but how we want visitors to come and engage and learn about you know what we're all about, as so well stated.

Well, and and I love the fact that that Todd used the word curate because that's an awful lot of what this process is.

You know, I I have to admit I'm of an age, I'm on Facebook.

My grandchildren tell me that's not cool any longer, but I love to see what people post when they come to Chattanooga.

They post the Goldome Building representative battle.

They post the custom house, they post pictures of our historic R.

H.

Hunt buildings.

The number of people that have posted recently, the vault, yeah, those are the sorts of things that that single snapshot tells a story of where we've chosen to invest, where someone has chosen to invest to preserve something that resonates with people who it's not necessarily part of their history.

And that's that's what we do as a community.

We preserve those stories.

I saw so I see something every day as I drive through Chattanooga.

And somebody stumble on this.

I don't know if they were thinking about preservation if they were just trying to say we need to recognize the neighborhood, okay.

But one of the beautiful things you see as you drive through Chattanooga is neighborhood identification.

Those little signs that say Fort Wood, those little signs that say Orchard Park, those little signs that say those little signs that say Glenwood, okay.

That's identification.

Yeah.

And I think that to me, that's that's the that's the beauty of uh of this city is that it recognizes community as being the driving force, and not so much what might happen at City Hall or at Hamilton County government, but these communities really drive, okay, what's going on in the city and to recognize that and to preserve it.

I think our young people, I think our young people will grow immensely from that.

The more we can promote that, the neighborhood level, the more we can promote community, the more we can promote living together in peace and harmony and be proud of it, the better off we are as a community.

And I think when people leave Chattanooga, they have gone through, they've been riding through, they say, wow, them folk in Chattanooga must love Chattanooga.

They put their name on everything.

And just one real quick final point.

You know, I think preservation has been a part of this community forever.

I love when I'm traveling and I'm probably taking Representative Battles Thunder again because he is so active in the national park system.

But I'm I'm I'll always have when people say, Oh, you're from Chattanooga, and they begin to sing the Chattanooga Choo Choo song to me, and I'll go, yes, and and I'll say, do you know that Chickamauga Chattanooga National Military Park is the oldest military park in the nation?

And I've had people say, Oh, no, that can't be right.

It's Gettysburg and I'll get it.

First National Military Park.

Because the community came together here in the 1890s to preserve that sacred land where the Republic had been saved.

We have the oldest military park.

Preservation's not a new thing in Chattanooga.

It just needs to be have new life breathed into it with each generation as we grow.

One of the proudest things that ever happened to me was in my college career.

I was a football player at Howard High School.

Y'all know I'm a hustling tiger.

That's what I am, okay?

But but when I went to Dillard University in Lord, I'm wearing the proud shirt tonight, accidentally I had the shirt on, okay, because I didn't want to disappoint Councilman Clark by not my mind is not as good as it used to be.

But they named me as a running back, the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Cool.

Yeah.

I mean that that told me that there was something about Chattanooga that's recognized by people uh from here.

There was a radio announcer, his name was from Chattanooga.

His name was Larry McKinley.

He worked for W Creek Pajama if I'm wrong.

He worked for WMFS, I believe it was.

Uh, a black black control station, I'll say it that way here here in Chattanooga.

But he moved from Chattanooga to New Orleans.

But man, when he gave me that name, I was the proudest guy on the block.

I want to fold the final three points and distill that back to the basic principles that we saw in the presentation to allow a chance for our panel to weigh in on that, so then the community members can weigh in.

Should existing local historic districts be geographically expanded and should new ones be created, what types of historic resources should be prioritized, what additional preservation tools should be explored.

It all comes back to two of the questions in the beginning of the presentation.

Where do you want to go?

How do we get there?

Yeah.

That's why we are in such good company with our wonderful consultation.

And I can say we have zero answers.

You know, this is the point where we're learning and listening.

And you, you know, we don't come in with preconceived notions like, oh, we have all the ideas.

You have to, you really have to let the process play out.

And the very beginning of it is this first trip where we see things, we you know, we've done some research where we're far far from having the answers.

But I'd love to know what you know, the audience and community members, what their opinions are on those.

And before we do that, if there's anything more that uh Todd or Irvin or Linda wanted to weigh in on.

I think you gotta have a couple things in place.

You gotta have a vision.

You gotta have a vision of what this thing really needs to look like 50 years from now.

And then you got to have tactics to make that happen.

And that's what I like about this approach here is to put the it's got some vision, it's starting to put some tactics to it.

And when you add the tactics, I think we'll get the enthusiasm and the movement that we need to get going forward.

But without this vision of preservation, and without the tactics, we just would we just be I hate to say it, blow it Dixie.

Vision is so important.

I had somebody challenge me once and asked me to try to imagine the city.

If every building that was built prior to 1940 just disappeared tomorrow, how would that make you feel?

What would you be seeing?

You know, and then imagine the opposite everything built after 1940.

What if that disappeared?

And what would the city look like?

If you just let that rest in your imagination a little bit, a lot of the places that you drive by and experience every day that make you feel at home and make you feel like you're part of a bigger story, a multi-generational story.

You realize how vulnerable they can be because all of these things are privately owned for the most part.

And so what we have to do through this process of having community discussions about preservation is figuring out how we can engage the property owners, people who are making decisions about properties, whether it's incentives or using tools like overlays to pull people into a conversation.

We're just asking folks to be present to this conversation and help us really build a good preservation ethic because I think Representative Vinyl said it well, we do have to keep reminding people all the time.

This is a generational opportunity with a plan like this for people to have their voices heard and for us to come together and set a vision for what life's gonna be like here in the next 25 to 50 years.

Linda Well, yes.

Um I think I you know, my mind is swirling because I I really do think it comes down to vision, and each of us probably has a different vision for and that's the beauty of having a public town hall meeting.

It's the beauty of living in a community where everyone has a voice, and it's so important that we each have a voice, and I want to hear your voices.

I want to I want to know, I know that everyone involved in this process knows that at some point there has to be a melting where it all comes together, and that it reflects the priorities of the community, because this city doesn't belong to the elected officials, it doesn't belong to any one particular group of people.

It doesn't belong to those of us who've been here a long time and think we know a lot because we've lived a number of decades.

It belongs to every segment of our community.

And I I want to know what the community wants.

And with that, it's your turn.

Thank you for the discussion.

So we'll give Ray, let's turn this off.

There we go.

You guys give Ray of WTC a round of applause for moderators.

And can you hear me on this microphone?

Can someone turn it?

Can you turn it up just a little bit?

There we go.

Uh, first of all, thank you to this wonderful panel.

Uh, to Irvin, to Linda, feel and feel and to Ty.

Uh, we want you to stick around because the most important piece of this town hall, like Linda mentioned, is to hear from some individuals who have comment about some historic places or communities or structures, but to also for our council members who are in the back.

Again, if you could go back to that slide where it talks about the locally historic districts, uh Phil.

Yeah, sorry.

Is it working?

There we go.

I just want to put that as a where it talks, it's like uh kind of list out.

There we go.

I need people to understand what locally designated historic districts are.

Because I know you saw that list where they had ML King, but you were like, why isn't ML King listed as a locally historic district?

Because in the 90s, the city council stopped preserving areas, and so we we stopped at these four areas, and so a lot of things that are recognized on the national registry, the council is researching here tonight to figure out how we can put it on the locally designated historic districts.

Does anybody know why it's important to add those sites to the locally designated historic districts?

It's because they have design guides, which that protects the interior and exterior of buildings and communities.

So that's why we have areas like you saw Glen Woods, people are like, well, that's a national historic site.

Technically, it's not, it's just recognized as such.

And so we will do our civic duties as legislators, and we will introduce an application.

As a matter of fact, is there anyone here that is an appointed member to the the city's historic zoning commission?

I know we each appoint some.

Is anyone here?

There are several who uh that we appoint as council members, and we will put in an application to that board, and Todd and his group will hear that with some input from the consultants.

It is a process.

This is the first process.

Uh, the first person I'd like to bring up and is Councilman Gilbert.

So Councilman Gilbert is my predecessor, it's probably one of our longer service members of City Council.

And he called me and said, you know, why you didn't tell me about this uh preserved Chattanooga thing because I forgot that him and his wife are also historians along with him and his daughter here today.

And he educated me about an African American municipality in the county unincorporated called Turkey Foot Hollow.

So I went on this rabbit hole.

He's gonna come to the podium and then we're gonna hear from Greg Vital.

I'm just calling some people out in that order.

You guys are all welcome to come to the podium and to give your input and to ask the panel some questions, but we're gonna hear from Russell Gilbert and his daughter Skye.

There we go.

She's gonna come to the podium and the representative fightle.

And I also want to record recognize uh Dr.

Tadd, who also uh pastors of historic church, First Baptist Church of East Eighth Street, as you know, was one of the original sites where Martin Luther King came uh to um interview for the pastoral position there, um, and did not was not chosen there, and as you know, went on to Atlanta to begin the civil rights movement.

And so we have a lot of as as Irvin would say the whole story that we need to make sure that's incorporated.

So I'll bring Skye to kick off our public input session in about two to four minutes.

Just tell us your thoughts and what areas you would like to recommend for historic preservation.

You can turn that mic off.

Okay, yeah, because you're up to turn that one.

Which one?

Are you gonna turn that one up?

Hello, hello, hello.

It doesn't come back.

Push it back up like that.

Oh, okay.

Perfect.

Okay, so I'm here to talk about a brief history of Turkey Foot Hollow and Johnson Cemetery, written by Terry and Skyri Gilbert.

To understand why Johnson Cemetery matters, we must first understand the history of a town known as Turkey Foot Hollow.

Before the 1800s, the area was part of the Cherokee homeland and was home to indigenous black and brown families who lived long along with what is now Chattanooga's Highway 58 corridor.

Evidence preserved by historian Raymond Evans through family records and documented burials indicates that Turkey Foot Hollow existed long before the Civil War.

Families established homes, maintained burial traditions, built self-governed institutions, and developed a town rooted in enduring connections to the land.

Turkeyfoot Hollow was home to generations of indigenous black and brown families.

They built schools, churches, businesses, and civic institutions that sustained the town.

Although later developments altered the landscape, the history of Turkey Foot Hollow survives through its descendants in the sacred ground of Johnston Cemetery.

Johnson Cemetery contains some of the earliest documented burials associated with these indigenous families.

Among them is Sarah Sarah Batcher, whose burial is recorded in 1816.

According to family records and private historical sources, Willis and Eliza Johnson, an indigenous black couple, purchased land in Turkey Foot Hollow in 1867 from the estate of Carnel Lewis Shepherd, my sixth great grandfather.

In 1878, the Johnson family re-established what had previously been known as Turkey Foot Cemetery as Johnson Cemetery, preserving their ancestral burial grounds that remains one of the most significant surviving landmarks of the town.

Johnson Cemetery is more than a cemetery.

It is one of the last surviving physical connections to a historic town where indigenous black and brown people built institutions, preserved their culture, and created a lasting legacy.

Our goal is not only to preserve a historical cemetery, but also to preserve the history of Turkey Foot Hollow and honor the memory of the people who built it.

Thank you.

Can you guys give any historical context, Linda and Irvin, to what you know about Turkey Foot Hollow?

I know historically we have uh Bushtown has was recognized as the first African American municipality in the city of Chattanooga, but we have now discovered Turkey Foot Hollow in the unincorporated area of the county.

Councilman Gilbert.

Booger T Washington make you reverse your memory.

There you go.

Okay.

You know about Booker T Washington.

Do you have some context to that, Linda?

Well, it's it's it's interesting.

I've known the cemetery for a long time because it's one of my favorite places to visit because the stories that you can feel you truly you can feel being there.

I did not know the name of the community until Mr.

Gilbert and I began to talk about it, and I'm fired up about whatever it is that we need to do to make certain that those stories are told.

Raymond Evans did a lot of research of several different areas in the county that have been sort of forgotten.

And I think those stories have to be preserved, but not just preserved, but shared and told and become part of what becomes the community conscience.

Booker T Washington was a developed was developed by TVA, uh, where they flooded out the Johnson area and created Booger T Washington and Harrison Bay.

Booker T wasn't for blacks, Harrison Bay was for whites.

Also, people don't know about it goes for the Johnson part, it goes from Summit, in the Friday South, down to uh up to Harrison, and then off the Booker T Washington.

That's how large that part was.

But Colonel Lewis Shepard owned over 10,000 acres.

Part of East Brainerd Forest Mill, over there about used to be Rhine's Forest to the Ridge, up to Harrison to Summit, Hickory Valley.

That belongs to that one family, and we are descendants from that family.

And we want to see things preserved.

Uh, the dentant house that you go get your driving license tags in the middle that was part of the family home.

So it's a lot of Houston people don't know back in the day, so we're trying to bring that out so people can understand how that particular area, the town was thriving, would make it begin to be large and then got destroyed.

We're gonna we've got some comment uh about Bushtown.

Thank you.

I'm a proud resident of the Bushtown community, and yes, Bushtown was the first recognized municipality in Chattanooga and in the state of Tennessee.

It was organized in 1851.

And we're proud of that fact, and we wanted to be recognized and preserved with the history of Chattanooga.

The history of Chattanooga cannot exist without our stories being included.

We had the first black golf course because we were not allowed to play golf on the other golf courses.

We had all kinds of businesses up and down East Third Street.

But then it came in being destroyed by model cities, which took a lot of our houses and our business, and then urban renewal came through and just destroyed our community.

But there's still some old timers.

We're still here.

We're still there.

And we want our history of the community to be known.

And we want to preserve it.

Because we're proud of the history.

And Mr.

Overton, he's familiar with all of this.

And we just like Lincoln Park.

And we want to reclaim our boundaries as Bushtown because it goes from Milney to Orchard Knop up to Macaulay on the side of the Orch uh Park reservation to Macaulay down to Hall's Claw and ends at Citico.

But somehow it got distorted and said to East Third Street.

So we've got to get those records straight.

But we are proud of not only Bushtown and Lincoln Park, we're proud of Avondale and Churchville and Glenwood.

We are all a thriving black community, and we want our place in Chattanooga history to be recognized.

Next we'll have our Representative Greg Vido of State House District 29.

Well, thank you, Dennis, and uh it's an honor to be here.

I appreciate the invitation by Dennis and Ron and Cody to join you this evening.

Uh long before I was involved as a state representative as a businessman in the community.

I've always had a passion for history.

And uh I look around this audience, and there's a lot of new people here who have picked up the banner about our history and our heritage in this community, and I'm excited about that.

There's many of us that as I look at these lists, I'm part of history now because I think back in the early 80s as I served on the Erlanger board as a very young person with Irvin, uh, and we learned about Lincoln Park and the expansion of Erlanger in those days, and we're still facing those challenges.

But I also learned about other places in this community, some of them have been mentioned.

Places like Hill City that haven't been mentioned and Spears Avenue.

Those were forgotten places in Chattanooga.

We take it for granted that that's part of the North River and a wealthy enclave over there, but that was an area you didn't go.

That's right.

You didn't go.

And I'm gonna use an example as we try to identify places and neighborhoods that we want to protect.

There are wonderful places on this list, and I've been very fortunate and blessed in this community to have involved with many of them.

You know, I put the first facade easement on the dome building when it was bought out of bankruptcy.

I put a facade easement on the custom house when TVA wanted to sell it, I bought it and still own it.

That was the home of Chickamauga Chattanooga National Military Park, its headquarters, our weather station.

It was our first federal building on the Stone Fort Land that was used in the Civil War.

So there's a lot of history there.

But tonight, as we begin this process, we're going to identify the new places that over the next 30 years we must save and identify and protect and make part of our history.

Places like the communities in in Harrison and Turkey Creek in Hill City, and finally remember that Lincoln Park has a wonderful history.

We've got to bring them in.

And so it does take each of you to be involved.

It's not just the business community, it's not just the preservation community, it's the community groups.

City government can't do it alone.

They just passed a budget, they have more needs than money.

So community activism to help us understand what we said is our priorities and our history and heritage of what made this community important is what tonight is about.

So I thank the members of the city council, our historian, those that have been around forever, like Urban.

He's history.

He's history.

His walking history.

We ought to do oral history right there.

But no, and I just let me just leave it on that note.

We have wonderful people in this audience who have an oral history.

We can identify back to the Lincoln.

We ought to be recording that, not just in notes, but in verbal audio visual.

That's a good keeping that on record so that someday we can decipher that as we outline this history forward.

So applaud what you're doing, appreciate it.

As a member of the legislature, and I do represent most of the rural county, but I come down to Summit.

Uh we have Rosenwall schools, two or three in my district that we're working on protecting those sites.

We're so much history, guys, but we got to prioritize it and take it forward for the next 30 years, just like we made history important things for the last 30 years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Here, here.

Are there any more questions or comments for the audience?

There's about two or the more people I'm gonna take the mic to, but I just want to make sure that while we have some.

You want to come to the podium?

Because I'm coming to Dr.

Harms and coming to Edward.

Uh uh Pastor Terry, Dr.

Pastor Terry Ladd.

I'll give up.

I think Rick, if I take this mic away, they can still be picked up on that one.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Um, this has been uh awesome tonight.

Um I would like um everyone to know that first Baptist Church, this is our 160th year.

Our church building is a hundred and forty-one years old.

Uh Todd came to visit, and we're in the process of, I think Dennis or someone said uh progress and preservation.

Uh so our plan at our on our campus is to build 80 unit affordable housing, but in the basement of our church, we're gonna have a community center where they have uh health clinics, uh health and wellness, computer literacy.

Uh so we're really excited about preservation, but we're also excited about progress.

And my question is, um I think as we think about preservation, we also need to think about progress as we talk about these historic districts because they do put some limitations on what you can build and how you can build.

So I think I'd like to have some conversation about uh that conversation about not only preservation, but how does preservation and progress marry to help continue to preserve the buildings uh with within common capital?

Thank you so much.

Does anybody want to tackle that about what it what is the investment look like?

So after we take something off or we recognize something uh from the registry as a protect the historical district, what is that investment look like?

Is it more funding from state representative from the state?

Do how do we what does that look like as far as incentives and protection onces from a fiduciary's perspective?

It is a different, it's different than just building because you're limited uh in certain things that you can do.

So we we run into a lot of that without you know one thing I guess I would say is that with um when it comes to locally designated historic districts, not national register, you know.

You were you're talking about the ones that have regulations, right?

With what you can and can't do with your property, you know, it's one of those things where there are trade-offs, right?

And I mean, they've done a lot of economic studies over the years.

Some people think it's gonna lower their property value.

In fact, it's it's typically the opposite that areas where people suddenly uh start to look at and want to protect and invest in the property uh values actually go up.

Um, but people need to know, do need to know what they're getting into.

And I think it's also important not to drag a neighborhood kicking and screaming into local designation.

You really have to get a substantial majority of property owners to be on board if you really wanted to work well.

So I think that's important too, so that people can learn what are the benefits of having this, but also realize that there are certain restrictions, and it does only uh impact what you do to the exterior of your building and and typically what's really visible from a street okay.

Hello, Jackett Simpson district now.

I kind of want to piggyback off of the whole concept period.

I'll start off with Lincoln Park.

You can't talk, you cannot talk Negro League baseball without talking Lincoln Park.

Not only did I see the men play, I played on the women's team.

I'm broke down now.

But in my prime, I was off.

You understand what I'm saying?

Now I okay.

Trust me.

Don't let me get that glove out, okay?

But I'm just I just want it to be understood.

I have no place to care.

I can't care my kids out there, my grandkids and great-grandkids.

Look, your granny played out here.

It's nothing now no more.

That was the place to be.

Okay, new Tina.

That's what it was called then up here off of Hawkinsville Baptist Church, the big pill up there, Clack Kelly's on that property.

We all down in Dewbury, Blowing Spring, Kennister.

Because we did not have that many women's teams here in Chattanooga.

So we would just go and play wherever we could get a game going.

You know, a lot of teams, South Pittsburgh, they had a team over there for me, and we go over there and play.

But it's hard to see this now because it's just terrible as far as the property.

It hurts to ride over there to see it and know how it was.

It's about like in Bushtown with the nine hole golf course.

You mentioned something about that.

They're looking at you what?

When?

Yeah.

It was a black nine-hole golf course there.

All your doctors, your lawyers, your school teachers, they lived all around this surrounding area.

Played over there.

If you go through that now, you would almost break down and crack to know that the city have let this property go this bad.

We're talking about 25 acres of land.

Yeah, you got a rec center there.

It's standing there.

But everything around it is a neighborhood.

He can verify this.

He can verify it.

And the reason why I'm talking, I retired from parks and wreck.

So basically, I done seen everybody's kids go come through the cellars and got them ready and okay, you ready to play bird?

Suit up, get in, okay?

So now it's no area for the kids really, just the everyday playing kids.

I'm not talking about that AAU and that D1 and all that.

I'm talking about little Johnny that go to first base over here on the third base.

You know, that's the crew that you want to get back into the game.

And if we don't get a hole of this, and we talking about these kids and know where to go, we got to get back to the basics.

Thank you, Ms.

Simpson.

I have a I guess I have a question the most part.

I think it's an element that I think we haven't talked about, and it's an element of ownership.

And if you don't own the property or own the land, it's hard to really say anything about the preservation.

And the person that owns the land has to buy in to the preservation and say, hey, you know what?

I'm willing to do it.

And the council members, they get beat up behind that because the really defense they have is saying we're not gonna rezone it for what you want.

And the community, by them not understanding a lot of times that if the city doesn't own the property, it's hard to save that parcel of land.

And like with Lincoln Park, we all want that done tomorrow.

We wish we can invest 20 million dollars in it, but Erlanga owns it.

So in that instance, it's a negotiation that you have to sit at the table because it comes down to economics as well.

Because what are we gonna get for this property and what are you gonna give us in return?

And it becomes a debate situation, and the community is still sitting there wondering, hey, why we haven't done nothing as simple and plain as day to see that this land should be preserved and built up.

But the city council is really hard for them to do anything because they can't come and just say we're gonna take eminent domain and take it, you know, because then we get into a whole nother level of issues.

So I guess that's my thing.

What is the process with the buy-in?

Because even with Fort Wood, I know some families that have historically lived in Fort Wood for years, and now they can't keep up with the historical preservation, and now they're about to lose their home.

So, how do we create that balance and how do we create?

I guess a nonprofit where we can invest money to help those neighbors or those people in those homes say, hey, you can come to this fund and get your house historically preserved so that you can keep your home because then you get to a level of displacement as well.

So those are a couple of things I like to ask.

That that is really, really good.

I want to, and we're gonna take two more responses because we're at our 730 mark, and we have refreshments for you over here.

But when we talk about historic preservation, I'm just gonna speak very candidly.

It is off oftentimes in more affluent communities and where there are still descendants of historic neighborhoods, because we have design guidelines, and those are often hard to keep up with.

What do you say to communities that may be of lower income but that need to be preserved?

How do they get into the preservation arena without us displacing people?

Because that's economic justice is very, very important to this.

And I want to see if you guys could touch up on that just briefly.

You know, one thing I'll mention, uh Fort Wood was was just mentioned, and uh, you know, with your historic preservation ordinance, which regulates the whole design review process with your guidelines, there is a provision for economic hardship.

So in other words, if the commission makes a decision and an owner is required to do something, if they can make the case for economic hardship, then sometimes they can get some relief.

So just you know, one thing to keep in mind.

I think it is it's hard to come up with that economic hardship, you know, and all of that.

But it just looks like to me that for a community that's paid a tremendous value uh to the city of Chattanooga.

Uh and when you look at, well, I was born next door, Erlinga Hospital.

Mama walked out the back door into her back door.

But I was born in Lincoln Park.

And I I know a lot of people, a lot of our residents who grew up in Lincoln Park, and when I look around the city today, many of those people made great contributions to our community.

And I think it's that it comes to a point maybe where we just have to say, we just gonna do something to preserve that neighborhood.

They preserved Fort Wood like that looked like to me.

They said there should be a preservation district, and lo and behold, there was one.

It looks like to me, we can shake it.

I think Lincoln Park is more worthy, okay.

It may not be as worthy as Turkey Creek, okay.

Turkey foot.

Turkey foot.

Okay, but when you look at the when you look at the economic impact of what has come out of that community and the people that have made great contributions to our society here in Chattanooga, should that be should be worthy of spending a lot of dollars to preserve that.

Uh my hat's off to Mr.

Bessie Schmidt, she's no longer with us.

Miss Bessie Smith fought hand, tooth and nail to keep Erlingo from buying all that property.

Okay.

Erlango bought that property, but there was an underlying motive in that as well, is that people from the outside was trying to buy that property.

So you had to find a way to keep the ownership of those parcels of land as encumbered to the neighborhood people as you could.

So the neighborhood people were offered some incentive dollars to buy those houses in Lincoln Park.

And as a result of that, that's stabilized.

Okay.

So I think where there's a wheel, I think what I'm saying, where there's a wheel, there's a weight.

And that's why we're here tonight.

Uh, Todd, you want to add to that?

Oh, I will, because um, there have been so many important things said here tonight.

But I do want you to know that there are great examples across this country about how communities are dealing with some of the issues that are being discussed, and we know that they're working, so I you know, it may be that we need to bring these things to Chattanooga, which we can identify through this planning process.

So, for example, um, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the local preservation group actually owns houses.

They have a housing bank, and the whole purpose of that is that they want to keep the rental rates locked in so that they just don't skyrocket in order to help people have a home and to stay in place.

Uh historic Charleston Foundation, they have a program where they provide grants to repair homes so that people can stay in their home, and then what they do is they, you know, half of that grant is um what's the term I'm looking for?

Like over a five-year period, it just goes away.

And as long as you continue to live there, when you sell the property, half of what the property sells for goes back into a fund to help other people with their properties.

When I was in Knoxville, uh there was a small grant program that the city helped support.

Uh but Knox Heritage, their preservation group administered.

And they were at that time offering, I think it was two to five thousand dollar grants uh to people who were in the lower to middle income range who lived in a historic district that had guidelines.

But when you work on those elements on the outside of these historic homes, it costs a little bit more to do the window the right way or to get this particular porch detail fixed.

So those grants would go to just help those people do that to just go buy the supplies and it would waive the historic zoning commission application fee too, which is a little thing.

So we can look at programs across the country and see what might fit and help you know particular neighborhoods here.

And there is a lesser uh form of uh overlay called conservation zoning that only reviews new construction, demolition, and additions on the visible parts of uh the facade.

So that's a very now common and popular, less restrictive type of uh overlay that's uh widely used.

And it's a lot easier to sell the property owners.

I live in a conservation zone in Nashville, fills in one too.

Cool.

I also want to uh Casey Klein, who's is our where's Casey?

Are you in the oh there you are?

Casey uh works on she worked on our new guidelines that the city council just adopted.

She works in the I don't even know what department, the land.

At land development office, Casey works with the uh the Historic Zoning Commission, and we'll be working with the city council and Todd.

As we leave here tonight, we're we're talking cheap, right?

And so what can we do to put our words into action?

Because this is what happens what I've learned as a and I'm not speaking for other council people.

We'll get up here and we'll say we love preservation, we we love Lincoln Park, and then nothing happens.

Right, that's right.

We're not this council, as you guys watch this every Tuesday, I'm sure you guys get a kick out of it.

But we are we we I'll get to you, David.

We want to move on this.

Meaning when we leave here tonight, our council as in in that's enshrined in our charter allows us to designate locally historic districts.

We're going to rely on you, but we will not allow grass to go under our feet any longer.

And institutions like Lincoln Park, Turkey Foot, even some of our uh historical architectural designs of R.H.

Hunt that's in our federal courthouse building, the medical arts building, this is no dig on the Presbyterian church, they're trying to tear that down.

That is a travesty.

Had those buildings been protected as a locally designated historic district or place, they would have had to have gone before the Chattanooga Historic Zoning Commission and said, can we do this?

And we have not done it.

So as well as you guys know, this is just not a town hall meeting to talk about how much we love these buildings.

We are here in the back because when we leave here today, we will get with our attorneys and we will talk about neighborhoods like Glenwood, Bushtown, buildings.

It's gonna make some people mad.

But it's okay.

Part of this process is public input.

If you care about historic preservation, you should care enough to go before the commission and to state your case on why you should not tear down a building.

Okay?

I'm gonna get to you right in a second, Donald.

Uh glover, you and the work running over time.

Uh I said, David Crutcher, excuse me.

Go ahead.

This mic is you have an honor to God to be able to come here today and speak.

Uh I've been hearing some of the things been going on in different communities and all, but Chattanooga diversity is its strength.

And we are so recognized throughout the country that it's unreal.

I have over, I'm from a very large family.

I have over 240 nieces and nephews going on down to the great, great, great.

And a lot of times they'll call me, they hear something about Chattanooga, they saw it in a magazine, they heard it on the news.

And there are so many good things that make me feel so proud to be from Chattanooga.

When I hear my nieces and nephews talking about what great things are going on here, and I appreciate that, and I tell them, you know, we can be as strong as we want when we work together, no matter what group it is, uh what area it is in.

Now I do want to thank my classmate Mary um and Mary Morris and Jackie Simpson who I worked with for many years for coming up here and saying their piece on different things.

I'm so proud of them.

They've been very advocates of you know anything that goes on good.

Uh I do want to say this, and Mr.

Uberton, who um good friends with our kids play ball together, and uh we always have some conversations when we get a chance to be around one another, and he's just an outstanding person and always looked up at him as a hero because he had done a lot for the Chattanooga community.

Uh but he made a statement a few minutes ago as if like if you really want to, if you do something about you do something like if you really want to do something, you can do it.

Oh, whether it's will, there's a way.

Yes.

I use that sometime, and I used to talk with my kids about it, and I would share it with other kids.

If you really want to do something in life, you'll find a way.

If you really don't want to do it, you'll find an excuse.

So with that being said, Lincoln Park, when I was a little boy, eight, nine, ten years old.

I used to go out to Lincoln Park and I would see the guys playing baseball.

There were so many activities out there.

There was a swimming pool, there was the bear and the monkey, the goldfish, uh, you had the candy shop, the swing.

That's right.

It was just so many entertaining things there.

Uh, little restaurant there, we go get food and listen to the jukebox.

It was so exciting for me to grow up in that atmosphere to see my friends coming there weekend after weekend.

People coming in from Atlanta and Birmingham, Huntsville, to play baseball.

It excited me so much.

I just really wanted to try to play baseball.

I was scared of the baseball.

So we had to sort of figure something out here.

So I started practicing, it got better.

One day I was able to play on that field.

And the first game I played in, I hit two home runs.

And you know what?

After that, I saw some little kids coming up and say, hey, that was good.

That was great.

The same thing I would say to guys that I saw early on when I was growing up in it.

That place was awesome for our community.

We really couldn't go to Warner Park during those times.

It was not there for us, but eventually that was a great place to go later on to do something.

But Lincoln Park has so much history in it.

You feel it when you just say the word Lincoln Park.

It just vibrates through your entire body because I know what it meant to our community, to the people who just came there.

People come there to picnic from out of town.

They knew about Lincoln Park, no matter where you went.

And it was just such a great place to be surrounded by so many good things.

Also, I got to say this Hill City.

I was born in Hill City.

I still live in Hill City.

A great place.

It's going by the name of North Shore.

I don't have any problem with that because different names sort of changed around.

But we knew it at North Chattanooga and Hill City.

It's changed around a lot, but I remember going out and getting cold drink bottles, taking the Kroger with my friends, getting two cents, going to the crystal to get us some hamburger, walk across the river to go to uh 9th Street at the time, to go to the Liberty Theater.

We get in for about 15 cents.

Those things we imported to our people.

Our kids today need something to remember.

They need things to grab a hold to.

I tell my kids about my grandkids, how great Chattanooga is.

And it is a great place to raise kids.

We got a generation of kids, though, that are being unhealthy because they don't get out and do things.

They want to play on the computers and do the well and good for education.

But if they don't get that body to move it and doing things, they are going to become an unhealthy group.

We've got to do something about that to get them involved.

And most of y'all know me from recreation, and I love the recreation.

That's what kept me out of trouble coming up.

I didn't get off any drugs, drinking, smoking because of recreation.

I wanted to be the best person I could be in my sports arena that I could be.

Now, when I speak to kids, I tell them about that.

I was actually one of 60 players recognized by Major League Baseball, Robert Manfield, sent us a letter inviting 60 people throughout the country to come to Birmingham in the year of 24.

I was one of those.

Also from Chattanooga, James Tatum, Stan Swalford, and Charles White.

The four of us went down there, and we even met with him.

He talked about how there are not as many African Americans in baseball now.

What can we do?

And they are going to put money in the different cities throughout the country.

They already started that to help promote baseball, especially in the African American community because there were so many great players that came up.

Now I look at them as legends.

They call them.

Lincoln Park, let's hold on to that place as much as we can, that history because it was a great place to go.

Thank you very kind.

All right, thank you.

If you can be brief, I don't like to cut people off, but please respect the time and be brief.

And then Mr.

Edwards and uh Dr.

Holmes, if you don't mind.

I'm calling you on the spot.

Please be brief.

I promise you, I'm not long-winded like my classmates.

Okay.

I'm Janice Gooden.

And it's kind of ironic that I keep running into the representative.

He mentioned the Rosenwall schools, of which I attended.

Roland W.

Hayes.

And there just happens to be an exhibit at the Bessie.

It started yesterday and it goes through August 3rd.

But it's the building of Right Future exhibit from Tennessee State Museum along with Fisk University.

So there were eight Rosenwall schools in Hamilton County.

Roland W.

Hayes.

Chickamauga became Shepard.

Georgetown.

Georgetown, of course.

Can't remember them all right now.

Bakewell.

That's where my mother was born.

Yeah.

So if you want to know more, go see the exhibit.

It's gonna be there till August 3rd.

Thank you, baby.

Thank you.

Dr.

Holmes, I'm gonna bring the mic to you.

Do you want to say some brief words, please?

Yeah, well, I'll wrap this up.

But I want to thank Mr.

Bird because he was gonna take half of my speech.

And that has to do with um Erlinger owning the property.

But uh council um the councilman told me that this process did not necessarily require them to take part.

I was hoping that we would have a representative here from Erlinger.

But I am history.

I'm from Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

So when we talk about Booker T Washington, Carver, Tuskegee Airmen and all of that.

That's a part of my history.

I even met uh Roland Hayes as well as George Washington Carver, and didn't get a chance to meet Booger T Washington, but his daughter taught me music.

But anyway, uh I want to commend this group for doing what you you would like to do.

I hope it that it does materialize.

When I came to, when I retired to Chattanooga in 2001, they had a Red Hat Society, and I was fortunate to get on the bus.

I learned about it two days before, and they took me all over Chattanooga talking about the history of Chattanooga to a grave up in Missionary Ridge where we have African Americans and all around, it was just a wonderful history, and I loved it as a result of that trip, knowing learning about Chattanooga and its rich African American history.

Then I was on the historic River to Ridge Plan, area plan, and I learned about Bushtown.

And I will I had an opportunity to go with the Rangers up to the park that was mentioned earlier.

We have a lot of rich history here in Chattanooga, and it needs to be memorialized.

And what better place than Lincoln Park?

I even heard Bessie Smith sing in New York when I lived there.

So I just think you have a lot of rich history here in Chattanooga.

Let's do it.

Could you pass the microphone towards me to John Caddy?

And then that would close us out for public comments.

Okay.

Okay.

Real quickly, um, we talked about some of the smaller towns in uh Hill City.

We got to remember that uh a lot of these towns were first settled by former black soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

And that's very important because we played a significant role in the history of uh Chattanooga and how it's built.

When you talk about uh 9th Street and the business that flourished through that and made it the lively town it was, it really started with the black soldiers.

So the soldiers uh who came here who served under the Union, uh, some of those union uh generals had industrial ties to the north.

And when they saw the rivers and the waterway, they got excited about what they could do with industry here.

And they built mills along the river, and those mills became what U.S.

pipe combustion engineering, uh and on a wheeler and things like that.

They didn't realize that they needed a workforce because most of the people who were with the Confederacy had moved out.

They had to use the black soldiers, and those black soldiers went directly to work for people they had served under in the Civil War.

And they were part of this industrial complex that became the dynamo of the South, and they built homes uh on the on North Chattanooga.

Maybe I've heard of some uh bearer sites in these new communities that's just been discovered.

I just want to make that point that we owe a lot.

There are 148 graves marked in the National Cemetery of Black soldiers that are used they served in.

There's some that are unmarked, they could not identify.

Sorry, by black soldiers, the hundred, the uh 44th, the 42nd, I believe, who is a working unit.

They built the national cemetery.

So when I looked at a survey uh recently, and I'm gonna close, that uh one of the places that people are stopping by throughout uh Tennessee are places that have Civil War history, and African Americans are part of their civil war history.

Just remember that.

Just hold that, you can just hold that mic, we're gonna use this one.

All right, well, that concludes our public comment section.

Um, I want to thank again, Todd and your crew.

Um throughout this process, as this is the uh public kickoff meeting, there is a link.

Um, that you can survey link.

Um, and I don't know how is there something to scan out there for that or there is there's a QR code that you can scan or you can visit our website at Preserve Chattanooga.com and it links to the survey they created should take three to five minutes at most.

And we'll share that survey on the city council website.

They have also created an organization to where you can become a member where you can pay to help support preserve Chattanooga.

And so uh please put your resources, times, and talents into this effort.

Um, I believe in this effort, and this council believes in this effort, and we're gonna continue to support you financially.

Um hopefully we can get some partnerships from the state.

Sorry to put you on the spot, Greg, but uh, he already does a lot personally, but I know he will be a willing partner.

So thank you all, Irvin, Irvington, Irvin Overton, Linda, Phil and Phil, and Todd for being a part of this panel.

Uh thank you to Ray Bassett with WTC and all of you who came out tonight.

Uh we do have refreshments.

Uh, I would like for us to kind of fellowship.

We have there's a lot of storytelling.

There's a lot of homework assignments for us to do.

I know you all have been taking notes about Turkey Foot Hollow.

We need to discover a little bit more about that place and find out where some of the resources are so that when we do create these landmarks and we preserve them into our city ordinance, we need to know exact boundaries.

And so there's homework for us to do.

Um, I'm not gonna turn this over.

Um last uh they will be the last to speak.

Councilman uh Harvey and Councilman uh Ron Elliott will close us out with closing remarks.

Um I promise I'm not crying.

Allergies are just not my friend.

Um Councilman Clark, he's given a lot of people shout-outs today, but I want to take the time to give him a shout-out for this because without him.

He was gracious enough to put our name on the fly because we're strong allies, but this is his effort.

And I don't want our effort.

I want him to really be recognized.

For those who don't know me, my name is uh Ron Delhi.

I have the pleasure of serving as counselors for the 9th district.

For those who don't know what that is, that's okay.

I got some own constituents, they only know what this is.

The best way I can describe it, I have all seven miles of missionary bridge, and most of the neighborhoods that flank both sides, right?

Have a very unique district.

I have some uh Chattanooga's most beautiful neighborhoods, but I also have a lot of communities that they left behind, overlooked and other resources, right?

Um when I stepped into this uh pool of applying for this job or running for office, I heard from my decision very quickly about the love they have for their communities, about how they want to hold on to that, right?

And you also hear a lot of fear about what's to come.

You know, our communities in the world are changing.

How do we make sure we don't lose what makes us special?

Right?

And I held on tight to that, right?

I tell people often we have to lean into these conversations.

Uh your district nine, you've heard me say this before, and you're either cooking in the kitchen or you're on media, right?

Because things are gonna move and happen whether you're in the conversation or not.

I'll give you a couple anecdotes on the promise you five.

So y'all are a lot of those thoughts.

When I first came in, Missionary Bridge, Todd lives in Israel, so he's one of my physicians.

One of the first things they told us, they said, I want our road restored.

I said, Yeah, we can get it repaid.

They said, no, no, no, no, no.

Not repaid.

And we want to restore it.

I said, Oh, okay.

I don't think I really understood what that meant.

Because I, if you go to the ridge, you will find families that have been in those homes for generations.

Well before it got popular, before it became a main attraction for the city.

And one thing that makes that ridge special, it's the historic anchor it is, especially with uh dating back to some of our old outfits here.

You look at it, northern South Curse Road, we have that whole concrete deposit.

For 20, 30 years, people have been saying we want our concrete fixed.

Alright.

And I am proud to say that Missionary Ridge, and our first fundamentally 2.5 million dollars to start concrete restoration plan for the rich.

Dr.

Holmes mentioned our river to ridge, which covers a good chunk of my district.

Now, I wasn't an engaged, I wasn't, I just got it.

I mean like 12 years, so they took the hurdle of that, and I'm just picking up the work.

But that is probably one of our most in-depth uh works as a community where these folks really were able to decide what do these communities look like, right?

How do we make sure we don't wake up in five to ten years and no longer recognize our communities because it's gonna turn over our heads, right?

And even today, as we start looking towards playing Chattanooga and council having to make decisions on that, that is something I can stand firmly by and say, hey, we're not touching this one.

That one's already been decided by the people, right?

I have Glass Street in my district, right?

Glass Street is one of my largest projects uh in my term.

We are going to be installing an arts cultural district in Glass Street, one of the city's first.

The concept is how to use arts and culture to revitalize the community while minimizing the displacement of those people.

Today, I wasn't dressed like this all day.

We have a city-owned property on Glass Street that's been abandoned for years.

So to help with city crew, we can crack the locks, we'll actually want to go see what does it look like.

Y'all know we've got a couple strips of buildings over there.

I was hoping it was a little bit better, but it was not.

The floors are completely collapsed.

There's I've probably been breathing in the specs of some other type of toxins for the betterment of about an hour or so.

The ceilings are gone, the roof is collapsed, but the bones are there, right?

I think I have uh we're in a little bit luckier position because that's a city old building.

Everybody else will probably come in and tear that building out.

Now the task is on myself to make sure that we can figure out how to clean this place up, revitalize it, and make sure that it can continue on for years to come.

I say these things to like to make one point, and that's advocacy, right?

You all are showing up around an issue that most people wouldn't give two thoughts about, and that advocacy, it matters.

When Missionary Ridge told me you better not put asphalt on that road, I heard them.

I said they'll probably uh recall me quicker than I could think.

Right?

Uh just this week we saw what it looks like when communities who did not have water or wells were filling the Rack Room Mountain.

They advocated.

They've been advocating for a long time that we were able to start helping provide a community in great need.

Right?

Yesterday we sat in here and saw folks from the arts community, folks who work with child uh early learning, fighting for the city to be attentive to their issues.

So I ask you, do not let your advocacy stop here.

Continue to fight for your community, frame your neighbors, because that's the only way we make this a better city.

Thank y'all so much.

Thank you, Councilman.

I'll be brief.

I know everybody said that when they got up here, but I will be.

I agree with Representative Vado.

I think we need to do some sort of oral audio visual movie or something.

You guys get on that.

I mean, this is great.

I think we need to take a field trip out to Turkey Foot and Bushtown.

I mean, we need to, I think that'd be a lot of fun.

We can go to It's a good America 250 process.

Absolutely.

We can go walk around some cemeteries.

I call Lenin Moss Minds with us.

Linda, what have you been doing?

Been walking around cemetery.

Alright, well, let's go.

Well, thank you all for being here tonight.

My name's Cody Harvey.

I'm the representative for the fourth district of the city council, and that is uh Hamilton Place, essentially.

East Brainerd, just draw a big square around Hamilton Place.

Uh want to thank my fellow council members uh for putting this together.

Um for me, preservation is personal.

Um, I'm like you.

I was born at Erlanger Hospital just right down the road.

I'm a Chattanooga native, born and bred.

Um my 93-year-old grandmother is still living and can tell me stories about when she was shopping at the old Lovemans building, and we were sitting on her couch the other day and said I remember when I bought this at Fowler Brothers downtown.

So those buildings still exist.

The shops aren't there anymore, but the buildings still exist.

My dad tells me stories about how you're scared to death riding across the walnut street bridge in a car.

Um so these historic things are still around us, and it's so important that we keep them alive.

Um otherwise we lose our character.

We lose who we are.

Um so it that's why it's so important to me.

I can't imagine a Chattanooga without the Tivoli Theater.

I can't imagine a Chattanooga without the Chattanooga choocheo.

Uh these are things that are essential uh to who we are as Chattanooga natives.

Um so again, um Dennis Clark, kudos to you.

This is an awesome night.

It was well orchestrated, so thank you.

Uh we look forward to hearing from you all and uh what the plan looks like.

Um, and we uh we're here to we're here to help.

So uh thank you all very much.

Thank you for coming.

Um refreshments outside.

In the conference room, outside the conference for the conference.

Refreshments outside the conference room there.

Thank you all.

Um we look forward to hearing from you.

Have a good night.

All right, okay.