Smaller Cities Revitalize Their Downtowns
Published Mar 03, 2008
Cleveland, Tenn., is one of the cities designated a Main Street community to attract more private investment.
In the regional hub city of Chattanooga, the downtown renaissance has been well documented regionally, nationally and even internationally.
Many people know about attractions such as the Tennessee Aquarium and the Hunter Museum of American Art. In 2007, the city revamped and reopened the Market Street Bridge, and an upscale riverfront complex called 417 Frazier Avenue is currently under development at a cost of $20 million.
But smaller cities in the region also are revitalizing their downtown business districts, including Chickamauga and Dalton, Ga., Murphy, N.C., and Cleveland and Dayton, Tenn. Some communities – Dalton, Cleveland and Dayton among them – have obtained state designations as official Main Street communities to secure public-improvement grants aimed at spurring private investment.
Local leaders say it is essential to give people good reasons to head downtown other than to pay taxes, renew auto license tags or go to court.
“Getting people to come downtown – especially in a small town – can be a difficult thing to do,” says Chickamauga City Manager John Culpepper. “It often means reinventing yourself in order to have a robust downtown. And reinventing ourselves is exactly what Chickamauga is starting to do.”
Culpepper says Chickamauga is mostly known for being the site where the Chickamauga Battlefield is located. The Battle of Chickamauga was a major Civil War encounter in September 1863 that involved more than 150,000 Union and Confederate soldiers.
“In 1889, there was a reunion of soldiers from that battle who came back here, and they all helped dedicate Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park,” he says. “The vision of those veteran soldiers in 1889 was to make Chickamauga a true Civil War tourism destination, which it has ultimately become to a small degree. But now we want to take things a step further.”
Culpepper says Chickamauga was a textile mill town during much of the 1900s, then evolved into more of a bedroom community for Chattanooga as the textile industry dwindled.
“And now, with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War coming up in 2011, we are jumping on that heritage tourism bandwagon by giving ourselves a new slogan,” he says. “Our branding will be ‘Chickamauga: The Gettysburg of the South.’ Civil War enthusiasts who will come to study the war in Georgia must start at Chickamauga Battlefield, and we are positioning our city to be a player for those heritage tourism dollars.”
Besides the battlefield, Chickamauga has historic sites such as Lee and Gordon’s Mill along with the antebellum Gordon Lee Mansion with slave quarters still intact. In addition, all of the city’s north-south avenues are named for Union and Confederate generals.
“A lot of the smaller downtowns in this region experience ebbs and flows of success, and now it’s time for Chickamauga to be successful once again,” Culpepper says. “We have undertaken a $1.5 million streetscape project, and our town has a beautiful look like it did 60 years ago. We feel good about where we are right now and are confident about where we are trying to go.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by Wes Aldridge
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