WHAT TO DO WITH TVA COMPLEX?

The Tennessee Valley Authority is seeking community feedback on what to do with its 1,149,000-square-foot, fivebuilding, nearly 40-year-old downtown complex, and it wants your opinion.

It’s offering four alternatives on what might be done, but we think what’s more intriguing is what happens on the site if, as several of the alternatives suggest, the public utility divests itself of all or part of the property.

So put on your thinking caps, and be creative. We have some thoughts — a few partially tongue in cheek — as well.

In the meantime, TVA wants to hear whether you think it should: 1) keep and maintain its complex indefinitely; 2) demolish the buildings and sell the land; 3) sell or convey the buildings and land “as-is, where-is”; 4) retain and renovate part of the space and then do either option 2 or 3 with the rest of the space; or 4a, 4b, 4c and 4d) retain four, three, two or one specific building and retrofit them for various current uses and sell or convey the rest.

Since TVA is already building a new Systems Operation Center in the southern tip of Meigs County that is expected to open this fall, according to the utility’s website, and many of the utility’s former downtown employees now work from home, alternative No. 1 doesn’t make much sense to us.

On the other hand, keeping an inefficient, underutilized complex seems exactly like what a federal bureaucracy might do, but we hope not.

Option No. 2, in which the utility would raze the buildings, seems like it would make it easier to sell the land because it would enable potential buyers to better see the footprint they’re considering.

However, if the downtown land is the prime real estate we think it is, buyers might be willing to do their own razing and/ or retrofitting of the buildings to suit their purposes.

Whether options 2 and 3 are considered probably should depend on what prices TVA might be offered in either scenario.

The various options under No. 4, it seems to us, already should have been factored into the request for proposals TVA sent out in July 2023. Either the utility needs part of the space, or it doesn’t. And it either makes sense to retrofit the space for what is needed, or it doesn’t.

But let’s say the utility takes option No. 2, razes its buildings and puts the land up for sale. What are the possibilities?

› The space has been suggested as one of several options for a new federal courthouse, for which $218 million already has been authorized by Congress for site acquisition, design and construction. Of the courthouse options given, we always thought the TVA site made the most sense. And if the federal government just conveyed (rather than sold) the site, it could save on site acquisition cost and perhaps give local federal judges Travis McDonough, Susan Lee, Charles Atchley, Christopher Steger and Curtis Collier an indoor swimming pool to enjoy when they’re not deciding cases.

› Downtown parking is one of visitors’ biggest gripes.

Although it certainly wouldn’t be considered the highest and best use of the land, and it’s not close to the riverfront, a parking garage would solve some of the complaints of both workers and tourists.

› During the discussion of the new Chattanooga Lookouts’ stadium in recent months, one of the alternatives suggested for the foundry site was an arboretum. The TVA complex site is probably too small for a true arboretum, but wouldn’t a mini-version (for which an admission price is charged) in a metropolitan downtown be refreshing for both Chattanoogans and visitors?

› Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly frequently mentions his One Chattanooga plans, talks a lot about affordable housing, and has secured some funds to help with such housing, so perhaps he could get the land conveyed to the city and challenge builders to erect a modern housing complex with perhaps 50% or more affordable housing.

› Talk has bubbled up in the last couple of years about the enlarging of the Chattanooga Convention Center. The razing of the TVA Building would allow an expansion of the convention center across Chestnut Street to the site of TVA’s current Monteagle Place and/or Lookout Place buildings.

› The space is large enough for several hotels, though it seems like we can’t possible fill the ones we have. Developers might have a different take on that.

› New tourist attraction: the TVA history center. Interactive space recounts the history of how the public utility brought power and light to many Tennessee Valley communities and harnessed power, all within a relative few years, and how it’s taken more than two decades to complete a replacement Chickamauga Dam lock.