One Walker's focus on Chickamauga changes

Chickamauga’s hosting of the Walker County Chamber of Commerce’s quarterly One-Walker imitative allowed city leaders to tout some of the “good things” already finished or now underway in the historic town.

“Chickamauga had a good year financially,” city council member Evitte Parrish told about 60 attending the gather at the Gordon Lee Mansion.

Parrish highlighted the recently renovated Senior Center and a justcompleted landscaping project, near the Food Lion shopping center, that serves as a gateway to the city.

The city’s purchase of the former Hutcheson hospital clinic is proving its worth — and value — as CHI Memorial, which leases the facility and provides general practice and pediatric medical service reports about 250 individuals visit the office each week.

Looking forward, Parrish said the newly formed Chickamauga Community Growth Organization is bringing civic groups, local organizations and churches together to coordinate community activities.

In similar fashion, the city is using a $50,000 Lyndhurst Foundation grant and a $5,000 grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority to fund creation of a comprehensive growth plan for the city. Parrish said the plan, spearheaded by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government, will help the residents and elected officials determine “where the city is and where it’s going.”

While the overall plan on the city’s future has yet to move beyond brainstorming, plans for replacing Gordon Lee High School are underway.

“The school is the glue that holds the community together,” school board chairman Corky Jewell told OneWalker attendees.

Alumni delight in praising the school and Chickamauga’s schools having won state and national recognition for excellence reinforce their pride. Among its accolades, the school has been recognized as among the top nine in Georgia and its board is in the top 10 of the National School Boards Association’s 10th anniversary Digital School Districts Survey.

What most interested his audience, and has been most talked about in the town, were plans Jewell showed for replacing the 85year-old high school.

Chickamauga voters recently approved a special purpose local option sales tax for education (ESPLOST) that should generate about $3 million in revenue and secure roughly $12 million in state funding for a new school.

But not just any school. Key to the public’s willingness to tax themselves for a new school — and in May adopting a referendum that guarantees about $2.5 million earmarked for demolition of the old high school — was a promise that the new construction will replicate the exterior look of the building it replaces.

Jewell said the work will begin this summer, possibly delaying the resumption of classes this fall, and is expected to take about 30 months to finish.