THE RIVERWALK IS INVESTMENT IN TOMORROW
The Tennessee Riverpark just gets better and better. A new 12-foot wide Riverwalk expansion opened Friday to meander from Ross’s Landing downtown, along the river’s edge of Cameron Hill condos and the industrial Southside behind Alstom and Wheland foundries and along the Tennessee River facing Moccasin Bend, under Interstate 24 and around the ghost-town hulk of U.S. Pipe to Broad Street near the foot of Lookout Mountain.
Along the way is incredible potential for this newest city greenway that connects Tennessee River beauty to the industrial chic of Chattanooga’s present, past and future.
The newest extension makes our Tennessee Riverwalk a worthy and unbroken 13-mile trek from the Chickamauga Dam to within a stone’s throw of St. Elmo and and the iconic Incline Railway.
When the last half mile or so of the Riverwalk is finished in a year or two, the greenway will cross Broad Street and can connect, via the Incline, to Lookout Mountain’s Point Park or some 93 miles of trails already built along the flanks of the Lookout Mountain portion of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.
Our Riverwalk’s latest $16 million addition is the fulfillment of a 30-year-old promise to the people of Hamilton County: a commitment to create a beautiful, linear pedestrian crescent around the city from the city’s northern edge to its southern border.
Just since this last segment was announced in 2012, builders have invested more than $220 million in new condos, apartments and businesses.
That’s not a bad return on what now totals about $150 million in federal, state and private grants to build our Tennessee Riverwalk from one end to the other, and there is no doubt that more and newer private investment will come. After all, what’s better than river views with Lookout Mountain as a backdrop?
Unlike the wetlands and wooded stretches from the dam to Ross’s Landing, this newest trek shows off our industrial beginnings where muscle and steel gave our city its first prosperity.
The trail leads beneath the giant cranes that have loaded giant boilers made for power plants onto river barges. A few steps further the trail skirts the remains of Wheland Foundry and Siskin Steel and brings walkers, skaters and cyclists up close and personal to the daunting ghostliness of U.S. Pipe.
Though this newest segment is still very much a work in progress, just give it a few years for the plantings to mature and the artworks to patina and the innovations to happen — like where an old contoured parking lot begs to become an impromtu skatepark.
And only our imaginations limit what cool future the U.S. Pipe site will offer.
Pretty soon, we’ll wonder why it took us so long to embrace this new landscape as a very customized city park. Well done, city and county leaders. What’s next?