Former Temple soccer field to be developed for housing
A Chattanooga construction company that focuses on building homes in urban neighborhoods plans to build a 29-home development in Highland Park.
GreenTech Homes LLC is under contract to buy the site for the development: a 3.65-acre soccer field bounded by South Hawthorne Street, Bennett Avenue, South Orchard Knob Avenue and an alley north of Anderson Avenue on Tennessee Temple University’s former campus.
“What we want to do is stay true to the existing feeling of Highland Park,” said Cris Angsten, director of marketing and design for GreenTech, a 12-employee, 5-year-old business that got its start building homes in Chattanooga’s up-and-coming Southside neighborhood and has since built in St. Elmo, North Chattanooga and Highland Park.
To stay true to the Highland Park style, she said GreenTech plans to build houses with front porches in a variety of sizes and price ranges on different-sized lots.
“We are building 29 socio-economically diverse homes ranging in size from 1,300 to 2,000 square feet,” Angsten said. “And what we have proposed pays attention to the existing build pattern in Highland Park, which generally offers larger houses on the corners.”
“We love that the residents of Highland Park are so connected and diverse, and they love their welcoming, open front porches that encourage neighbors to stop and talk and know one another,” she said.
GreenTech sought input about the exterior look of the homes from Highland Park residents, Angsten said, and plans to do so again at a meeting Thursday night. GreenTech reached out to Highland Park residents through social media, she said.
“We’ve invited neighbors in Highland Park to come out and talk with us,” Angsten said. “Our entire design department is going to come.”
Frank and Tina Goodwin of Ringgold, Ga.-based Goodwin Southern Property LLC bought the eight tracts of property that comprise the soccer field for $310,000 on Aug. 19 from Redemption to the Nations, a not-for-profit corporation associated with Redemption Point Church, a fast-growing Highland Park church that owns many former Tennessee Temple University properties.
GreenTech is under contract to buy the land from the Goodwins, Angsten said, but she declined to state the price.
The Goodwins had a proposal to build 29 homes on the land on Monday’s agenda of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission, but pulled the item.
“We [have] to submit a new application,” Angsten said.
GreenTech plans to start construction this winter on the Highland Park homes, Angsten said.
Other GreenTech developments in Chattanooga include Madison Park “luxury townhomes” on Chattanooga’s Southside and the company’s biggest development, the 80-home North Shore Heights that’s under construction on Dartmouth Street near Curve Street in North Chattanooga.
The South Hawthorne Street corridor in Highland Park is the focus of other improvements.
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), a nonprofit housing organization whose motto is “dedicated to building a better Chattanooga,” recently broke ground on a $4.7 million, 49-unit apartment complex on South Hawthorne Street and Bailey Avenue in Highland Park named after the late Chattanooga City Councilwoman Mai Bell Hurley.
CNE also recently tore down a blighted home on the corner of South Hawthorne and East 12th streets, and CNE sold land that formerly held a vacant Tennessee Temple University dormitory on Kirby Avenue at South Hawthorne Street, so a neighborhood of one- and two-bedroom so-called “tiny homes” could be built on Kirby. GreenTech built three of those homes.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/ MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetfor business or 423-7576651.