The real Tubman is the one we build together

In 2014, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke purchased the former Harriet Tubman housing project with a promise: to make the community stronger.

“When I took office almost a year ago, I said I was going to create stronger neighborhoods and grow the economy,” he said at the time. “Today, we took another step forward in that vision.”

A few months later, the city demolished the houses. Then silence.

One year goes by. Then another. Another.

And another. Nothing happens at Tubman.

Yet across town, City Hall presided over tremendous development:

A new Innovation District.

The $10 million remodeled Miller Park.

A comprehensive plan for South Broad Street.

Some $1 billion in downtown private investment. Yet at Tubman? Nothing.

In fact, it took far less time for the real Harriet Tubman to escape Southern slavery by running to Northern freedom — while returning back to free her family — than for City Hall to make any real progress on the project named in her honor.

Until now.

The city has announced plans to rezone the Tubman land from multiuse to industrial. This was Berke’s original plan; the purchase of Tubman, he said, is for job creation.

Yet this rezoning is a mistake, a breach of civic trust.

There are dozens of reasons why.

But you need only one. It’s not what residents want, need or envision.

“We are asking that the city postpone rezoning,” proclaimed area community leaders. “We need to make sure that any new development is held accountable to benefiting area residents through living wage jobs, mixed-use development, and opportunities for upward mobility.”

Last week, respected members of the 50-year-old Unity Group stood on the City Hall steps, imploring Berke to postpone Monday’s rezoning meeting.

“The decisions made regarding the redevelopment of the Harriet Tubman site will have a major impact on East Chattanooga residents for decades to come,” they said. “Too often we have seen development come into our communities promising jobs and better opportunities, only to watch our bills rise, houses flip and money funnelled out of our neighborhoods.”

They ask for a Community Benefits Agreement — they asked for this years ago, too — that would create a partnership between residents and developers. (Google “CBAs and Nashville soccer.”)

For zoning to remain for retail, housing and commercial.

For more communication from City Hall.

It’s the same message delivered over and over again.

From nonprofit workshops to City Hall-arranged conferences, residents have consistently vocalized a clear desire for affordable housing, living wage jobs and authentic power planning their own communities.

Doesn’t City Hall hear them?

It’s dizzying, crazy-making behavior. After the city purchased the property, it asked for input from citizens.

Yet now, it outright ignores that input, doing the very thing citizens don’t want.

› Earlier this year, residents began regular and productive meetings with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning to create a long-term vision for Area 3 neighborhoods — Avondale, Glenwood, Orchard Knob, Highland Park and others — near Tubman.

Their work has uncovered a plethora of potential visions, like an affordable community for retirees near our medical corridor. Nobody’s talking about industrial.

Their final draft is due soon.

City Hall knows this. Why would the mayor announce rezoning plans that preempt and neuter the Area 3 planners and residents?

› In October, residents met with City Hall staffers, who told them of the plans to rezone Tubman. Yet residents were told they weren’t allowed to ask questions without first submitting them on paper. (Want to control a meeting? That’s how you do it.)

Why would City Hall ask for citizen input, yet then patronizingly regulate the very means by which citizens speak?

› When given the chance to designate Area 3 and the Tubman site as part of an “Opportunity Zone” federal program that would incentivize development, city and county leaders instead looked elsewhere, prioritizing seven other locations — including the Innovation District, already the downtown darling for many developers — over Area 3.

Why would city and county governments refuse to prioritize the consistently forgotten Area 3 neighborhoods?

The fruits of our development are so segregated; too many are passed over while so many others live in high cotton.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a large group of African Americans gleeful or excited about development in Chattanooga.

That could change with Tubman.

On Monday at 1 p.m., the Unity Group will gather outside the Hamilton County Courthouse. They want you to join them in asking the mayor to postpone the rezoning.

“The real Chattanooga is the Chattanooga we build together,” Berke declared at his second inaugural.

The Tubman property gives him a chance to prove it.

David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6329.