Sadly, downtown Chattanooga is hollowing out
One day last month, I decided to take a walk. I strolled from the Times Free Press offices on East 11th Street over to Ankar’s Downtown sandwich shop in the 500 block of Broad Street — about eight blocks, one way.
Sometimes I get a craving for Ankar’s onion rings. They’re crunchy and salty and as big around as beer coasters.
It was a clear spring day with a temperature in the low 70s, the kind of day that through the years would have spilled thousands of office workers outside to enjoy the weather.
But as I walked through Miller Park and Miller Plaza — adjacent public spaces designed specifically as urban parks suitable for lunching — I was struck by the near total absence of people. Rather than scores of office workers munching on hoagies or pizza slices, the parks were virtually empty. There were zero people occupying the tables along the perimeter of Miller Park.
Gone were the clumps of TVA folks, the solitary office workers with their earbuds in, the packs of courthouse lawyers, the bankers with their regimental neckties. Pre-COVID-19, these groups formed the backbone of Chattanooga’s lunch crowd.
During the pandemic, our brains got used to noticing empty urban spaces. But on my lunch walk in May, it struck me that this nearly empty sidewalk phenomenon is becoming a permanent state of affairs. Maybe the masses are never coming back to midtown Chattanooga.
Then, last week came news reports that TVA is downsizing its downtown presence and looking for new uses for its sprawling office complex, which used to be the office home for some 3,000 workers. Will the vast downtown insurance offices be next?
It seems the beating heart of the central city suddenly has bad circulation. People are working at home in their PJs lunching on leftover DoorDash orders from the night before.
I remember when going to lunch with co-workers was a standard part of city life. There seemed to always be someone at the newspaper willing to step out for lunch.
Some of our favorite lunch spots back in the day were Porkers Bar-B-Que on Market Street,
the Park Place restaurant in the basement of the Tallan Building, the Soup Kitchen near the Hamilton County Courthouse and, years ago, the Farmers Market restaurant on 11th Street.
At lunch, we caught up on gossip, exchanged stories about our kids or wondered aloud about the state of our business. It’s how we became friends outside our cubicle-filled workplaces.
Part of me mourns that loss of collegiality.
I understand the allure of the work-at-home life: less time spent commuting, less money spent on gas, smaller dry-cleaning bills, more time with our kids and pets.
But, understand, this remote work comes at a social cost.
It makes us, well, remote.
Part of my melancholy may be reaching the final years of my work life and mourning for an office culture that is simply out of fashion.
Still, my walk to Ankar’s and back was an eyeopening slog.
As I got back to the newspaper, I kicked a rock that skittered off the sidewalk and clanked into a storm grate. Meanwhile, I could not hear a human conversation in any direction.
My heart sank.
Something, I believe, has shifted.