Infrastructure of Opportunity

By Lawrence Richter Quinn

Anyone involved with urban issues nationally knows the story of Chattanooga's ongoing four-decades-old rejuvenation. It's a rebirth that appears to have begun around 1969, when Walter Cronkite famously declared on national TV that Chattanooga was "the dirtiest city in America," home to its filthiest air.

"It was not a chamber of commerce moment," says Ron Littlefield, FAICP, a former mayor of Chattanooga (2005 to 2013), who began his Tennessee planning career at about the same time Cronkite made his comment.

John Bridger, executive director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Planning Agency, agrees: "We were a very ugly city for a long time." (The county and city jointly run some agencies and fund them, including planning and education — which sometimes creates tensions between urbanites and those in more rural areas.)

Today, Chattanooga has a lot going for it: two defining mountains; a languorous river bisecting it; a well-known history as a major Civil War battlefield and train crossroad; booming tourism; a growing tech industry and other major economic development wins (many thanks, in part, to its status as the first "gig city" in the U.S.); and an enviable AAA credit rating.

There are a lot of good things to say about the Tennessee city, and the planning efforts — as well as those of others, of course — that have gotten it there.

But of all the various investments and strides Chattanooga has made, there's one gaping hole: developing its human infrastructure. Unfortunately, weak or downright broken public education systems are hardly uncommon in cities. But Chattanooga might be a bit different in that it's doing something about it — or at least starting to.

"For 30 years our focus has been on place and infrastructure that will pave the way for the future," says Sarah Morgan, president of the Benwood Foundation, one of many headquartered in the city that has helped underwrite its remake.

"With what I call 'Chattanooga 1.0' — that is, everything the city's done to rejuvenate itself up until now — we created a place we were proud to call home," says Morgan. "Now we have to focus on people, making sure Chattanooga has the jobs and an education pipeline from cradle to career that helps everyone access those jobs. We want people living here to benefit from our infrastructure of opportunity."

Hamilton County school leaders are encouraged to change and develop curriculums, programs, and staffing models that work best for their schools and students. Photo courtesy Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The rebound: still going strong

But first, let's talk about what's already working. Chattanooga today is among the healthiest of American cities. Routinely named to "best" lists by publications such as Outside, it's luring sports enthusiasts and tourists keen to take advantage of the city's countless events on the Tennessee River, Lookout and Signal mountains, and elsewhere — almost all easily accessible on the city's fleet of emission-free electric buses, among the first in the nation.

Tourism's booming, pumping roughly $1 billion into the economy in 2015. Out-of-towners flock to its cultural institutions, namely the Tennessee Aquarium, the Hunter Museum of American Art, and the Creative Discovery Museum for children.

On the business front, the city's reimagining has been no less impressive, rejecting and shedding its image as what planning head Bridger calls "the industrial 'Rust Belt' of the South." It continues to position itself as the Southeast's "start-up capital" for entrepreneurs who want to successfully launch new businesses (and hopefully keep them there once they become profitable).

It's working hard to attract talent from Silicon Valley and other well-known high-tech locales, and has launched an entire infrastructure and innovation district downtown to support entrepreneurs and help attract capital.

One of its proudest achievements: installing "the Gig," the fastest high-speed internet service in America at the time of its opening in 2014. (Today more than 200 U.S. cities claim to have "gig-like" wherewithal.) The ultra-high-speed fiber-optic connection, owned by the city's taxpayers, transfers data at one gigabit per second. For Chattanoogan consumers, that means it takes 33 seconds to download a two-hour, high-definition movie, compared with 25 minutes for an average high-speed broadband connection elsewhere.

Far more important is that its ever-increasing bandwidth is attracting big business and is also allowing homegrown companies to thrive. Some, like 3D Ops, use that powerful internet capacity to leverage and build on complex manufacturing processes like 3-D (and now 4-D) printing. 3D Ops provides patient-specific 3-D printed models to hospitals and surgeons for enhanced presurgical planning.

"This has been an incredible game-changer," says Sheldon Grizzle, a founder of the Company Lab, a nonprofit that helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. The Gig, as the startup community fondly refers to the fiber-optic network, "has brought both funding and brainpower to the city we wouldn't have otherwise."

And there's more. In the past five years, VW has opened an auto assembly plant, and others based abroad, including Komatsu, Wacker, and Gestamp, also have set up shop. Meanwhile, Amazon opened a giant warehouse and distribution center in 2012.

It helps that the city is well connected physically: Railcars loaded with freight trundle through the city and so do thousands of trucks, since three interstates — I-24, I-59, and I-75 — crisscross it. It is just a one-day truck drive to more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

On top of it all, Chattanooga has a AAA-credit rating — which actually improved during the economic meltdown in 2008 and 2009. Thomas Zemetis, associate director of credit ratings agency S&P's U.S. public finance group, credits the city's steady hand in financial, credit, and debt management over many years.

"All of the city's credit ratings characteristics are strong," says Zemetis. "One of the reasons is the city's collaborative process, with departments working together. That includes planning, which has been integrated into the budgeting process, including what it's doing in the capital planning area."

'In short, Chattanooga is on a risky trajectory. If we do not act now ... the majority of our residents will not be able to benefit from the recent influx of jobs that have been the result of years of hard work and investment.'
— "Building the Smartest Community in the South"

Clearly, the city's planning community is proud of its accomplishments. "Chattanooga is not only the best planning story in the country, but it is also the most 'transformed' city in America," says former mayor Littlefield.

A lot of what has made Chattanooga so appealing in the last few decades has been paid for by philanthropy, including dollars coming from the Benwood and Lyndhurst foundations, both founded with money from heirs to Coca-Cola's bottling fortune (the families are from Chattanooga). Each continues to fund numerous one-off planning expenses, such as a community outreach effort as the city's formbased coding initiative got under way.

Some leaders worry that the city has become too dependent on foundation funding. "We are very fortunate to have very involved and giving foundations," says Tiffanie Robinson, president and CEO of Lamp Post Properties, part of The Lamp Post Group, the city's most visible venture capital firm.

"Most of the time, the foundations do close funding gaps where public dollars possibly should be going," says Robinson. "I do feel that Chattanooga has started to rely solely on the foundations [as opposed to taxpayers] investing. Taxpayers have gotten used to the foundations jumping in."

Education: Chattanooga's Achilles heel

But like so many urban areas nationwide, Chattanooga has underperforming public schools that don't deliver enough qualified high school grads (or those with postsecondary education or training) to fill the positions being created by the city's successful business initiatives. That's a hurdle that community leaders publicly recognized two years ago, and they're working to fix it.

"In the spring of 2015, industries in Hamilton County were complaining that there's not a local workforce, so they were having to recruit outside of Chattanooga, whether it's for entry-level or management positions," says Jared Bigham, executive director of Chattanooga 2.0, the organization created in July 2016 to come up with a plan for fixing the school system. "It was a 'bridge on fire' moment for the community."

Chattanooga 2.0 is the brainchild of four key community stakeholders: the president of the Benwood Foundation; the superintendent of schools; the president of the Public Education Foundation; and the chamber of commerce president.

They first met on Martin Luther King Day in 2015 and continued getting together weekly for two months before hiring Bigham and founding 2.0, which operates today as part of the chamber.

Its first order of business: Putting together and analyzing data to understand exactly what kind of educational and workforce hole the city and county had dug. The report, issued in December 2015 and called "Building the Smartest Community in the South," included this "bridge-on-fire" information: Over 10,000 jobs will be created in coming years, and more than 80 percent of those paying a "living wage" of $35,000 will require a postsecondary certificate or degree. But just 35 percent of students in Hamilton County are likely to obtain this required level of education.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. The report also revealed problems in the county's and city's "cradle to career" pipeline: poverty, lack of readiness for school, and low secondary education attainment are all contributors (see "Challenges" below).

"In short, Chattanooga is on a risky trajectory," that report said. "If we do not act now to promote new approaches and make smart investments to improve educational outcomes for students, the majority of our residents will not be able to benefit from the recent influx of jobs that have been the result of years of hard work and investment. Ultimately, we run the risk that the economic boost we are currently experiencing will only be temporary, as companies struggle to find outside talent that can fill their jobs, which means our region loses its competitive advantage."

It was an enormous wake-up call. Following the report's release, a 100-day period was declared where Chattanooga 2.0 organized continuous meetings with some 3,700 Chattanoogans, from senior public executives (including the mayors of Chattanooga and Hamilton County) to citizens on the street, both individually and in groups. The goal, simply: to discuss how to deal with the county's educational problems and "workforce gap," soliciting ideas from anyone and everyone.

The results of these meetings were released in a second report, also titled "Building the Smartest Community in the South." It calls focusing on "people needs" a "moral and economic imperative." (See its stated goals below.)

Should the city and county pull this off, the rewards will be significant, the report notes. Mayor Andy Berke, just reelected to his second term, notes that "today we certainly have much more of a people focus than in the past. My job is to tear down barriers to being successful."

Enoch Elwell, founder of co.starters, a nonprofit dedicated to exporting Chattanooga's entrepreneurial culture and "magic" to countries around the world, starting with New Zealand, says: "There's a subtext to this conversation, and that is that the economic and other divides that have been part of the city still exist. There have been some communities that are really stuck and in decline. Everything in Chattanooga is not perfect. So we're beginning to address some social justice issues that have been there for a long time."

"Can we leverage our success and grow into a more equitable community?" asks Elwell. "The question's at the top of everybody's mind."

The planning community's on board

The city's and county's planning communities aren't mincing words, says Ann Coulter of the planning consulting firm A. Coulter Consulting and executive director of the planning agency from 1995 to 2000: "Chattanooga 2.0's all about evolving our future generations. It's all part of our work to make sure our citizens stay here — and stay here successfully."

Chattanooga looked to how other communities made positive change in public education. Those that were successful, says former mayor and planning exec Littlefield, "have taken bold, dramatic action and moved with audacity."

He suggests that the region has what it needs to "turn failing schools and failing students around with a combination of inspirational leadership and with our technical ability to digitally link classrooms with state-of-the-art educational programming. We have no excuse other than perhaps not being willing to do what's necessary."

Strong opinions aside, so far Chattanooga's planners are sitting on the sidelines as work on Chattanooga 2.0 continues. That's because the planning and educational bureaucracies operate separately (2.0's Bigham says he doesn't know or work with anyone at the agency) and don't interact professionally.

Says Karen Hundt, AICP, director of the Regional Planning Agency's community design group: "There are limits to what we can do. We coordinate with 2.0, but the chamber's taking the lead on this. We're not as involved with education other than land use or physical development."

"Unfortunately," says Lamp Post Properties' Robinson, who is also a member of the Hamilton County School Board, "our education sector is not included currently in our planning process, which is certainly why we are in the predicament we are currently in."

But, Robinson says, there have been discussions about a school board members sitting on the regional planning board, but no formal request has yet been made. "The school board has a ton on its plate right now but I hope to [or see one of my fellow board members] request something this year."

Can Chattanooga 2.0 succeed?

Whether Chattanooga 2.0 will succeed remains an open question (Chattanooga 2.0's Bigham says he's aware of 81 other U.S. cities implementing a program developed in the same way that Chattanooga 2.0 was, with a bottom-up approach).

The work so far has been decidedly big picture, but few details about how the city and county will pull off a revamp of its education system that offers opportunity from cradle to career have been released — or perhaps decided. But the will to succeed is there.

"I think they have a good chance of pulling this off," says Lane McBride, a partner and managing director in the public-sector practice at the Boston Consulting Group, which worked with the city during its 100-day inquiry period.

"Chattanooga has done it before," he says. "It has a track record of success. [But] its leaders would be the first to tell you that [this work] in work force development and education is not as easy as physical development or attracting VW."

Freelance writer Lawrence Richter Quinn is a former resident of Chattanooga. He lives in Atlanta.