Best Towns 2008: Chattanooga, TN

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Outside Magazine, August 2008

Best Towns 2008
Chattanooga, TN
Southeast

By Katie Arnold


	Chattanooga’s Wine Over Water event (courtesy, Chattanooga Area CVB)

THE REVIVAL: Chattanooga's surrounded by mountains and rivers, but like so many manufacturing towns, it turned its back on its natural assets. In the mid-'60s, the city went from industrial boom to rusting bust when local steelmakers and foundries closed their doors, leaving a decrepit, nearly abandoned downtown and a community in dire need of an aesthetic and economic overhaul.

THE STATS

Pop. 151,900
Median age: 38
Med. household income: $37,000
Med. home value: $119,900
Avg. commute: 19 mins.
Largest employers: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Hamilton Co. Dept. of Education, Erlanger Health, Tennessee Valley Authority, McKee Foods

Read more on visiting Chattanooga.

The Tennessee River flows through town, and urban renewal in the '90s centered on a total do-over of the nearly nonexistent waterfront, including construction of an aquarium and ten-mile river walk; 2002 saw $120 million invested in, among other things, a pedestrian pier, free public boat slips, and the new Renaissance Park, on the North Shore. "That's the Chattanooga way," says forester Gene Hyde of the community-driven overhaul. The Greenspaces program will invest $2 million over three years to transform downtown condos, offices, and shops into LEED-certified buildings; the Take Root project recruits locals to plant some 2,000 trees in the urban forest; and there are plans to develop 100 miles of singletrack within ten miles of Chattanooga by 2010. All of which has remade downtown into a live/work/play crossroads with half a dozen parks, a new organic grocer, and the annual Riverbend music festival, which spans nine days and six stages.

THE LIFE: The much-revered Tennessee Wall serves up year-round trad climbing, and mountain bikers flock to Raccoon Mountain—both just a few minutes from downtown. Chattanooga's best carbo load comes compliments of Aretha Frankensteins, an all-day pancake joint in the up-and-coming North Shore district.

THE WORD ON THE STREET: CHATTANOOGA
"A very scenic, very happening, and very easy place to live, with unlimited options for climbing, caving, biking, hiking, and paddling."

—PATRICK JOHNSON, SUBSCRIBER

Next Page: You say you want a reconstruction? In the Big Easy, it's the regular folks, with help from a host of smart non-profits, who are resurrecting the city.