Chattarati Articles in Zeitgeist

The Civic Forum as Urban Catalyst

2011-11-08T15:30:00Z

Photo courtesy of River City Company.

When you're looking at 1001 Market St., the word "energy" probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. The Civic Forum was razed in 2003 and turned into a parking lot. Since then, it's sat underutilized and devoid of much activity. But given the block's size, long-term vacancy and neighboring energy companies, the former home of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce does have something going for it: potential.

For the past two and a half months, architect Steve Haase and a team of urbanists have been thinking about that potential. The team, calling itself the Big Gig, will present a new design concept for the Civic Forum block on Thursday, Nov. 10. Their presentation will be the second one in the Urban Design Challenge, a year-long series sponsored by River City Company in which teams of architects, planners and designers rethink and draft designs for select sites throughout the downtown area.

Two aspects of the Civic Forum block made it a compelling site to design for, Haase said. "It's one whole block that's empty in the central business district. So one, there's a big void. And two, there's a lack of energy in the central business district after 5 or 6. With those two things, if you're going to energize the central business district, the bigger the project the better."

The Big Gig sees the block as a connecting point between the riverfront and Main Street, Haase said, and a catalyst for the central business district itself. One of their goals was figuring how to tie those elements together.

Before putting pen to paper, the team spent several weeks discussing the site amongst themselves and with other developers. "We concentrated a lot on the actual urban design part of the challenge," Haase said. "I think we've got a great idea for the block, but the idea is kind of secondary to the urban design portion."

"The urban design portion is the first two floors and how the pedestrian accesses the site. So we concentrated a lot on that aspect of it. I think our presentation will reinforce the fact that we were thinking a lot about what happens when you walk by. And in our particular case, as you walk through."

"The permeability of the site was important. The friendliness to the pedestrian was important," he said of the design.

In all, six sites will get similar treatments throughout the Urban Design Challenge. The sites tend to come in pairs, said Christian Rushing, who is a consultant on the series along with Ann Coulter*. The complementary site for the Civic Forum block is 700 Market St., which was presented in August.

"What they share in common is the fact that they're both undeveloped vacant lots in the central business district. But they're different in that one is that one is a very narrow, confined smaller site. And the other one is a full city block," Rushing said. "So we get the opportunity to compare and contrast what you can do in similar places on different sites."

Like the Civic Forum block, many of the sites are vacant. And the teams are encouraged to approach them in a variety of ways. "When I'm briefing the teams, my advice to them is that this is a blank slate. This is a chance for you to be as creative, as innovative or as conservative as you think is necessary to show what your team's vision is for the future of downtown and this site," Rushing said.

One important aspect of the Urban Design Challenge is to start a conversation about urban design, architecture and the built environment. At the end of the series, the designs will be compiled into a portfolio that will serve as a point of reference for future development.

"With the Urban Design Challenge, we’re looking in a new way at future opportunities for high quality development downtown,' Kim White, president of River City Company, said in a news release.

The challenge is a competition too. An outside panel of planning experts will review the designs and select a winning team for a $3,000 award at the series' end.

Haase sees his team's design, and the broader challenge, as a way to show what's possible in Chattanooga's urban landscape. "I would hope that our project will benefit River City Company when it comes to them talking about what people can do in downtown," he said. "Whether it's on this block or somewhere else."

The Big Gig tried to showcase what could be done with the Civic Forum block, Haase said. "But you could also take those same principles and apply them to other places in town."

* Christian Rushing and Ann Coulter contribute commentary on urban planning and design to Chattarati.

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Michelle Rhee, Michael Pollan to Bookend Lecture Series

2011-08-14T12:00:00Z

Buoyed by high attendance and an overwhelming response in the recent past, the George T. Hunter Lecture Series returns with a lineup of nationally renowned experts for 2011-2012. Michelle Rhee, Armando Carbonell, Robert Pinsky and Michael Pollan are speakers for the series that begins Sept. 20, the Benwood Foundation announced today.

During the next eight months, each of the speakers will visit Chattanooga, discuss his or her personal experiences, and challenge residents to pursue positive, long-term change in their communities.

The series, now entering its fourth year, has become the preeminent event for bringing creative thought and new ideas to the city.

“The Hunter lecture series has always maintained a focus on bringing the nation’s foremost thinkers and leaders to Chattanooga,” said Corrine Allen, executive director of the Benwood Foundation. “By doing so, we hope to generate meaningful dialogue around big ideas and how they apply to community issues within Chattanooga.”

The first and final lectures with Rhee and Pollan will be at the Tivoli Theater. Lectures by Carbonell and Pinsky will once again be held at UTC's Roland Hayes Concert Hall.

The change in venue is one indicator of how the lecture series has grown in popularity, said Benwood's Lori Quillen. "We have received an overwhelming response to past lectures, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for even more people to be able to attend."

But it also reflects the caliber of expertise the series brings to town. The upcoming lineup includes Rhee, an educator who has helped institute significant (and sometimes controversial) reforms in education; Carbonell, a leading voice in smart growth and land-use policies; Pinsky, the celebrated U.S. poet laureate; and Pollan, an activist who is at the fore of a national conversation on food.

Named after George Thomas Hunter, the Chattanooga businessman who founded the Benwood Foundation in 1944, the lecture series correlates to the foundation's four focus areas: public education, community development, arts and culture, and the environment.

Dates and topics for the speakers are listed below. The lectures are free and open to the public.

About the Speakers

Michelle Rhee is an educator with an 18-year career in teaching, administration and advocacy. Her lecture, "Putting Students First in Public Education Reform," will be at the Tivoli Theater on Sept. 20.

Rhee was chancellor of DC public schools from 2007-2010. Upon her appointment, the system was one of the worst performing in the country, and it was entrenched with special interests and political division. She became a lightning rod for criticism due to her willingness to challenge teachers unions on merit pay and tenure. However, test scores and the overall graduation rate showed marked improvement during her administration.

Rhee later appeared in Waiting for Superman, a documentary film about educational reform inspired by the work of Geoffrey Canada. She recently founded the advocacy group StudentsFirst, which pursues reform through state governments. She lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Armando Carbonell is a senior fellow with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. His lecture, "Planning for Increased Growth, Livability and Economic Vitality in the Chattanooga Region," will be at the Roland Hayes Concert Hall on Nov. 1.

With almost 30 years experience in professional planning and urban growth policy, he has emerged as one of the country's top voices on smart growth.

In 2009, Carbonell became a co-chair for America 2050, a national initiative to prepare the United States for explosive population growth in the next four decades. The organization develops research and policies for 11 mega-regions — systems of metropolitan areas connected through their economies, natural resources, and transportation systems. (Chattanooga is part of the Piedmont Atlantic System.)

Carbonell has co-edited three books on regional planning. He teaches at Harvard University.

Robert Pinsky is a writer, literary critic and former U.S. poet laureate — the first to serve three consecutive terms from 1997-2000. His lecture, "Placing Value on the Arts in Tough Economic Times," will be at the Roland Hayes Concert Hall on Feb. 7, 2012.

Pinsky has published 27 books, including his acclaimed translation of Dante's Inferno, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic magazines.

In 1998 the poet laureate created the Favorite Poem Project, a one-year call for Americans to submit their favorite poems. Though he initially expected a modest response, more than 18,000 people contributed to the project. The submissions became the subject of several well-attended public readings, and many of the poems were collected into two anthologies, Poems to Read and Americans' Favorite Poems.

Pinsky is the poetry editor at Slate and teaches in the graduate writing program for Boston University.

Michael Pollan is a journalist, activist and author of four New York Times best-selling books. His lecture, "How to Eat: Making Food Choices That Nourish Your Body and Your Community," will be at the Tivoli Theater on April 19, 2012.

In the past decade, Pollan has been at the fore of a national conversation on food. Time magazine named him one of the world's most influential people in 2010.

His 2008 book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, challenges the often-complicated theorems of nutritionism with a simple maxim, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The same year, he starred in Food, Inc., a documentary film based on his work that examines the industrial production of food, its effects on personal health and the environment, and the powerful interests that shape agribusiness.

His writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the New York Review of Books. He teaches at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Pollan's lecture is co-sponsored by Gaining Ground.

About the Series

Started in 2007, the George T. Hunter Lecture Series has quickly emerged as a must-attend event. Past speakers include Madeline Albright, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Brooks, Geoffrey Canada and Malcolm Gladwell.

The series is sponsored by the Benwood Foundation in partnership with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, and CreateHere.

Chattarati is a media sponsor of this year's lecture series.

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Creative Discovery Museum Buzzes With Honey Harvest

2011-07-29T15:45:00Z

Adrienne Royer

The observation hive at the Creative Discovery Museum.

Did you know that there are beehives in downtown Chattanooga?

This weekend, the Creative Discovery Museum will hold Honey Harvest, an annual weekend celebration where beekeepers process the honey from the beehives that live on the roof of the children’s museum.

On Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., kids can make lip balm, soap and beeswax candles using products from the beehives. Families can also watch beekeepers extract honey from the hives and taste different types of honey.

This year’s Honey Harvest also celebrates the grand opening of Buzz Alley, a new permanent exhibit that showcases the museum’s beehives.

About the Exhibit

Buzz Alley was developed in conjunction with the Chattanooga Nature Center, Hamilton County Department of Education and the ad hoc William’s Wildflowers committee, and it aims to teach children the important role that honey bees play in pollination and how beekeeping helps sustain healthy beehives.

According to a press release from Creative Discovery Museum:

Creative Discovery Museum chose to create the bee exhibit because there is a critical need for children and their families to have a better understanding of the important role bees fill in our environment and crop production. Bee colonies are suffering from colony collapse disorder, and decreasing quality food sources, such as wildflowers. This exhibit will explore bees and wildflowers as a way to spark children’s and families’ interest in the environment in their own backyards.

Kids can observe three different types of beehives from inside Buzz Alley, as well as the observation hive that has existed since 1998. Kids can also dress up as bees and follow the different types of dances that bees use to communicate by following dance steps printed on specially designed flooring in the exhibit.

A larger-than-life honeycomb educates guests on the three stages of a bee’s development, and interactive videos provide additional information about bees.

William’s Wildflowers

The exhibit is part of a partnership between the Chattanooga Nature Center and Hamilton County Department of Education and William’s Wildflowers, which created a curriculum on bees and pollination based on the book, William’s Wildflowers, for grades 3-6.

Written by Mary Patten Priestly, curator of the Sewanee Herbarium, the book uses the watercolor paintings made by William Crutchfield, a Chattanooga architect who began collecting watercolors during the Great Depression. He eventually created 460 paintings of wildflowers before his death in 1956. The book was published through the effort of local volunteers to preserve his work and features paintings of wildflowers that grow around Chattanooga.

The book is part of a tour of the Chattanooga Nature Center and Buzz Alley at the Creative Discovery Museum that features a wildflower scavenger hunt, pollination relay game, and flower hike that is available to school children in the area and aligns with Tennessee standards for science education.

All the students who participate in the curriculum will receive a copy of William’s Wildflowers.

The Creative Discovery Museum is open Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Tickets are $10.95 for adults and kids ages 2-12. Kids under 2 are free.

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Video: The Tilt-Shift City

2011-07-21T11:00:00Z

‘Take Me There.’ChattanoogaTN via YouTube

The Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau has a new ad, "Take Me There," to mark its new location on Broad Street in the old Bijou Theater.

Chattanoogafun.com:

The new location of the Center will be in the lobby of the former Bijou Theatre, at the intersection of Broad and 3rd Streets. The new space is one block from the current location. The Center will occupy roughly 5,000 square feet of the 25,000 square feet of space and will provide an improved visitor experience. There is ample parking available in the attached garage. It is also at the northern terminus of the downtown shuttle, making it more visible for people getting on or off the shuttle.
Construction of the new space is slated to begin in June and be completed mid to late September. Artech Design Group will be responsible for the redesign of the space and will work closely with the Chattanooga Area Convention & Visitors Bureau to create a state-of-the-art facility to meet the needs of visitors to Chattanooga.
The new branding initiative has the tagline "Take Me There." It includes tilt-shift photography and stop-motion video. The technique shifts the angle of the focal point in the image and gives it a miniature effect. When you combine the photography with stop motion, you get a tilt-shift video.

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Zombies Don’t Like Nuclear Power. Who Knew?

2011-07-21T10:15:00Z

Footage of Wednesday’s zombie protest outside TVA in downtown Chattanooga.WDEF via YouTube

About 10 demonstrators held a zombie walk outside TVA on Wednesday to protest the federally owned corporation's plan to restart construction at its Bellefonte nuclear facility in Alabama.

On Aug. 18, President Tom Kilgore will ask TVA's board of directors to "approve a plan to complete one of two unfinished reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant near Scottsboro," the Daily Sentinel previously reported.

Fancy Film Work

2011-07-07T14:30:00Z

Drew Belz and Isaiah Smallman are doing more than the average film company. Rather than just creating commercials, Fancy Rhino, a video production company, helps its clients identify and communicate their stories.

“The idea is that everybody has an inner beast, and every company has sort of this energy that’s pent up, and they don’t necessarily know how to put it in a tuxedo, send it to dinner, and make it sell their idea. That’s what we’re trying to do for people,” Belz said.

Fancy Rhino became official in October 2010 doing freelance work for the nonprofit organization CreateHere. Through small projects at CreateHere, Belz and Smallman realized that there was a vast, untapped market for the kind of videos they were creating.

“We kind of stumbled into business through the back door,” Belz said.

Business started to pick up when Belz and Smallman won $10,000 from the Covenant College Seed Project, a competition among Covenant students and recent grads looking to start small businesses. The capital allowed the two entrepreneurs to take the next step with Fancy Rhino. “We had to think about it as a business,” said Belz.

Through the seed project, the company also came in contact with the Lamp Post Group, a venture incubator which invests in small businesses that are just starting out. The Fancy Rhino office is in the same building as Lamp Post, though it's not an official member yet.

“We’re sort of living together right now is really the best way of describing it,” said Belz.

The growing process started an explosion of creativity. “Our biggest struggle right now is having a lot of ideas that are a lot bigger than what we can handle,” Smallman said.

While it’s taken them awhile to get the ball rolling, their way of doing things has had its benefits. The company is almost entirely debt-free, and while profits have been slow, business is picking up.

The team consists of Belz, creative director, Smallman, director of photography, Bethany Mollenkof, documenting and editing, and Kelly Lacy, motion graphics design. They also have two summer interns.

Andrew Mollenkof, an English and philosophy double major at Covenant is one of them.

“I think Fancy Rhino is interesting because, as far as the video world in Chattanooga goes, they have a pretty fresh perspective. A lot of the other video companies in Chattanooga don’t have the same eye for detail. Fancy Rhino has a lot higher class production than a lot of the bigger companies and a lot higher quality image. It’s been really good because they have the expertise and a keen attention to story and detail,” he said.

That passion for story began in middle school, when they would spend their afternoons creating short clips on iMovie.

In high school, the two, cousins and best friends, became serious about film as a career. “It really is a calling. I think if I wasn’t doing this I’d just be terribly miserable,” said Smallman. “Making stuff that people will see and care about.”

“That’s the high for me — if we work hard at an idea it can become a reality on film,” Belz said.

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Slideshow: Around Cherry Street

2011-07-06T12:00:00Z

Around Cherry Street on Monday, July 4.David Morton via Flickr

Cherry Street was vacant Monday afternoon, and I took the opportunity to take photographs. Here are a few of my favorites.

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‘Chattanooga’ Via Instagram

2011-06-29T15:15:00Z

I'm betting that Chattarati readers like Instagram as much as I do, perhaps more so.

The handy app lets you take pictures from your iPhone, apply a preset filter (that's where the magic comes in) and share it with others. You can also post the images to Facebook, Twitter — it's a social app, you get the point.

One of the biggest criticisms/gripes users have is the lack of an official Web interface. Nothing has changed on that front, but there's a new service, Instagram Heroku, that uses the Instagram API to display a thumbnail gallery of recent photos matching your search term.

I used Heroku to search for "Chattanooga," and got the gallery above. You can also search by tags. A search for #chattanooga yielded slightly different results.

(And in case you were wondering, it doesn't look like a search for #CHA brings up anything related to our city, or its airport.)

There are a few other features I haven't had a chance to play around with, but it's a cool way to get a little slice of life from the Scenic City. Via Yewknee.

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A Distinction We Already Knew

2011-06-28T13:15:00Z

Chattanooga won Outdoor magazine's Best Town Ever vote on Facebook yesterday.

Via timesfreepress.com

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Fourth of July at the Chattanooga Market

2011-06-28T11:30:36Z

From the inbox:

All-American and local too! What better way to spend this patriotic weekend than visiting Chattanooga Market for fresh produce on Sunday: blackberries, peaches, strawberries, lettuces, zucchinis, squash, beans and so much more. Kids and adults alike can cool off with homemade Popsicles, local ice cream and frozen lemonade.
Featuring artists and craftsmen from the Chattanooga and surrounding areas at both Chattanooga markets, there's always something new.
On Sunday, join us in supporting the Tennessee Army National Guard, 230th Sustainment Brigade, by bringing in much needed supplies to Chattanooga Market. The list of items to be collected can be found at www.chattanoogamarket.com. The collection for this active troop in Afghanistan is being organized by First Tennessee Bank and Executive Women's International.
Saturday River Market, open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Tennessee Aquarium Plaza: 10 a.m. free yoga by Chattanooga Yoga Collective, 12:30 p.m. live music by Megan Light.
Sunday Chattanooga Market, open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the First Tennessee Pavilion: Live music at 12:30 p.m. with Kurt Scobie and 2 p.m. with Michael Jacobs.

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