posted April 2, 2008
The successful effort to stop the Stringer's Ridge condos and the effort several years ago to halt the Coolidge Hotel both mark sensational community efforts to preserve the beauty of the North Shore area - i.e. the "scenic beauty" of our city.
I feel that our city's history should take note of these two critical successful stances within the same genre of Civil War battles fought in this area. Both are a testament to the courage and energy of citizens to rally together for a cause - i.e. the
preservation of the scenic beauty of the "person-made" Coolidge Park and the preservation of the "natural scenic landscape beauty" of Stringer's Ridge.
These are times when a community recognized the attributes of development, but also recognized and acted against the dangers and the destruction of over-development. We are thankful for the intelligence to know the difference and the courage to take a stand.
Frank DePinto
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Mr. DePinto, I disagree with your take on the cancellation of the proposed development on Stringer's Ridge. How can you compare nixing a major eyesore hotel by the Walnut Street Bridge to a new condo neighborhood, one which you'd have to squint your eyes to even notice, from the same bridge? One which, by the way, would be occupied almost exclusively by liberals wanting to live the North Chattanooga lifestyle?
You readers, go to the bridge and focus on this controversial site. You'll probably have to ask some local to point it out to you. From the North Shore side, to the naked eye, it's about a two inch section of Stringer's Ridge, a stretch of desolate land which no one, but no one ever cared about for generations, but which is now a big deal.
Lots of talk about making it a park. A few people correctly wanting to preserve what's left of our Civil War heritage, and I'm all in favor of preserving the remains of the gun pits (apologize for an earlier stand), and allowing private groups to keep these historic places up.
These are not economic times which scream out for making a new park on property no one's cared about since forever that is since the ancestors of today's varmints held sway on this precious parcel. I'm sure at one time this was a presentable parcel of land which was farmed, and someone might care about. Today it's an eyesore no one wants to take responsibility for.
And so the tract of land up on Stringer's will be the focus of something-or-other for months and years into the future. It won't be a park, it won't be a condo community collecting taxes, to support whatever. It will simply be sitting there, supporting gophers, hedgehogs, rats, mice, snakes, and also being a prime nursery for the same kudzu which we all despise.
I have to laugh at the wisdom of all this: all said and done, in a couple or five years, we'll be reading about the goats the poor sucker taxpayers of Red Bank subsidized ever since the nixing of the Stringer's Ridge development. They'll pay plenty in increased property taxes to buy the goats, let them wander around the kudzu wilderness, until either local dogs or the odd predator kill and eat them.
If you doubt this, ask the taxpayers of East Ridge how the kudzu defoliation went.
John R. Smickle
Chattanooga
jsbottomfeeder@juno.com
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Mr. Smickle, you continue to perplex me. Some of your responses ring true as a bell but you seem to have made a decision you plan to stick to regarding Stringer's Ridge.
The area is in fact hard to miss, even from the Olgiati Bridge, it's the only area in North Chattanooga that does not have anything built on it. It's the great area of greenery that spans the areas from the Cherokee tunnels down toward North Market. That's just if you look at it from the Riverside. From Red Bank's vantage it completely blocks the city out and travels back to White Hall Park.
As for the miniscule sized condo's you speak of, my two year old spies the Grand View/ Pinnacle from downtown on Market Street and by the police station in Red Bank on a regular basis. I find it difficult indeed to imagine anything less taking place from a developer.
I'm grateful you have changed your stand on the preservation of historical areas, but I'm still confounded by your determination that no one cared about the area until now. If you mean no one cleaned up any significant amount of tires and garbage until now, you probably are correct. But have you been out on these trails? I see someone new every day I go out there. And it's not vagrants and vandals. It's folks out enjoying nature; we were there before Mike Cooke came to town.
You also refer to the area as a kudzu nightmare. I have seen kudzu on the Cherokee tunnels and all around the Grand View. But once I get away from the developed area and enter the woods, I have not seen any of the kudzu you are troubled about. There's some English Ivy left by some folks who built homes up here decades ago, but no kudzu.
I believe there are scores of people wanting and waiting to take responsibility for this "eyesore." It's an "empty" space of land because it is a difficult area to build on and most likely was never even cultivated.
The part that confuses me the most is that you have come across a few times as not seeing any purpose for rats, snakes, mice and hedgehogs. I know you are an intelligent man; I read many of your opinions. The whole wheel in the sky, ecosystems, ecology, nature's balance, food chain of life stuff, does it seem like a bunch of hooey to you?
In a couple to five years I hope we all see some kind of compromise or forward movement to a much neglected but highly useable area. And by useable I don't mean, necessarily, profitable. We need some idea that makes sense to most the people from all sides.
As we can see it takes a lot of communication, education and dedication all around to keep it going. But I firmly believe that is not an insurmountable obstacle. I know we can make something happen that will please and impress you. We're just waiting and working toward the opportunity. I look forward to proving you wrong, I mean that in the kindest way.
Debbie Parker
Hill City
parkerdebs@gmail.com
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