In my previous entry, I mentioned that I’m going to Chattanooga. As it turns out, I’ve now been there and back, with a little to report about the town gone fish.

Chattanooga is in so many ways becoming a New Urbanist’s dream, but without rail transportation (no, the Incline doesn’t count). It’s pedestrian friendly. According to Sunday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press, the downtown area is going through a housing boom. However, much like Atlanta’s own Post Riverside complex, there’s very little sign of any boom going on. Perhaps we went at just the emptiest time of year, but there was hardly anyone on the streets (even the homeless were difficult to find), especially on the nights and weekends. Struggling to find a place to have a reasonably-priced breakfast, we wound up going to a Waffle house sitting a few miles from the downtown area.

One thing that surprised me was the storage room sitting in prime restaurant property. Across the street from the Aquarium, you can find a building that houses the Big River Grille and Thai Smile 3, plus some unoccupied restaurant spaces. We were able to see inside the unoccupied spaces quite clearly only to see that some of those spaces were utilized as storage space. My reaction to this: if the best use of prime real estate is storage space, downtown Chattanooga has some (no pun intended) real problems.

On our last day, we no longer had a parking pass for the hotel, so we parked in one of the downtown lots. Now, the lots there are so plentiful that it will take years before anyone ever has a parking problem in the area. Seriously, the folks who run the lots could certainly afford to charge much lower rates to help attract more folks to the area. We found a surface lot a little out of the way, but relatively cheap compared to the others: $4.00 for the whole day — as opposed to hourly rates, which generally eat wallets for breakfast. The lot we found, like many others, was run by Republic Parking. Given the rates and ubiquity of Repbulic Parking signs, it appears they have a monopoly on parking services in the city. As we found out, they seem to act like a monopoly, too. Upon returning to the car, I found a “Parking Violation” ticket. Thanks to cellular telephone technology, I was able to call the number listed on the ticket and request they void the ticket, which they did. To their credit, the folks from Republic Parking were very courteous and professional to me on the phone, but as I got in the car I had to wonder how many folks out there have gotten tickets and decided it wasn’t worth it to try to fight the ticket — and how much additional revenue Republic generates from their irresponsible ticketing practices.

Having said all that, our trip to Chattanooga was an overall good experience. The people there were very friendly. The food at all the restaurants we visited was very good. The attractions were … well … attractive. When we arrived at the hotel, there happened to be a Veterans for John Kerry rally featuring Max Cleland.

From the reports I saw while we were there, I have little doubt that Chattanooga’s downtown area will see more folks move in. The Tennessee Aquarium is expanding, and this single attraction is clearly at the center of much of downtown’s economic development initiatives. The quality of life there, at least superficially, appears to be enviable, and it will probably remain that way for some time to come.