Chattanooga Pulse

Driving over to the Finley Stadium area for the soccer game on the Fourth and again to the Chattanooga Market on the 5th, the eyesore better known as “Parkway Towers” struck me as an issue that someone needs to deal with, and pronto. Fix it up or tear it down—one or the other.

As loose facts and rumor have it, the owner was approached when Finley was being built and the Pavilion refurbished to sell the abandoned building for a nominal price (mainly the value of the land underneath, I would suspect). And, apparently he/she/it was a little prouder of the building than the powers that be were willing to pay, so the deal fell through.

Since then, the brown-and-tan behemoth has represented nothing more than visual pollution, just steps away from a stadium and pavilion that add so much to our city’s potential for additional tourism revenue. And what’s worse, an unfortunate incident there left an alleged trespasser paralyzed when he fell from its unstable heights. Shouldn’t that have been enough to bulldoze the beast?

Personally, I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I owned THE ugliest monument adorning the intersection of two major freeways smack dab at the doorstep of downtown Chattanooga. But that’s just me. I’m no “businessman.”

Regardless, my outrage at some random local issue like that was the last straw to get me to finally go online and fill out a STAND survey on chattanoogastand.com. This four-question survey seeks to gauge respondents’ feelings for Chattanooga, and what we can do to make it a better place to live.

STAND was launched back in May by a diverse group of concerned citizens who wanted to see a community-wide vision established for the next 25 years. And I guess since the metro/county population is somewhere around 250,000, the STAND campaign decided that a good goal might be to aim for 10 percent responding, or 25,000.

The way I understand it, if they achieve this goal, Chattanooga will have accomplished the world’s largest visioning process to date. And I believe we can do it. I mean, we had more than 3,000 fans at the last Chattanooga FC game when the average NPSL League attendance is 150-200. Chattanoogans really seem to care about what’s going on here.

The answers collected will be given to the Ochs Center for processing and will then be available to the public for use as a tool, directing and demanding that the future of this city meet the needs of all of the people who live here.

Now, I doubt if the results of this survey will be enough to fire up a wrecking ball toward the aforementioned monolith of abandoned glory, or even force opinionated columnists to watch what they print, but results do have the power to make a difference that’s based on public desire—not just political prowess. And that’s pretty cool.

I mean, it doesn’t take Boss Hogg to figure out that if you choose your path from one already laid out by the constituency, then bingo: re-election. Even Littlefield is smart enough to see these wall-writings. And that may make the next three years or so a little more tolerable.

And guess what? No more “Power Structure.” Local radio talk-show conspiracy theorists and Chattanoogan.com opinion respondents alike will have no one left to blame but the STAND survey respondents for any great ideas (like two-way streets) they deem unpopular just because of where they came from.

But you can’t win if you don’t play. So next time you see one of the STAND volunteers in a school-bus-yellow T-shirt at Nightfall, Chattanooga Market, Family Movie Night or some other event, stop and give them your two cents. Or, visit chattanoogastand.com and fill out the survey online.

So far, 9,501 Chattanoogans have taken a STAND. Why don’t you increase that number by one?

Chuck Crowder is a local writer and general man about town. His opinions are just that. Everything expressed is loosely based on fact, and crap he hears people talking about. Take what you just read with a grain of salt, but pepper it in your thoughts. And be sure to check out his wildly popular website  www.thenoog.com