Springfield leaders make pilgrimage to Chattanooga

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

Chattanooga is a great place to learn about what the future of Springfield might hold, said several participants in a recent Chamber of Commerce-sponsored trip to Chattanooga, Tenn.

The chamber held its fifth annual leadership visit, beginning July 23, in Chattanooga. Chattanooga has long been referred to by city leaders as the type of city Springfield would like to be, with its focus on tourism and on becoming a destination city, rather than a pass-through point for travelers.

The three-day chamber program focused on sustainable development, center city revitalization and the Tennessee Aquarium. Forty-one community leaders from the Springfield area participated in the leadership visit, said Brad Bodenhausen, who helped organize the trip for the chamber.

"Chattanooga has been on the list of places we wanted to visit for the leadership trip for a number of years, and since it has the Tennessee Aquarium, which is similar to our proposed museum project, and has had success with its ongoing revitalization efforts downtown, we thought now would be the best time to make the trip," Bodenhausen said.

Last year, a delegation of Springfield leaders visited Boise, Idaho. This year's group of 41 was the largest ever to go on one of these trips.

Participants said they learned a great deal about downtown development and about what an attraction like the to-be-developed American National Fish and Wildlife Living Museum and Aquarium, a model for which is the Tennessee Aquarium, could do for the tourism industry in the Springfield area.

"It was really an eye-opening experience. In many ways Chattanooga is ahead of Springfield, but in many ways we're ahead of them," said Jan Horton, executive director of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks and a trip participant.

One of the most positive things about Chattanooga, Horton added, is that the community leaders all agree on the direction the city should move in.

"The cooperation was amazing. They have done everything in a highly collaborative way," Horton said.

Chattanooga's collaboration began with a crisis, however, when it was named one of the dirtiest cities in the country because of its air- and water-pollution problems in the late 1960s.

"Springfield is not coming out of a crisis situation like that, but we are developing a number of big projects at one time to increase the focus on tourism to our city," Horton said.

The role of private foundations, such as the Community Foundation in Chattanooga, was also something Horton said she found interesting. The Tennessee Aquarium is among many projects in Chattanooga's downtown that are privately funded. There are several foundations established for projects such as downtown revitalization.

"Our focus at the Community Foundation has been on people in need, but I think it would be great if some of our donors in this community would step forward and get interested in things like the downtown project," Horton said.

Chattanooga also has a heavy emphasis on sustainable development, or on developing an area while preserving its ecology and environment. Dave Coonrod, Greene County presiding commissioner, said he was interested in the sustainability aspect of Chattanooga's setup.

Coonrod is a member of the James River Basin Partnership and the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, and he is interested in cleaning up and preserving Jordan Creek.

"What impressed me most was that they all had these principles of sustainability they adhered to. They live by these principles. I am hoping we could carry these things home and develop principles of a similar nature here," Coonrod said.

Tracy Kimberlin, another trip participant and executive director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he was amazed at the amount of money the Chattanooga CVB and its aquarium were spending on marketing. The CVB had a $3.3 million budget and the Tennessee Aquarium a $2 million budget. Springfield's CVB has only a $1.4 million budget.

The Tennessee Aquarium is a not-for-profit corporation that does not receive public funding for its budget, but the Chattanooga CVB receives its support, like Springfield's, from tax money.

"Increasing overnight travel will increase our budget, and as we add these attractions, we'll see more overnight travel. We have discussed a county-wide hotel tax, but that's not something we're pursuing at this time," Kimberlin said.

Kimberlin said he expected Springfield's museum to surpass the Tennessee Aquarium in number of visitors.

"I think we can top the Tennessee Aquarium. With our situation with the museum being right next door to the Bass Pro Shop, which is Missouri's No. 1 tourist attraction, I think we will have more synergy and drive a lot more traffic through our museum," Kimberlin said.

The Tennessee Aquarium was a $45 million project; Springfield's museum is to be $40 million and is projected to open in summer of 2001.

Martin MacDonald, spokesman for Bass Pro Shops and a trip participant, said he saw in Chattanooga how joint marketing efforts can succeed.

"In the Chattanooga area, the city works cooperatively with the museum to market the entire area. That has a significant economic impact on the city because people are coming to the city for a lengthened stay," MacDonald said.

The downtown development in Chattanooga was spurred by its aquarium project, which is in its downtown, but in some ways, Springfield is ahead of Chattanooga in its downtown development, both Horton and Lance T. Brown, executive director of Urban Districts Alliance, said.

"They were very interested in our loft apartments downtown, because that's an area they haven't been able to develop. We also have a very successful group of eateries downtown, which is one thing they said they'd focused on developing," Horton said.

Brown said that Chattanooga's downtown entertainment was more focused on family entertainment and "was organized more along the lines of ongoing events rather than a big splash all at once."

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