Bryan Shults

The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency is hosting an Alton Park land use planning meeting from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at the Southside Community Health Center.

“What’s going to happen is that we will have little display boards and we want residents to fill in what will happen in the next 10 to 15 years,” said Bryan Shults, senior planner.

He said there will be no formal presentation, residents are asked to just come in and give their ideas.

Longtime Alton Park resident Debra Matthews said she is planning to attend, but she’s concerned that other residents aren’t aware of the meeting.

“A plan will come to fruition, but it may not be what the community wants,” said Ms. Matthews, head of the Alton Park/Piney Woods Neighborhood Improvement Corp. “The masses are not coming out because they don’t know about it.”

Maria Noel, a resident of nearly 30 years, said she remembers when Alton Park had restaurants, grocery stores and a dry cleaner, and she would like to see the neighborhood return to that.

“The goal is to make Alton Park a community of choice, not chance,” she said.

In the 1960s and 1970s the community was home to doctors, teachers, professionals and industry workers, she said.

“It was where the black middle class lived, where the kids were not only expected to excel in school but to go to college,” Ms. Noel said.

She said it wasn’t until the late 1960s that integration took hold and enabled people to take their business to more communities. Also in the 1970s many industries in Alton Park started closing, leaving many residents unemployed, Ms. Noel said.

The changes left Alton Park a low-income community plagued with high unemployment and a lack of businesses, officials said.

“We don’t see any new housing going up,” said Ms. Matthews, who has lived in the community for more than 50 years. “We have no major businesses, just small pockets of businesses and they’re scattered.”

Ms. Noel said she would like to see a grocery store, clothing store, dry cleaner and restaurants.

“It would be great to see more commercial business in Alton Park,” she said. “Especially business that enables residents to get jobs.”

The Alton Park area extends on the north from Chattanooga Creek to the Tennessee-Georgia state line on the south. It extends from Chattanooga Creek on the east to Hawkins Ridge on the west, Mr. Shults said.

Alton Park includes about 1,500 acres and at least eight publicly owned brownfields, underused industrial or commercial facilities where development is complicated by real or perceived contamination.

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