Reported price increase in Gateway project causes controversy at commission meeting

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- A report over the weekend from the Chattanooga Times Free Press claimed the cost of the Gateway school project had doubled to $80 million dollars.

It had been initially proposed to be roughly $40 million as part of a $250 million dollar bond issue to fund several school projects across the county.

Multiple commissioners voiced their frustration with how they were caught off guard by the paper’s report after a nearly $50,000 study was conducted to evaluate the cost of the Gateway project.

Commissioner Chip Baker remarked, “Frankly, I was embarrassed. I got a ton of calls, a ton of calls, and I was not pleased. It made me look incompetent, it made me look uninformed. I was not happy, and maybe the rest of you didn’t get any calls, but I sure did.”

Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp says that the headline is inaccurate, saying that the study analyzed four different options for the site.

Received in June, He says the $80 million number was the construction estimate if the Chattanooga School for the Creative Arts(CCA) is moved into the building alongside the new technical school, and that an additional $40 million would be spent to retrofit the existing CCA campus for Normal Park School.

Mayor Wamp said, “I’m looking at a more than $120 million dollar proposition which is completely infeasible. I can tell you as the county’s chief executive, that money doesn’t exist.”

Commissioner David Sharpe, who has been openly critical of the Gateway project and of the mayor said, ” I do not feel this board is being treated, is being informed justly and equally with information, particularly when that information directly impacts the people we represent.”

The mayor maintains the price of just a technical school inside of the Gateway building has not changed much.

Mayor Wamp said, “Best way for me to describe it to you is that the two phases of redevelopment at the Gateway site for education on the ground floor and the first floor, that’s how I think about it, that’s the number that comes in at $40 million dollars.”

He added that the Times Free Press has issued retractions to portions of their report.

Chairman Jeff Eversole did ask the newly formed Hamilton County Audit Committee to look into the report.

Projects such as the Gateway School are still in their planning stages and a final estimate for when we could see these schools open to the public has not been announced.