New Park to come to Apison
CHATTANOOGA, TN.- There has been a huge rise in residential development in Apison, leaving residents concerned about the lack of recreational spaces here, that is why Apison baptist church has sold a plot of land in hopes to solve that problem.
“So we were hoping that we would find an opportunity, obviously this piece of property owned by Apison Baptist. We knew that it was here. It just had not been on the market and when it went on the market, we started having conversations and decided that this was really the best interest in the community and that we had a responsibility to make it happen to the folks out here.” says Mayor Wamp.
There has been more single family residential growth in Hamilton County, than any other part of the city of Chattanooga. This has caused some frustration from people, who live in places like Apison, because they have simply outgrown their infrastructure.
“But in this part of the county, it’s also a parks youth sports conversation because in a rural part of a community you often if I were to go back 25 years, you know there might not have been much of a consideration about parts because in the Apison area generally speaking 25 years ago they were about 1000 people who lived out here today there are about 5000.” says Mayor Wamp.
There are too many people and not enough recreational spaces. The hope now is to provide a community space for the people of Apison that they didn’t have before.
“What we’re also working towards is improving youth sports facilities all across the communities something we care deeply about and out here they’re just aren’t youth sports facilities a lot of times that’s a conversation about taking better care of them or expanding them and hear what ends up happening is families are traveling to Ooltewah, which didn’t have a fields for their league to begin with. That’s something that we’ve been working with the youth association on. It’s a game changer right it’ll change it’ll become like you see in a whole lot of communities across our county across the country parks and youth sports fields end up being places where communities gather and that’s not been something that Apison had despite the significant growth.” says Mayor Wamp.
The County does not have an exact timeline for when this project will be finished, but express they are ready to start as soon as possible. The total price of the entire property was 1.5 million dollars, Hamilton County plans to sell a portion of the land, and start building soon.
