All that new construction is paying off for Chattanooga, literally

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – The River City Company says property tax revenues in Downtown Chattanooga have grown nearly 39% since 2013—adding nearly 5 million dollars to the city and county tax base.

The growth surprised some in the business community.

According to the River City Company, downtown Chattanooga produced over $32 million dollars in property tax revenue for the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County in 2017. That figure increases when the NorthShore is included.

We asked River City’s Director of Marketing, Amy Donahue about it.

“That entire area, in 2017, produced $44.5 million in property tax revenue. That out punches, sort of any other area in our community by about three times the amount. So it’s a very, very powerful tax revenue generator for our community.”

That information comes from a newly released report by Metro Idea Project, MIP, which was commissioned by River City Company.

Joda Thongnopnua with the MIP says “We went and parsed through about one point two million tax records to better understand, exactly how this growth has impacted our community.”

The increase in tax revenue was helped considerably by several new projects that were developed, like Market City Center, and the new Westin Hotel.

Donhaue adds “On a per acre analysis in downtown we’re producing about thirty-five thousand dollars in property tax revenue a year.”

“And that is probably about three times what the next closest per acre, average does, so again, we can really produce in a small amount of space.”

Thongnopnua says “As we’re digging through the data we realized, “Holy Cow”, this is actually a really big deal to see tax revenue not only representing such a big part of the tax base coming out of downtown, but to see it grow so fast and to be so efficient.”

River City Company is a private, non-profit organization that seeks to manage downtown growth.