CALEB pulls out of South Broad stadium, groundbreaking uncertain

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- Thursday morning, the Chattanooga Sports Authority Board heard the latest developments on the South Broad Stadium.

Opening day of 2024 was last night but the Lookouts future home might be ready to bring in the proverbial closing pitcher.

However, there was a curveball as ongoing negotiations over a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) between developers, the city, and the Chattanoogans for Love, Equality, and Benevolence (CALEB), have ended as the community organization has elected to withdraw from CBA negotiations.

Some initial infrastructure beginning on the Wheland Foundry site, future home of the South Broad Stadium.

A representative for CALEB, Geoffery Merdahl, says they have been representing the South Chattanooga Community for 15 months in CBA negotiations.

Merdahl said, “It was never about the CBA per se for us, it was about the concrete benefits that was enclosed inside of the CBA.”

They want various items including affordable housing, construction workers being kept local, increased public transportation options, and funding for the Howard School among other requests.

However, despite some of the things being agreed upon such as $10 million for the Howard School from Hamilton County, they say it hasn’t been enough.

Merdahl said, “We’ve decided on a critical part of the package of items that we were pursuing. We weren’t able to get really robust language in any of the agreements.”

Developers of the project in a statement say that they are disappointed that these negotiations have stopped after over a year of meetings and discussions on the subject.

They said, “This project will revitalize a part of Chattanooga that has been overlooked for generations, and we look forward to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with community leaders who are willing to agree to reasonable terms that will ensure sustainable economic growth that benefits everyone. We will all continue to work diligently to codify the commitments we made during these negotiations for the benfit of the community and Perimeter Properties (landowner), The Lookouts, and New City Properties (project developer) stand ready to follow through with the commitments we made whether there is a formal CBA or not.”

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly’s Chief of Staff Jermaine Freeman added, “It’s the city’s expectation that a CBA will still be negotiated the private parties and the South Chattanooga Community Association, so our anticipation is that the CBA will continue, and again we really want to thank CALEB for everything they’ve advocated for.”

Meanwhile, we did see some of the initial stages of work ongoing on Thursday at the Wheland Foundry site.

Near the rear of one of the main portions of the site which will become a pavilion, there were some initial infrastructure being placed by contractors such as utility lines.

Despite this initial work, formal construction of the stadium cannot begin until several documents such as the development agreement, donation agreement (of the site), the Lookouts’ lease, a CBA, the bond indenture, and a note for stadium financing.

Freeman says they hope to get several of these documents to the Sports Authority Board within the next two weeks, as the date for groundbreaking continues to shift,

Freeman said, “It’s a little bit of a moving target right now, but I do think we are looking at a construction start within the next few months.”

These documents will all need to go through final approval by both the Chattanooga City Council and Hamilton County Commission.

CALEB says they will still continue to monitor the process despite no longer being directly in negotiations.

Supporting the development of that district is a traffic study of South Broad Street and adjacent roadways.

Conducted by La Bella Associates, the study is looking at traffic counts along South Broad at various peak times.

This is gage the baseline traffic count before the ballpark and additional development is brought in.

An engineer of the project, Kaitlin Sims, says that it has been tricky trying to develop these counts at 18 different intersections.

Sims said, “Traffic studies are very particular in that they want specific times to be normal, so you don’t want to do it on holiday weekends, you don’t want to do it when TDOT is closing lanes on the interstate, or the frontage road is being built which will be utilized by this development.”

Sims says they are still analyzing the data from their traffic counts and will make recommendations within the next few weeks.

She says major changes to the project from this study are not expected.