Editorial
Front Page - Friday, June 11, 2010
Bennett to retire after making city plans for four decades
Erica Tuggle
Barry Bennett has been with the regional planning agency for forty-one years, ever since he worked for them part-time before working his way up to the office of executive director. Bennett, who will retire at the end of July, says it has been rewarding to see the growth and progress of the city in four decades.
- Erica Tuggle
For forty-one years, Barry Bennett has been helping his town undergo a striking before and after makeover that has called the attention of the country and the world.
Bennett began working part-time at Chattanooga’s regional planning agency in 1969 while he was still in school, he stayed with the agency and four decades later he is now looking at a well deserved retirement from his position as executive director of the RPA at the end of July.
In his time as executive director, Bennett has overseen all the functions and operations of the RPA, also serving as a liaison between his staff and the local city and county governments and executive and legislative branches.
“We deal with long range, comprehensive land use and development plans from the entire county, downtown and individual neighborhoods,” he says.
This includes working with several other departments, agencies and public works to find solutions to zoning issues and subdivision usages, he says. The RPA processes all the applications for permits for special usage, zoning and subdivision development that are needed for any place you can imagine visiting in the scenic city. He also serves on the regional planning commission comprised of 15 individuals that formulate recommendations at monthly public hearings along with the community input that is presented to the appropriate legislative body.
If it all seems very complicated, we can rest assured that the system works by the examples of the growth of areas like downtown in the past 20 years. Bennett says the city is in fine shape, but he remembers a time when he began with the RPA when things were not so nice.
“Now, this is the scenic city, the green city, but I remember when I first started work here you could see the black particulate matter floating between the buildings,” he says. “The cleaning process that the city went through to overturn this stigma and achieve the status where we are today has been really remarkable.”
Part of the revitalization of the city has included the efforts to bring the population back to the downtown area which is showcased in the development of the two aquariums and the range of different events the city hosts downtown every week, he says.
“Chattanooga is no different from any other major city in the U.S. They all experience the same things in commercial development particularly the residential moving to the suburbs and shopping malls,” he says. “Downtowns tend to suffer when that happens.”
Although, the mall development in Chattanooga has been the best in the state and maybe even in the South East, he says, there was still the need to bring people from the suburbs to the downtown area that was suffering at that time.
He says, “There have been great efforts on the part of the city to work and partner to bring the population back to downtown, to make it a place where people want to live and work and spend their recreational time.”
Further efforts by the RPA and their partners to bring industry to the area have paid off equally as well, Bennett says. He says the economy will continue to grow with the addition of the Volkswagen plant and the industries that will spring from it. Bennett says he believes Chattanooga will fare far better than other areas of the nation during this time.
“Industrial development will spur more residential development and that will encourage commercial development,” Bennett says. “Efforts made by those in private and public sectors have created a buffer which we will continue to see more of for this community against what is happening to the rest of the county and the world as far as economy goes.”
Chattanooga has become visible on the national stage for their environmental sustainability, and “just the way we do things here,” Bennett says. He attributes this recognition of success to a component in the planning process of having a very high degree of public involvement. Getting the community directly involved in neighborhood plans, giving citizens the opportunity for input and to buy into the process gets the decision makers of the community involved as well, he says.
This has led to visits from all over the world that have come to learn about how Chattanooga managed to turn so many things around such as air pollutions, getting the population back to the downtown and facilitation new growth in the suburbs at the same time, he says.
“They look to this community as a model, and that is something I am very proud to have been a part of,” Bennett says.
This retiree doesn’t seem to be too worried about leaving the decision making in the hands of his successor.
“I think they will be taking over at a point where a lot of good has been done, a lot of remarkable initiatives have taken place, but it is a process,” he says. “The goal is to keep improving and developing and growing to make this a better place for people to live and people to visit. I think everything that is happening now will continue to do that. It will be the job of the new person to continue those efforts.”
Even with the nationwide search for his successor under way, Bennett says, he doesn’t think retirement is going to take him out of the loop or that he will be at a loss to find ways to occupy his time.
“I have five grandkids that I would like to spend a little more quality time with while my health still permits,” he says.
Bennett is also the defensive tactics instructor for the Sheriff’s department, and says he will continue to maintain this position.
“Plus, I don’t plan on disappearing entirely,” he says. “I will pop back up in one capacity or another. I don’t plan to lose touch with what is happening in the community and always want to be available and be a resource.”
With over 40 years of experience, Bennett says, he has much stored up information that is totally useless in any other setting.
“If someone thinks of
something I might happen to know they are welcome to call me,” he chuckles.
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