Charles Oliver
charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com
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Two years ago, Dalton Mayor David Pennington took office with promises to make the city a more attractive place to do business, increase tourism and make the city a more attractive residence area for retirees.
Thursday morning, at the Dalton-Whitfield Chamber of Commerce’s state of the community breakfast, Pennington reeled off some of the things the city has done since then to meet those goals. The City Council has cut property taxes 20 percent, gotten voters to approve a “freeport” tax exemption for some business inventories and cut business license fees up to 50 percent. The city has also added new “pocket” parks to make the area more green and livable and new recreation facilities, such as four additional tennis courts.
But Pennington didn’t just dwell on what had been done. He focused on measures the city plans to implement to improve the quality of life and encourage economic development, plans that include more green spaces and recreational areas across the city linked by new walking and bicycling trails.
“I want to let people dream about what this city could be,” he said, introducing a video that outlined that vision.
City leaders have long talked about Crawford Street as the entrance to the city and the need to make it more attractive.
Under the plans unveiled Thursday, city officials would take advantage of Crawford Street’s 95-foot right of way to create an outdoor mall stretching from Harmon Field where the Dalton High Catamounts play to downtown and beyond to a proposed new park just east of the railroad tracks. The mall would be a site for festivals, and on football game Friday nights it would allow tailgaters to stroll downtown to local shops and restaurants.
The city is already trying to revitalize the Crown Mill area, using federal grant funds to repair and renovate the historic Hamilton House, for instance. But plans call for “greenway” bicycling and hiking paths to connect that area to downtown. Those paths would branch out into a number of different directions, ultimately linking to Mill Creek, Mount Rachel and Heritage Point Park and to what city officials called the area’s “crown jewel,” the Haig Mill reservoir.
The video referred to these areas as the city’s “green hat.”
City officials say they’d like to see a walking path around the reservoir and a pavilion and paddle boat dock on the reservoir.
Pennington said after his presentation that these are all long-range plans with no set timetable.
“But some of this is being done even as we speak, the work on the Hamilton House and the Crown Mill area,” Pennington said.
He said before any plans are finalized for Crawford Street there will be a public meeting to get more input.
“We have businesses that are interested in that, and one of the concerns that people always have is parking,” he said. “We hope to have most of those concerns addressed before we have that meeting. And that’s not as imperative as some of the stuff we are working on over in the Crown Mill area.”
In addition to helping repair the Hamilton House, which is owned by the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, the city has acquired the old Crown Mill store, and officials hope to acquire some of the old mill houses.
“We want to quickly figure out what we can do up on Mount Rachel and also what is possible along Mill Creek,” Pennington said.
He said Dalton Utilities will play an important role in these plans since it controls the reservoir and is also responsible for maintaining waterways in the city.
Dalton Utilities president and CEO Don Cope said utility officials are already looking at what the utility can do to help, noting he proposed a similar recreational plan for the reservoir several years ago.
But Cope said the utility must be able to control access to the reservoir.
“Since 9/11 (the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001), the federal government has become especially concerned about security of public drinking water supplies,” he said.
Cope said that because the reservoir is a source of drinking water, motorized boats cannot be used on it because fuel and oil could contaminate the water. But he said paddle boats and canoes proposed by the city could be used there.
