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From the editor:
Twenty-two years ago, I made a big mistake. No, the mistake wasn’t taking a job in Clarksville – I’m glad I did that.
The mistake was taking Exit 4.
It was March 1999, and I was driving my wife into town for the first time. We were moving here from Tallahassee, Florida, where most of the paths into town include magnificent live-oak lined boulevards, grassy medians and landscaped, well-kept businesses.
We got off Interstate 24 and passed by Governor’s Square Mall. OK, that was good. Then there was a Red Lobster, Books-A-Million, Lowes and Baskin-Robbins. Our national retail needs would be met.
Then we passed over the Red River, and my wife got quiet.
For most of a mile, both sides of College Street were lined with dilapidated shops with peeling paint, busted-up concrete parking lots, junked cars, trash everywhere and the longest, rusted, barbed-wire fence I’d seen since the last time I drove by a state prison.
I looked at my wife. She was crying.
This, Clarksville, was our first impression of the city.
Things improved a bit since then. The new bridge was built a few years after we arrived, and Austin Peay State University now has the Science Building at the far end of the stretch. The old Riley and Hayes warehouses have been partitioned into quaint antique shops, with the adjoining Silke’s Old World Bread.
But sadly, it hasn’t changed much. And that fence hasn’t moved.
Things are about to change
Farther into downtown, the F&M Bank Arena is expected to open for APSU’s 2022-23 basketball season. The venue will have room for about 6,000 fans at concerts, 5,500 for basketball games and 5,000 for hockey.
The incoming arena has created a flurry of activity for new and incoming businesses, with the three-story Shelby’s Trio restaurant across the street, and the federal building about to be turned into a restaurant one block away. Plans are still in the works for a retail center next door, between the Riverview Inn and the arena.
But to get there, most visitors will be coming to Clarksville by Exit 4, leading them through an entrance that’s an embarrassment to our city.
One big hope was that the purchase and redevelopment of the old Vulcan property behind the fence would improve things, but the owners are having difficulty finding a developer because the area is so visually unattractive.
That’s according to businessman Don Jenkins, who last week pushed fellow members of the Economic Development Council Executive Committee to address the problem.
“That fence has been there forever, and that is the biggest case of urban blight that you’ll ever see,” Jenkins said at the meeting.
He mentioned that the city of Clarksville once did a study along that stretch that proposed 10-foot wide sidewalks, with circles going into the streets in adjoining neighborhoods. It’s been sitting on a shelf ever since.
“We need an entrance way to Clarksville, Tennessee, where we look like the city that we really are,” he said.
“When you invite somebody to come to Austin Peay, and all the people that are going to come in to the (F&M Bank Arena) … you want to showcase part of the city in a very positive manner, and we can’t do that right now with that one little section,” Jenkins said. “If we could improve that one little section, it would make a major impression on people that are brand new, the very first time they ever look at Clarksville, Tennessee.”
Chamber of Commerce Chairman Paul Turner told the committee that the Central Business Improvement District is looking at some possible solutions.
Those solutions can’t come soon enough.
Clarksville is better than this
My family, obviously, got over our first impression. We had planned to be here for only a few years, and we had several opportunities to leave for other places.
But we fell in love with our house, and our church, and our friends, and so we put down roots, and we’re here to stay. We want that for everyone, because we know Clarksville is better than that horrible first impression.
How long will it take for us to make a better one?
Correction: Paul Turner is chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. The article has been updated.