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The Chattanooga Lookouts Minor League Baseball team has broken ground on a new ballpark that will have a seated capacity of between 6,000 and 7,000.
The ballpark is expected to be ready in time for the 2026 MiLB season. The Lookouts, which are an affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds, have played at AT&T Field (pictured) since 2000.
The new $115m (£89m/€106m) stadium is being built on a 140-acre plot of land in the South Broad District of Chattanooga. The city’s mayor, Tim Kelly, was in attendance for the groundbreaking ceremony.
Plans for the ballpark were first revealed two years ago. The stadium will be jointly owned by the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County.
The stadium will anchor a wider district that will also include hotels, restaurants, office spaces and housing.
“As Chattanoogans, we have many reasons to celebrate this long-awaited and historic moment: This project allows us to remake the western gateway into our city and attract over a billion dollars of new investment to a historically neglected part of town, including badly needed new housing,” Kelly said, according to the Chattanooga Pulse newspaper.
“We will also make history with our city’s first Community Benefits Agreement so that everyone – including Howard students and Alton Park’s legacy residents – will benefit.”
In a statement reported by Local 3 News, the City of Chattanooga added: “The stadium development is expected to pay for itself through future tax revenue generated around the stadium through a financial tool known as a TIF, but it will generate $186m in new education funding for Hamilton County Schools and $102m in new tax revenue for the City and County over the next 30 years, without raising taxes, according to an independent analysis conducted by Younger.”
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