Oct. 15--CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. --Visioneering Wichita's 63-member contingent got a look Wednesday afternoon at a three-block railway corridor in downtown Chattanooga that blends the city's history into a Riverwalk art and entertainment corridor.

City and county officials say it is the template for downtown Wichita's future.

The corridor, which retraces the Lookout Railway from the Hunter Museum of American Art past the Tennessee Aquarium to AT&T Park and the Tennessee River, was one focus of the first day of fact-finding by the Wichita contingent. Business and civic leaders are in Chattanooga through Friday looking for ideas on how to connect downtown Wichita's attractions.

"They're telling a story here of where they started and how they got to where they are today, and they're connecting it all together," Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer said as he toured downtown. "They have retail; they have the housing; they have the young people; they have the outside cafes. They have everything you could want.

"I look at this and I'd say this is Wichita, and where they are today is where we can be."

Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce president Bryan Derreberry said the next step for Wichita is to identify and understand its assets.

"Chattanooga really understands their ingredients and how to combine them. That's the key," Derreberry said in a late-afternoon brainstorming session. "It's truly about understanding and maximizing the ingredients that we have."

Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield said his city's story is similar to Wichita's: In 1969, Chattanooga was dismissed by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite as "the most polluted city in America."

"It wasn't a proud moment for this city," Littlefield said. "It was a dark moment. We've cleaned up our act since then. God gave these people a great backdrop for a city, and we've done very little with it."

Chattanooga was an old-style industrial city, Littlefield said, with factories lining the Tennessee River that deteriorated into eyesores as the city's manufacturing base dried up.

So Chattanooga officials hit the road -- much like Wichita's 4-year-old metro-to-metro tours -- with visits to Indianapolis; Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; and Birmingham, Ala.

"We have shamelessly stolen all of these ideas from every city we've visited," Littlefield said. "Our aquarium will look like those in Baltimore and Boston. Our children's discovery museum was essentially stolen from Charlotte and Birmingham."

The Riverwalk corridor is a $120 million public/private partnership, half-funded by hotel taxes and the other half raised from private donors.

Without it, Littlefield said his city would have been handicapped in its quest to lure major manufacturers, such as the Volkswagen plant Chattanooga landed in July 2008.

"When Volkswagen came here and made the announcement in this facility (the Hunter Museum), they talked about the incentive packages all of those big industries expect and receive," Littlefield said.

"For us and the other cities, the incentives were equal, they said, but it was the intangibles.... Because at some point, the intangibles of life become tangible. If we had told the captains of industry here years ago it was our quality of life, the things people thought they could do without, that brought those hard industry and high-tech jobs to this community, they would have thought we were wasting our time and money.

"Building a great city isn't easy," Littlefield said. "I hope you'll be inspired. I hope you'll go and do things in your city. We aren't competitors. We're in the business of quality of life."

Reach Bill Wilson at 316-268-6290 or bwilson@wichitaeagle.com.

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