Bold Thinkers
by Doug Gillett

Fourteen years ago, shortly after the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, consultant and kayaking enthusiast John Anderson came to Columbus to get a look at the Chattahoochee River.

“On his very first day in Columbus,” recalls John Turner of the W.C. Bradley Company, “he’s on the RiverWalk just below Eagle and Phenix Dam, and he’s looking at that incredible view, and he says, ‘The Olympics should’ve been here.’ . . . What John told us back then was that we have an amazing whitewater river that’s just hiding behind these dams.”

That amazing river won’t be “hiding” much longer.

On April 27 of this year, Anderson, Turner, and a host of city political leaders and visionaries met on the 14th Street Bridge to announce that the city’s Chattahoochee River whitewater rafting project
was officially underway. Decades in the making, the project will give the Columbus metro area something that Turner says is unique not only to this region or this country, but perhaps even to the planet: a lengthy stretch of whitewater rapids going right through the middle of a major metropolitan area. Imagine enjoying dinner and drinks on the patio at the Chattahoochee River Club downtown and watching rafters and kayakers shoot down the river below you, and you have an idea of what Columbus’ big thinkers have planned.

“There are a number of western cities that have a little piece of whitewater, but the longest that I’m aware of is a 2,000- foot whitewater park in Reno, Nevada,” Turner says. “We’re talking about 2.3 miles [in Columbus]. I’m not aware of there being such a significant stretch of whitewater in this kind of urban setting anywhere in the world.”

An Unprecedented Partnership

The uniqueness of the project lies not only in its vision, but in the people who have joined together to drive it toward fruition. These days it may seem impossible for government, business and environmental groups to agree on anything, but that’s precisely what’s happening on the Chattahoochee River.

The whitewater idea first took hold in the minds of local business owners, but began grabbing the attention of city leaders in both Columbus and Phenix City in the mid-1990s as the twin successes of the Chattahoochee RiverWalk and the Atlanta Olympics demonstrated the enormous potential of both the metro area and its river. Project leaders pooled public and private money to purchase Columbus’ two obsolete mill dams and put them under the control of the nonprofit Uptown Columbus organization; when it comes time for the actual heavy lifting of breaching the dams and restoring the river flow, private donations once again will be combined with city funds and federal grants to pay for it, says Billy Turner (no relation to John), who is heading a committee on the project.

Billy Turner has experience in assembling such wide-ranging partnerships, having been the head of the Columbus Water Works during the construction of the RiverWalk—which actually began in response to federally mandated upgrades to the city’s sewer/water infrastructure. Between commitments from the Army Corps of Engineers (who contributed heavily to the RiverWalk project), private and corporate pledges, and grant applications pending with federal agencies such as the Economic Development Administration, project leaders already may have lined up more than half of the necessary funds. “I think there’s still $8 to $10 million that still needs to be raised, and we really haven’t even had a major fundraising effort yet,” he says. “That’s one of the things we’ll be able to move on better if we can get some actual construction started.”

The Corps of Engineers has dubbed the project the “Chattahoochee Fall Line Ecosystem Restoration Project,” which says a lot about both its motivations and its goals. The whitewater project is more than just a tourist attraction, says David Arrington, Columbus’ deputy city manager:
It’s an attempt to return the river to something like its natural state before the mill dams were put in.

“One important aspect is that it’ll restore the falls and restore the habitat” of species threatened by the “impounded environment” of the river in its current state, Arrington says. “This is one of those rare projects where it’s a win-win— a win for the environment and a win for the community from both an economic standpoint and a quality-of-life standpoint, to provide tremendous recreational opportunities, while at the same time helping to restore an ecosystem.”

A River with Endless Possibilities

John Turner envisions a recreational area with a wide range of activities.The whitewater course would include challenging Class III rapids at the big drop near the City Mills dam, but it would also have milder Class II rapids “characterized by big broad shoals, the kind of thing that fishermen could wade out into and fish for shoal bass—a different kind of fishing experience than is typical of our area right now,” he says.

And the presence of Georgia Power’s North Highlands dam—which is still used to provide hydroelectric power to the area—means rafting and kayaking enthusiasts can enjoy several different
kinds of trips in a single day, says Billy Turner. “You can get either an easy trip down the river, a slower trip, when the dam is at its lowest flow, up to a much faster and maybe more exciting trip when they open up their turbines for generation of electricity, which will take place usually two times a day in the summertime,” he explains. “We hope that will produce some different experiences that people can plan around.”

Project leaders even envision a “standing wave” that appears under certain conditions near the end of the Eagle and Phenix rapids—one that could be used for everything from kayaking to surfing competitions. “A standing wave is the type of thing that kayakers will travel for hundreds of miles to play in—you can do tricks and play around in one spot without having to go all the way down the river,” John Turner says. “Kayakers have a good understanding of when these waves appear; they watch for those conditions and they flock to those spots. We’ve been told that ours is perhaps the best wave on the entire east coast, when it appears. Our goal is to make it appear a lot more reliably.”

When the kayakers and other outdoor enthusiasts start coming—as many as 188,000 a year, according to a Columbus State University study, more than three quarters of them from out of town—the project’s leaders are optimistic that the money will soon follow. John Turner says W.C. Bradley is evaluating the possibility of turning some of the river’s abandoned mill buildings into mixed-use developments, with property values along the river poised to increase by as much as 60 percent as a result of the whitewater attraction.

“And what’s the value of doing something this cool in such an unlikely place?” Turner asks. “If you’re a student wondering ‘Where should I go to college,’ this has got to be a big deal for CSU and CVCC and Troy State. If you’re a new employee prospect and you’re contemplating coming to Columbus and working for TSYS or Aflac or one of our local companies, this is going to make a great impression on you because it’s green, it’s young, it’s healthy, and it is something that’ll be so unique to Columbus. Any community can build performing-arts venues and museums and skate parks and ice rinks and pools and soccer fields—and they should—but no other place has this
opportunity.

“I think we’re well on our way to being a great mid-size community. I mean, we’ve been recognized as such already,” Turner says. “And this is just one of those incredibly special things that is going to be part of the equation.”