Times: Why haven't you gotten behind a project like this before? Were you hesitant? ...
Lupton: I have never been hesitant. I've never had any skepticism about the community, about the river, or about the riverfront project. It's just a matter of time. We had to wait.
We had to wait until Rick (Montague, his son-in-law and head of the Moccasin Bend Task Force) has done his job. There was Carr, Lynch (the Riverpark planners) and jillions of kinds of expertise that we've brought into this community.
And then you went through the Venture syndrome, and the people of the community told us very clearly that they felt that's where we ought to go first.
The biggest problem that Chattanooga has ever had, they've all buttoned it up at night and went home to their little bitty conclaves and nobody communicated with anybody--including him (he points at his father's photograph) and his cohorts.
They wanted to keep this place a secret. They didn't want anybody knowing about what a nice little deal they had here.
Well, they were full of s---, as far as I'm concerned. And I told him so, in just those words, a good while ago.
And that, I think, is what Venture has begun to overcome.
St. Paul did it another way. Charlotte did it another way. Strictly business. They got all the business guys together and they went out and did it. "Like it or not, fellow." "Sorry about you down there."
It hasn't been done with this much representation in any city I know about.
Lyndhurst, I really firmly believe, has brought us to this point. It has excited some of the people that got going with Venture.
And we have planned like hell. But if you don't plan it, you go down there and build catfish shacks on that river.
So you did have to go through an ultra-long and an ultra-boring, as far as most of the community was concerned, session after session. And then when you finally come with the thing, everybody's saying, "Well now, let's by God do something. We're tired of hearing you shoot your mouth off."
Times: Now, there are some folks who aren't saying that. There is some skepticism out there.
Lupton: Why, of course, you can't make everybody happy.
Times: There's a lot of that out there, though. Too much to dismiss. Is that a factor?
Lupton: You know, I really don't think it is. I think you don't have to have much more than that good-sized nucleus of two or three thousand people that showed up at Venture that really have Chattanooga on their heart to really make a community hum and move forward.
Folks are going to shoot at this. They have to do that. That's part of human nature. You can't please 250,000 people.
This place is surrounded with the most ultraconservative form of people left in the world, in America. True. And the word "change" is the most hideous word in the American language, in the English language.
You have the black contingent which makes up a tremendous part of this community, and the word "change" to them, except as it concerns equality, is a very fearful word. Now, they are now just beginning to understand how to learn to live in a free-enterprise system. Going to be very difficult. They can't have it legislated for them. They must get in there and wade in the water. It's tough. It's tough.
People really don't believe in their heart of hearts that anything like this really is going to be this good or that we really are going to do this for all the right reasons. A lot of people don't want to see anybody succeed at anything.
But you don't have to have everybody. Metro (the 1984 vote on consolidated government) was a marvelous example. They just beat the absolute bejesus out of us. And they came out 75,000 strong to 35,000 strong. Well, that's getting your head beat in.
But those aren't the guys who are going to move Chattanooga forward. They're going to be the guys who are going to drag their feet, go back to East Ridge every night after they've earned their living in Chattanooga. And they're going to go to Ooltewah every night. And wherever they go, they're frightened. So you don't need that kind of people. They'll get on the bandwagon.
Times: I'm sure their response is: "To do it, you need some of our tax money."
Lupton: Oh, they love to hide behind that. They love it. "You're going to tax us to death. All you're interested in is this or that."
They can't say that about me. They'd love to, but I've got 'em. I've got not one thing to gain out of this except a better place for you and your kids and their kids to live. They can't lay that on me. They want to.
Times: You feel some insulation there, don't you? A purifier for the motive anyway?
Lupton: Yes, right, and everybody else that's involved in this ain't going to gain a thing out of it. The people don't understand that.
They've been led to believe that the rich people of the world are out to f---- 'em, they're going to up their taxes and they're going to kill 'em. That is not the purpose of this at all. They'll find it out.
Times: What are they going to get out of it?
Lupton: Oh, my God, what are they going to get out of it? Think of -- think!
Believe me, interested outside investors are already beginning to look at this city right now and they're saying, "What's going on? What the hell is going on in Chattanooga? I haven't even heard of Chattanooga."
They're coming in here. They're going to bring their companies in here. Some of them night even go out there and look at that damn Honors Course and say, "By God, you've got a place like that?
I want my company here. I'd like to play golf on the best golf course in America."
The economy is going to be entirely different. Your tax base is going to be entirely different. You're going to have more people paying the same kind of tax.
You're going to have a different kind of person, too, rather than the end of the Appalachian Trail.
And we've got a built-in reason to make this community move. Just name off the things that are sitting here dead.
How many have a river that looks like our river?
How many have three beautiful prep schools and another school system that's much improved and going to be a lot better? Paideia (the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences) is going to do something for this community that this community ain't really aware of yet.
Your mountains. We've got Chickamauga Park out there, a relic of the worst war we ever fought.
You've got Moccasin Bend, and God knows what we can do with that if we do it right. If we do it right.
That can be a historic site that the guy says to her, "Hey, Jane, pack the kids up. We're going down to Chattanooga and we're going to spend a week. We're not going to spend the weekend, and we're not going to come off I-75 on the way to Florida. They've got stuff down there that we need to see."
That's how things work. You get people excited about a community and that excitement spills over. The money is really the easy part of it. It honestly is, if you use it intelligently.
I think this town is the right size. You might put another 100,000 people in it in the next 10 years; that's big enough. Then you control the quality of the people.
You don't want to be in Atlanta - God, the most unmanageable damn place in the world. You want to be in New York, Chicago? Hell, you can't manage those towns. You can't keep your quality and decide on the kind of quality that you're going to have.
Times: I've heard some fear expressed -- and it was tied personally to you, I believe -- that the Riverpark would become a playground for the rich. Just as the average person can't go out to you Honors Course and play a round of golf this afternoon, because he can't afford a membership fee, the average person wouldn't' be able to take advantage of everything in the Riverpark.
Lupton: I love that. There's really no reason to comment on that. If we f--- it up that bad, you ought to run us out of town tarred and feathered. Me first -- tar and feather me first.
The Riverpark is going to be open to the world. You will have to pay to get into some things. You cannot open everything to everybody. It will not fly.
As long as there is an Earth, there are going to be poor people, there are going to be medium, and there are going to be rich people. there ain't anything any of us can do about that.
Times: Tell me about the aquarium.
Lupton: The aquarium is going to fool the hell out of all the critics. They're having a good time sticking their tongue in their cheek right now, but I think it's going to be a meaningful thing, an exciting thing. I really do.
Everybody's saying, "Who the hell wants to go down there and look at the brim and catfish." Well, if that's where they're coming from, they are going to be truly shocked.
Times: How active are you going to be on this Riverfront board? You're a busy fellow. Do you want to be chairman of this board?
Lupton: I don't think I ought to be chairman of the board. I am going to be very active on this board. I plan to be very active in the future of Chattanooga.
I want to play my part properly so that I don't overexpose myself and people begin to say, "This is nothing in the world except Lupton's deal."
Now, I'm not going to let them build an atomic bomb plant on the damn river. If that's what the finally decide to do. You know where I'm coming from. I'm in a delicate position, because people love to take a pot shot at me and say, "That son-of-a b---- is running the whole thing. We ain't got nothing to say about it."
Times: You said you wanted to raise $20 million, then $30, then $50 million. How much will Lyndhurst's commitment be?
Lupton: I'm a little hesitant to say to you today, because of ignorance, exactly what we're going to need over the next five years.
Ten million may leverage itself enough for us where we can't even keep up with that, with the financial community coming up with reduced interest loans. This is what happened in St. Paul. The McKnight Foundation gave $10 million, and they have leveraged that way up through the skies.
So I don't think it's a matter of how much money we get. It's a matter of doing a good job with the first amount.
Times: Has the Lyndhurst board met to decide how much it will give?
Lupton: I would be speaking out of school if I said now exactly what Lyndhurst is going to do in the way of dollars. We should have an announcement before too long.
The first original figure is going to be important is that everybody understand very clearly that this is an ongoing, never-ending project. This Riverfront Corp., I don't think it should ever die. I hope I'm dead and gone and they're still giving to it.
Times: Lyndhurst has about $100 million. It gives away about $4 million a year, a lot of it to projects in Chattanooga. Will the Riverpark donation reduce those gifts?
Lupton: As far as I'm personally concerned, if we take some of the body of Lyndhurst and put it over somewhere else, that's just as good. So we have that ability to dig into something that's a good deal bigger and different from that $4 million.
Times: How are your vision and Lyndhurst's vision different from the vision of the Memorial Welfare Foundation, which of course became Lyndhurst after your father's death?
Lupton: Oh, in so many ways that I doubt that you've got enough tape.
Times: I've got lots of tape.
Lupton: Maybe the key word is the willingness to take a risk and to be wrong with a lot of things that we've done. And we have been, but we have learned from it.
Times: Instead of just backing winners?
Lupton: Or just building buildings, you know. I don't like to build buildings. Dad really built Baylor (School) very quietly. And GPS (Girls' Preparatory School). And he was very interested in his church; he gave lots of money to that. He just had a different philosophy.
And you woke up one morning, or I certainly woke up one morning - long before he died - and this community is sitting there with its huge foundations. Memorial, Benwood, Provident, Tonya. No city this size in the world has the kind of foundation dollars that this city has.
And everybody was kind of plowing it into those good old Let's build a building."
It was just an entirely different time. And times change.
Times: There are some other folks in this town who have influence and wealth, including some other Coca-Cola bottlers. Are they involved in this? Would you like them involved?
Lupton: Yes. You know, the man back here (he points again at his father's portrait) raised me to understand something about giving money away intelligently. I don't know if I've done it intelligently, but he taught me an awful lot.
Those guys didn't have that opportunity. I want them very desperately to be involved, and I think they should be involved.
Times: The Moccasin Bend Task Force, the group that planned the Riverpark, was a government body. It had some secret meetings, but most were open. Now the new corporation, a private body is going to receive state money and city money and county money, and it will meet privately to decide how to use it. Should that scare us?
Lupton: No, I don't think it should, because of the makeup of the board. You can't do much better than we've tried to do as representation is concerned.
We've put the representatives of - well, what haven't we put? Maybe the indigent, or the lame. And the black member is being appointed by people that the community appointed, so they can't look funny at us.
Times: What reaction have you received to your statements in December?
Lupton: You cannot believe the numbers of letters I've gotten. It's been the most absolutely exciting, gratifying thing.
People say, "I came back to Chattanooga after being away for 30 ears, and this is it."
I'm talking about blacks. I'm talking about women. I'm talking about every conceivable walk of life. It shocked the hell out of me.
I had no idea what I was doing up there that day, or the repercussions of what I was doing. Well, I know what I was doing, but I had no idea of the repercussions.
Times: What could a person - Not a naysayer, but a person with a steady look at things -- see at the Riverpark in a year of five years and honestly say, "Boy they really screwed that up"?
Lupton: Oh, we're going to make some mistakes. We've got an opportunity to make a lot of mistakes. As long as you are out there taking risks, you're going to make some mistakes.
When we do something, we want it to be good.
I mean the best.
We've got so much of the best in this community now it's spooky. Go find me a damn Hunter Museum somewhere else.
You been down to the High (Museum in Atlanta)? Isn't that a nice thing to walk through? It's empty. Why, that's my old Co-Cola money, sat there and built a damn building. A building ain't any good. Bring all the schoolchildren in and let them see the ceilings. Empty.
Quality. Quality. And we can do it. We've go marvelous minds and marvelous enthusiasm in this community.
Hey, mistakes, but let's make sure we make some. Let's don't sit here and make the biggest of all.
I don't have to tell you what that is.
Do nothing. Do nothing.
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The Lupton Co. is located downtown also at 702 Tallan Building; phone 615/ 756-0611.