As NewsChannel 9 reported, "We're not proposing anything, and we're not not proposing anything."
That's how CBL Properties development director Jon Meshel described the state of Northgate Mall's future at the third and, by most accounts, final community input session on August 30. No renderings. No leasing list. No date for a single wall coming down. If you've been half-following the Northgate story through a year of headlines, that quote might sound like the whole thing stalled out. It didn't. A month earlier, CBL withdrew a proposal before putting forward anything resembling a formal plan.
The Proposal That Never Became a Deal
In July, CBL was in talks with LDG, a Louisville-based developer with nearly 29,000 apartments built across nine states, about an income-restricted housing project on part of the Northgate parking lot. The units would have targeted households earning at or below 70 percent of the area median income, which the U.S. Census Bureau put at roughly $64,500 for the Chattanooga area in 2024. Nothing was final. It hadn't even reached a public board yet.
On July 28, CBL asked a Chattanooga board to pull the LDG item from its agenda entirely. A company spokesperson said the conversations with LDG had already been winding down and CBL wasn't pursuing a deal. Whatever the internal reasoning, the outcome is the part that matters for anyone who shops, walks, or drives past that stretch of Highway 153: a specific, named proposal, from a specific developer, disappeared before it ever became a rendering. As NewsChannel 9 reported, longtime Hixson resident Peggy Lewis put it plainly at the final meeting a month later. "I understood that there was going to be affordable housing put in on the parking lot of Northgate Mall. I am against that," she said, explaining why she'd shown up.
With no formal redevelopment plan on the table, the town halls have focused on what residents hope one will include.
What Three Town Halls Actually Asked For
Hixson residents haven't just objected to things. Across a July gathering at Valleybrook Golf Club and the Friends of Hixson session at Burks United Methodist Church, a fairly specific wish list has taken shape, one the Chattanooga City Council formalized in a January resolution:
- No more than 25 percent of new construction should be residential, and if housing is built, individually owned condominiums are the preferred form
- CBL should reserve space at the site for a new Northgate branch of the Chattanooga Public Library
- The redevelopment should include a substantial park or green space
- The site should include an amphitheater, band shell, or similar venue for community music, art, and theater
- The overall model residents keep pointing to is Cambridge Square in Ooltewah, a mixed-use town center residents have cited by name as the kind of walkable, gathering-oriented development they'd like to see in Hixson
Councilman Jeff Davis, who represents the area and has led several of these conversations, has been careful to say the resolution isn't a rezoning condition. CBL can still build what it decides makes commercial sense. The five priorities have been repeated in community rooms, but no formal ordinance requires CBL to adopt them.
What Isn't Changing Yet
If you shop at Northgate now, the practical news is reassuring: nothing about your Saturday errands is about to disappear. Belk, Old Navy, Ulta, BJ's, and Culver's are all expected to remain standing through the redevelopment, along with the building that housed the former JCPenney. The work currently underway and actually funded, a $15 million tax increment financing package the city approved in December 2025, isn't glass towers or green space. It's plumbing. The mall's water, sewer, and stormwater systems date back roughly 50 years, and the city is reimbursing CBL up to $8.7 million to replace them across more than 70 acres, including service to 14 parcels that CBL's Hixson Mall LLC entity doesn't even own.
That approval process had its own small stumble worth knowing about, if only because it says something about how closely this deal is being watched. At the March 2 vote, an Industrial Development Board member flagged that Hixson Mall LLC was listed by the state as "not in good standing." City officials called it a clerical error tied to a missed filing, resolved within hours, but it's the kind of detail that shows up when a room full of people is paying very close attention to a project's fine print.
In the meantime, the neighborhood's actual walkable green space is just up Gann Store Road at Greenway Farms, a 180-acre city park along North Chickamauga Creek with six miles of trails, an off-leash dog park, and canoe access points. It's worth noting because it's essentially the amenity residents keep describing when they talk about what they want built into Northgate. Hixson already knows what that kind of space feels like. The question the town halls keep circling back to is whether it can exist closer to the shops people already use.
What to Watch For Next
Nobody involved is promising a fast timeline. CBL has said publicly it will build what makes economic sense, and Councilman Davis has indicated future public input will likely continue through quarterly town halls rather than a single big reveal. The infrastructure work is the near-term milestone to watch. Once the sewer and water replacement is further along, that's when a more concrete site plan is likely to surface, and it's the point at which residents will find out how many of their five priorities actually made it into CBL's version of the project.
For now, the honest summary is this: the mall you know today isn't going anywhere in the next few months, a specific proposal was withdrawn before it reached the rendering stage, and the community has been unusually clear about what a yes would need to look like. That's a different story than "big developer redevelops old mall," and it's the one actually playing out on Highway 153.
If you're watching Northgate because you live nearby and want to understand how it might affect your daily routine, or because you're weighing whether Hixson is the kind of place where residents get a real say in what gets built around them, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's been tracking it locally. Garrett Cox works and lives in the Greater Chattanooga area and keeps an eye on exactly this kind of local development. If you'd like to talk through what's happening in Hixson or any of the surrounding communities, Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
