The Hamilton County Commission will vote on the lease agreement for the downtown jail house studios/data center project on March 18th . This is a project where Urban Story Ventures plans to lease the former downtown jail building and turn it into a music, movie recording studio (Jail House studios) with short term vacation rentals as "artists lofts" and a helicopter pad on the roof. At this point, there is no public clarity on Jail House Studio's job creation goals or what the trade offs are in partnering with a company like Oracle entails for our community in the long term. Or how this project plans to support and sustain long term job creation in Chattanooga.

As recently as March 11th, project leaders said to the Chattanooga Times Free Press "Urban Story ventures is working on figuring out exactly how many jobs could be created by Jailhouse Studios". This current draft lease agreement has Urban Story Ventures paying about $31,000 a month in rent for this property, or $375k a year or $2.64 per square foot. After renovations to the property, values could increase to upwards of $30 per square foot meaning that if the county stays at a $2.64 per square foot lease amount for the duration of the 35 year lease, we could potentially lose out on $61,715,000 of revenue for our county.

Send an email here, to call on commissioners to delay a vote on the lease agreement for this project until project leaders commit to measurable deliverables in workforce development and ensure this lease agreement offers the most return on investment possible back to the county revenue streams.

Background and context:
When this project was first presented on January 7th, Urban Story Ventures announced 3 Oracle data centers would be going into the Bend innovation district. After some community push back, the project leaders said the downtown jail project won't be a data center, it's simply just a server room. Backtracking from the original statement of "after Oracle starts storing their data in Chattanooga? Everyone will want to store their data here in Chattanooga." (Jimmy White,Urban Story Ventures, County Commission January 7th).

After we asked how many jobs this project aims to create? Project leaders went from saying the downtown jail project would "create hundreds of jobs" to "this project will create the opportunity for hundreds of jobs."

The partnership with Oracle is deeply concerning to many in the Chattanooga community, Oracle as a company does not share our Chattanooga values for basic human privacy or loving and respecting our neighbors. Because this project does rely on significant Oracle funding and partnership (a company carrying $100 billion in debt and currently looking at mass layoffs and hemorrhaging cash), we need more time to be clear in what that funding is promised and safeguard for the community around Oracle's investment BEFORE this is voted on, March 18th.

How does this stack up with other decisions around our public funds? Our commissioners have recently spent months deliberating on evening meeting times because the cost would be $3,000 per meeting, whereas they plan to vote on this lease agreement after just 1 week of the public distribution of the agreement and no public clarity on the financial mechanics behind this plan, potential unforeseen costs to the taxpayers or what the tradeoffs of engaging with a risky company like Oracle are.

Over the week of March 9th, 2026, Novonix, a company originally aiming to create thousands of jobs in Hamilton County with public subsidies has announced they will not be making these expansions as promised to our community going from a 180 acre expansion to a 17 acre expansion.

How has this played out in other communities? In Athens, Georgia a film/music studio that opened in 2021 is now pivoting to reboot as a 1.3 million square foot data center. Commitments to long term, sustained jobs are what can help this project deliver the most for Hamilton County proactively, during this AI/data center gold rush.

Chattanooga, we need to be asking ourselves and our elected decision makers: when will we start holding these companies accountable for good paying, long term jobs? We can start now, by asking the County Commission to delay the vote on this data center project until written commitment for job creation is provided. In other places in Tennessee, cities like Bristol have put a 2 year moratorium on Data Centers until leaders can have a better understanding of their impacts on our local economies and environments.

While this project does seem to have much potential in terms of workforce development, the public has received no measurable commitments, on job creation from Urban Story Ventures, despite project leaders repeatedly naming workforce development is a central part of this plan. Jimmy White told the Times Free Press on January 9th, that Oracle was already shipping in hardware to Chattanooga before a vote had been scheduled to approve this project. Without clear enforceable commitments to creating and supporting local jobs, how can we as a community trust that this whole project won't turn into one massive Oracle data center that creates very few jobs and no community benefits for local tax payers?

The public deserves to have access to the following information BEFORE the March 18th vote:

Urban Story Ventures have promised this project will create hundreds of jobs. How many jobs can this project commit to creating? What are the businesses being recruited for this project who will be creating those jobs?

What will be the average wages of these jobs?

How many full time operational jobs will this project require for the day to day operations of the project? What is the estimate of construction side jobs this project will create?

Urban Story Ventures commit to hiring local contractors for the construction work?

What is the timeline for this project? What happens if job creation goals are not met?