Two long-idle Chattanooga landmarks are headed for the wrecking ball. The city is moving to demolish the old Lamar's Restaurant and Motel on Martin Luther King Boulevard along with the former 11th Street Farmers Market building, with both structures slated to come down to their base concrete.
The plans surfaced as the city expands its on-call demolition services contract with Tower Construction, according to Chattanoogan.com. Tower Construction is contracted to handle both demolitions — the old Lamar's building on MLK Boulevard and the former farmers market structure on East 11th Street — per the City of Chattanooga's contract resolution. The estimated cost to tear down Lamar's is $308,661, while demolishing the farmers market building is expected to cost $83,972, the Chattanoogan report states.
To cover the combined expense, the Chattanooga City Council will consider increasing the overall demolition contract from $300,000 to $700,000, per the same report. It's a sizable jump that reflects just how much work the two sites require after years of sitting vacant.
A Fire-Damaged Fixture on MLK Boulevard
Lamar's Restaurant was known for its fried chicken, butterfly shrimp and pork chops, drawing loyal customers over the years. The building had sat vacant for some time before a fire tore through it, with the Chattanooga Fire Department responding to a blaze at the vacant structure at 1810 East Martin Luther King Boulevard at 10:09 p.m. in February 2022 — a property the city says had been abandoned for a number of years by that point, according to the City of Chattanooga. The building was reportedly boarded up after the fire.
The timeline of Lamar's closure is murky. The Chattanoogan's breaking-news report states that Lamar's closed in 1917, while a separate 2022 Chattanoogan report said the restaurant and motel closed in 2017 — a discrepancy that remains unresolved between the two accounts. That same 2022 report noted plans at the time to remodel the property following the fire, though those renovation plans evidently never materialized given the demolition now moving forward.
The Curb Market's Decades as a Produce Hub
The farmers market building carries its own long history under a different name. It was also known as the Curb Market, and according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the 11th Street Farmers Market operated from the 1930s into the early 2000s. In the 1970s, at what the paper describes as the market's peak, as many as 100 farmers would show up daily to sell tomatoes, potatoes, peas and other vegetables.
A photo from 1981 captured the market as still a busy hub of activity, with open-air produce stands drawing hundreds of customers a day, per the same account. The city purchased the property in 2006 for $775,000, the newspaper reported. Portions of the surrounding area once known as Onion Bottom were later redeveloped with a police station, a transportation hub for the Southeast Tennessee Human Resources Agency, and the headquarters of Family Promise of Greater Chattanooga.
Part of a Broader Pattern in Chattanooga
These demolitions follow a familiar storyline in Chattanooga, where historic designation hasn't always stopped a wrecking crew. The city's historic Car Barn was demolished to make way for a hotel even though it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with Preserve Chattanooga noting that listing alone didn't shield the building from major changes or demolition, according to NewsChannel 9. The Chattanooga Medical Arts building also came down despite preservation efforts, as Local 3 News reported.
Residents have been vocal about protecting the city's history more broadly. Earlier this year, preservation of Lincoln Park and other Black historic sites was urged at a town hall, according to a Chattanoogan.com report. Whether either Lamar's or the old farmers market building was ever considered for local landmark protection isn't addressed in available city records, and no redevelopment plan for either site has been made public.
