When civic leaders from Fort Wayne visit Chattanooga this week, they'll find a city that succeeded at what Fort Wayne is trying: revitalizing downtown.

Chattanooga tourism is booming. Hundreds of thousands of visitors yearly help support a burgeoning restaurant, retail and hotel district near the riverfront, in an area once almost deserted. As opportunities for work and recreation downtown expand, developers have built thousands of housing units in the old core of the city.

Businesses are betting on the growth to continue.

“It's a good bet because of the proximity to the river and the main points of attraction in Chattanooga,” said William Mish, general manager of the Chattanooga Clarion Hotel. The company he works for, Vision Hospitality Group, is investing $20 million in the renovation of the Clarion — a well-worn establishment that looks every one of its 35 years old. Its rooms are being rebuilt floor by floor, even as it continues booking guests.

“You get a good percentage of corporate clients midweek, but typically weekends might suffer. But what you get here with the riverfront and the concerts and the IMAX (movie theater) and the Hunter Museum (of American Art) and everything that goes on down here, is your weekends are just huge with leisure traffic. The joke around here is, the only day off you get is a Sunday, and it's still busy. It's just going full blast,” Mish said.

Twenty years ago, the parts of downtown Chattanooga nearest the Tennessee River looked like a post-industrial ghost town.

How did Chattanooga bring off the downtown boom so many communities would like to emulate? Its surroundings provide a couple of advantages, and some of the reason lies in the way the community operates. First, two advantages that arise from its location:

♦A wide, dependable river. As Chattanooga Ducks tour guide Tom Offutt pilots a World War II amphibious truck through the calm waters of the Tennessee River at Chattanooga, he's quick to point out that “it's not really a river. It's a series of reservoirs.”

What this means for Chattanooga is its river is much less subject to flooding. Riverfront parks stay dry, enabling the city to plan music festivals that can draw tens of thousands of fans. Because the Tennessee River is reliably navigable, a riverboat and other excursion boats cater to tourists, while wealthy boaters dock large pleasure craft along its banks.

♦ Natural and historic attractions nearby. Ruby Falls and Rock City Gardens, only minutes from downtown Chattanooga, each average more than 400,000 visitors a year, according to the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The National Park Service's Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain Civil War battlefields also are close. That established tourist trade provided a great foundation for a reviving riverfront and downtown to build on.

Much more of Chattanooga's edge in reviving its downtown and urban core comes from the way community leaders responded to their circumstances:

♦ Civic boldness. Ideas that might be dismissed as loopy or, at best, impractical in some cities have a way of not only gaining a foothold but of paying off in Chattanooga.

An example is the Walnut Street bridge, built in 1891. When it was closed and slated for demolition in the '80s, a group of residents persuaded the city to spend the cost of demolition on preserving it. That money, together with private donations, turned it into the longest pedestrian-only bridge in the world. It's a way for strolling or jogging Chattanoogans to travel between the city's northern and southern parts, and it makes outstanding viewing for music festivals on the river.

♦ Nonprofit leadership. In 1986, when the push to revive downtown began, two nonprofit organizations were created: Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE) and RiverCity Co. CNE has always run on a mix of government and foundation funding, assuming some of the public-housing responsibilities usually borne by local government, and is a strong advocate for urban-core housing. RiverCity got its start with $12 million in capital from eight foundations and seven financial institutions, which it used to begin buying up neglected property and holding it for redevelopment.

Vesting so much power to shape the city's future in nongovernmental groups made it more plausible for foundations to use CNE and RiverCity as conduits for funding. Making nonprofit groups, rather than government, key players in revitalization insulated the movement from some political pressures that often bear on local governments.

♦Civic consensus. For the last 20 years, there's been a remarkable degree of agreement among many of the city's politicians, philanthrophists and business leaders that downtown needs to be a focus of civic effort.

That consensus and the ability of people with power to agree on common goals impressed Henry Schulson, executive director of the Creative Discovery Museum. Schulson, who grew up in New York and worked in Dallas before becoming head of the museum, said of Chattanooga, “It's a size where you feel like you can get something done.”

He said Chattanooga's leaders seem to have evolved a culture of cooperation that has existed for a long time, reinforced by overlapping memberships on boards of directors in foundations and nonprofits.

♦ Foundation support. Many Chattanooga-area foundations supported downtown revitalization at its beginning more than 20 years ago, and they've never backed off. In 2006, for example, $665,000 of the Benwood Foundation's $5.5 million in grants was directly related to urban revitalization in Chattanooga. Similarly, in 2005, $4.2 million of the Lyndhurst Foundation's $8.4 million in grants went for revitalization.

♦ A great beginning. The first major project in the city's downtown and urban-core revitalization was the Tennessee Aquarium. After it opened in 1992, it drew a million visitors in its first five months of operation. Nothing succeeds like success, and the aquarium helped sell revitalization.

♦ Insulated taxpayers. Because so much of the early cost of revitalization was borne by foundations and businesses, public spending didn't figure heavily in the debate. The boom in tourism allowed local government to finance some later improvements with a new 4 percent tax on lodgings, which again insulated resident taxpayers from the cost.

♦ Emphasis on housing. Pushing riverfront and downtown housing early helped bring activity back to the heart of the city, and it provided a stable customer base so businesses weren't dependent entirely on the seasonally fluctuating tourist trade. As the downtown and riverfront improved, property values and demand rose, bringing in private-sector housing development with little or no help from foundations or local government.

The resurrection of Chattanooga's downtown hasn't been a cure-all. Unemployment is consistently low, but so are average wages. Poverty rates are relatively high. Most of the more than 8,000 jobs created there in the last four years, as tallied by the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, aren't tied directly to revitalization. But the downtown rebound has brought a vibrant atmosphere to the city and an incalculable fortune in good publicity.