The City of Chattanooga provides a full range of municipal services while managing a diverse portfolio of public assets, including government facilities, parks, historic landmarks, and recreational properties.
Location
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Specialized Appraisals
The City’s property portfolio includes a variety of unique and historically significant facilities, from adaptive reuse projects like Erlanger Park to historic landmarks such as the Tivoli Theatre. Replacement cost appraisals help ensure these complex public assets are accurately valued for insurance.
Services
Built on Chattanooga’s historic Wheland Foundry site, Erlanger Park blends preserved industrial buildings with a modern baseball stadium, requiring a specialized insurance appraisal to establish accurate replacement values.
As construction of Erlanger Park neared completion April 2026, the City of Chattanooga faced an important milestone. With the builder’s risk policy ending and permanent property coverage ready to be secured, the City’s newest landmark needed an accurate insurance valuation before opening day.
For Greg Whisenant, the City’s Risk Officer, ensuring the property was accurately insured as it transitioned from construction to operations became a top priority.
Erlanger Park is not your typical baseball stadium. Built on the location of the area’s historic Wheland Foundry, with roots that reach back to the late 1800s, the project transformed long-vacant industrial buildings into restaurants, hospitality spaces, offices, and event venues, integrating them into one modern baseball stadium.
“They took something that had been sitting in Chattanooga, unoccupied, for years and transformed it into a place people really want to visit,” Greg said.
Because of Erlanger Park’s unique combination of historic and new structures, no standard appraisal approach could accurately capture the property’s replacement value. Each building presented different construction methods, occupancies, and replacement considerations, and that required an individualized valuation approach.
Through a referral from Gallagher, the City of Chattanooga engaged Centurisk to complete the insurance replacement cost appraisal before Erlanger Park’s grand opening.
Senior Appraiser Gary Tate immediately recognized that Erlanger Park was unlike any sports facility he had appraised.
"I've appraised several stadiums over the years, and they've all been built as stadiums. Pulling up to this site to see all of these repurposed buildings was really unique"
Rather than applying a single valuation approach, Gary evaluated each building according to its individual construction, use, and replacement characteristics. Historic foundry buildings, modern stadium facilities, hospitality spaces, and specialty systems each required their own valuation considerations.
Greg joined Gary during the on-site inspection, gaining a firsthand appreciation for the level of detail behind the appraisal process.
Supported by construction drawings and field observations, Greg saw how the appraisal documented every major insurable building and specialty structure, from adaptive reuse buildings like the Pattern Shop to assets such as the stadium’s video board. The result was a detailed inventory of replacement values that provided a far more accurate foundation for insurance decisions than a single overall value. Greg left with a clearer understanding of what the City was insuring and what it would cost to replace each major asset.
Before the appraisal, Erlanger Park carried an initial insured value of approximately $110 million. Rather than relying on that single figure, Gary established individual replacement values for every major building and structure across the property. The appraisal also distinguished insurance replacement cost from project expenses that were not part of the insurable property, including demolition, mass grading, and other site development costs.
As a result, the final appraisal established a defensible insurance replacement value of approximately $84.6 million, reducing the City’s insured value, while helping lower insurance premiums. For the City, that meant greater confidence that coverage reflected the property’s true replacement value while demonstrating responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources.
With detailed building-by-building replacement values in hand, the City now has built a stronger foundation for underwriting, policy renewals, future valuation updates, and long-term asset management.
Before opening day, the City of Chattanooga had accurate, defensible insurance values for Erlanger Park, providing confidence that one of its most unique public assets was appropriately insured while helping reduce insurance premiums.
The appraisal enabled the City to:
Develop detailed replacement values for every major building and structure
Establish a defensible insurance value of approximately $84.6 million
Help lower insurance premiums by aligning coverage with actual replacement costs
Create reliable property data to support underwriting, policy renewals, and future valuation updates
Strengthen stewardship of taxpayer resources through more accurate insurance values
Erlanger Park is just one example of the City’s diverse property portfolio. Centurisk has also appraised other distinctive facilities, including the historic Tivoli Theatre, where original architectural features and historic construction present an entirely different set of insurance valuation challenges.
Together, these projects demonstrate Centurisk’s unique ability to accurately value complex public assets that conventional appraisal approaches often struggle to capture.
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