St. Elmo's Incline Plaza Changed Hands Twice in Two Years, and the Fire Was Only Half the Story

Ask most people in St. Elmo why Clumpies disappeared from the bottom of the Incline Railway and they will point to the wildfire. That is the version everyone remembers: flames on the mountain in December 2024, the tracks damaged, the railway dark for months, foot traffic gone from the plaza that every shop down there depends on. It is a true story. It is also not the reason Clumpies is gone.

The fire and the storefront turnover are two separate events, more than a year apart, with two different causes. Understanding the gap between them explains why the plaza at the foot of the mountain looks and runs differently now than it did before either one happened.

What the Fire Actually Did

The wildfire hit on December 7, 2024, damaging the historic funicular's tracks and forcing an extended shutdown. Chattanooga Salt Cavern owner Rachel Shahen, whose business sits near the base, described watching it close in on a cavern full of guests that night, saying she "was panicked." Little Coyote owner Erik Niel, across the street, was evacuated along with his staff as officials worried the incline structure itself might come down.

The shutdown lasted well into 2025, and it hurt. St. Elmo shop and restaurant owners told local reporters the closure cost some of them more than 40 percent of their revenue, since the Incline is, as Niel put it, "the biggest draw we have down here." Clumpies felt it directly. The railway finally reopened in the middle of 2025, and foot traffic came back.

That should have been the end of the disruption. It was not.

The Second Event Had Nothing to Do With the Fire

More than a year after the tracks were repaired, Rock City Enterprises, the company that had run Clumpies and held the concessions and ticketing contract with the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority for a decade, decided to walk away from that role entirely. The company announced in late January 2026 that its St. Elmo location would close on February 28, 2026. The stated reason had nothing to do with wildfire recovery. Rock City spokesperson Pepper Raper explained the company had gone through a long-range master planning process and decided to bring its focus back to its core property, Rock City Gardens atop Lookout Mountain, rather than continue managing retail and ticketing at the Incline.

Here is the full sequence, laid out by date:

The fire cost businesses months of revenue and a scare nobody in the neighborhood has fully forgotten. The contract decision, made over a year later and for entirely separate reasons, is what actually emptied the storefront and opened the door for someone new to redesign the whole plaza.

One Company Now Runs Both Ends of the Ride

CARTA didn't just find a new tenant for the old Clumpies space. It handed the entire concessions and ticketing operation to a different company. The transit authority signed a three-year contract with the Reinert Group, a locally based operator that already runs the Southern Belle riverboat, Chattanooga Ducks, and the Mayor's Mansion Inn. Under the deal, CARTA keeps 100 percent of ticket sales, a figure the agency's own staff put at roughly $3.3 million, while Reinert takes over what happens around the ticket booth.

That is a meaningful shift from how the plaza worked under Rock City, where one independent operator ran a single ice cream shop next to a transit ticket window. Now the ticketing, the food, and the drink at both ends of the ride answer to the same company. Reinert Group Director of Operations Dillon May framed the intent plainly, saying the goal was to make the Incline "a more elevated experience" that works for tourists and gives locals "a great opportunity" to come and hang out.

What Actually Opened, and Where

The new lineup split across both ends of the railway, and it is worth being precise about geography here, since the two ends sit in different jurisdictions even though they are connected by the same ride.

At the top station, which sits in the separate town of Lookout Mountain rather than in St. Elmo proper, SoHi Pizza & Mountain Top Bar opened on March 27, 2026. It serves wood-fired pizzas under names like the Hot Girl Margherita alongside cocktails and panoramic valley views, and it has already turned up in local food coverage as a spot locals treat as a destination on its own, not just a stop for tourists riding down.

At the bottom station, inside the St. Elmo neighborhood itself, Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream took over the old Clumpies address at 3917 St. Elmo Ave. Its grand opening on July 9, 2026 came with free scoops from 6 to 10 p.m. and a giveaway for a year of free ice cream. The location is notable beyond the flavor menu. It is Jeni's first-ever Chattanooga shop and, according to Reinert Group's own account, the brand's first-ever franchise location anywhere in the country. Chattanooga, in other words, is where a Columbus-based ice cream company decided to test franchising for the first time.

Clumpies did not leave Chattanooga. Its Northshore and Southside locations are still open. What ended was its ten-year run in this one spot, tied to a business decision Rock City made about its own priorities, not to any lasting damage from the fire.

What This Actually Changes for Anyone Who Lives Here

For residents, the practical shift is less about which ice cream brand is behind the counter and more about how the plaza is being run. A single operator now controls the ticket window, the food at the bottom, and the food and bar at the top, which opens the door to the kind of bundled ticket and dining packages that a fragmented ownership structure never made easy. If you have ridden the Incline mainly as a once-a-year tourist activity, the addition of a real bar and pizza kitchen at the summit and a nationally known ice cream brand at the base gives you an actual reason to treat the ride itself as a short trip rather than a full outing you plan around.

It also means the next disruption to that plaza, if one comes, will trace back to Reinert Group's decisions rather than Rock City's. The businesses around them, Little Coyote, Chattanooga Salt Cavern, and the rest of Tennessee Avenue's independent shops, were never part of either contract and were never up for turnover in the first place. They rode out the fire and stayed put through the operator change, which is its own kind of evidence about how much of St. Elmo's character sits outside whatever happens at the base of the railway.

Two years from a wildfire that made the news for the wrong reasons, the corner of the neighborhood that took the hardest hit now runs under new management with a national ice cream brand's first American franchise and a mountaintop pizza and cocktail spot drawing its own crowd. The fire explains why the neighborhood noticed. The contract explains why it changed.

If you're curious about what else is shifting in St. Elmo and the rest of Chattanooga, or you want a read on how a neighborhood's day-to-day changes tend to show up in home values over time, the Dustin Mullins Team tracks these things closely across the Chattanooga area. Reach out anytime you want a local's read on where things stand.