by Joe Sullivan
Stress pedestrian-friendly mixed-use development in the suburbs; reclaim more vacant and blighted property for infill development in the center city; conserve open space in rural areas both for preservation of natural resources and future sites for parks and for protection against sprawl. Those are among the points of emphasis in the Metropolitan Planning Commission's General Plan for Knoxville and Knox County that's soon to be released for approval by City Council and County Commission.
Once a decade, MPC formulates such a plan, which is supposed to establish principles governing development throughout the county over the next 30 years. This one, entitled "Agenda for Quality Growth," has been two years in the works and is due to be unveiled for public review and comment at what MPC calls open houses next Wednesday and Thursday. (For details, see Meet Your City on facing page). Some other principles highlighted in the plan include:
"In the 21st century, transportation planning is not limited to roadways for private motor vehicles. Citizens need to be able to choose between driving, walking, biking and mass transit.
"One characteristic of sprawl development is that it is unstructured.... Neighborhoods structured into coherent communities and tied together by special districts create more efficient and memorable places.
"The preferred area for new suburban development should be vacant lands immediately adjacent to the existing built-up areas. Some of the other alternatives, such as prematurely 'leapfrogging' out into rural areas, have significant negative fiscal and environmental effects."
While a great deal of effort has gone into the plan, it's debatable how much will come out of it. MPC can enunciate principles, but it has only limited means (primarily through zoning) to impose them. And while it can try to lead developers to water in terms of embracing its desiderata, it can't really make them drink.
Take the fostering of mixed-use developments with shopping, office and residential components, for example. With considerable fanfare, MPC two years ago adopted a new Town Center (TC-1) Zone that provided for a range of residential densities surrounding a town center with clusters of shops, services and offices—all connected by wide sidewalks and interspersed with lots of green space. Yet as voguish as such New Urbanist developments have become in many parts of the county, no developers have yet stepped forward to undertake one here.
One prospective site, a 142-acre farm adjoining the intersection of Pellissippi Parkway and Northshore Drive, has gotten TC-1 zoning. And it's understood that Chattanooga-based developer Steve Arnsdorf has obtained an option on the property. But Arnsdorf is noncommittal about his plans. "I don't want to talk about any specific deal right now," he says.
In general terms, Arnsdorf stresses that, "Town Center developments are very challenging to do. Retailers have one set of priorities; office owners have a different set of priorities. And apartment users and homeowners have different things that are important to them. It's very difficult to integrate all of these demand components."
MPC officials also talk up the potential for smaller-scale village centers that would bring a grocery store, a dry cleaner, and other service providers into a residential developments on a walk-instead-of-drive basis. But the only one they can cite that's underway here is Mechanicsville Commons, which is governed by yet another new zoning ordinance labeled Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND).
About all that MPC's executive director, Norman Whitaker, can hold out in prospect are "a unified development ordinance... to include opportunities to actually develop something like this or that through TC or TND," and removal of "regulatory obstacles to doing this type of development." These obstacles, Whitaker says, are mainly imbedded in MPC approval processes that are a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s, when mixed use development simply wasn't contemplated.
Similarly, where prospects for infill development are concerned, the man whom Whitaker credits with coining the term "counter sprawl" isn't very encouraging. He is Harold Byrd, a builder who has made a mark fitting condominium complexes on large lots where abandoned houses once stood. But as much as Byrd believes in retrofitting to contain sprawl, he regretfully says that, "it's getting very hard to find the land at a reasonable price."
Still, Whitaker contends that by one means or another the spread of low-density subdivisions must be contained lest Knox County run out of land to house its people. "The demand for land for housing is growing out of proportion to population growth," he says, and he posits that, "if we continue as we have been, by 30 years from now we're going to be looking at two choices: 1) bulldozing present neighborhoods and building up denser ones; and 2) Grading down hillsides and features of landscape that people think are important."
But development doesn't stop at county lines, and at the risk of sounding sprawlish, it may be that one defect in Knox County's proposed general plan is it's failure to take a more regional viewpoint. Surprisingly, MPC officials are unaware of the one major town center development in the area that's already on the drawing boards in nearby Lenoir City. There, a pair of Charlotte-based developers, Ryan Clayton and Dallas Paul, are planning a mixed-use complex on 130 acres that will encompass more than 500,000 square feet of retail and a 16-screen cineplex in its center, concentrically bounded by 250 apartment units, 100 town houses and 350 single family residences. According to Clayton, "strong talks" with prospective anchor tenants including a cinema operator provide encouragement that ground breaking will take place this spring or summer. Completion of the total project is projected to take seven to 10 years.
Be that as it may, MPC's new General Plan sets many worthy goals whose achievement depends in no small part on community involvement and support. One way to get involved is to partake of MPC's open house next week.
February 13, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 7
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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