Combined residential-retail area sought along S.Watt
Daniel Smith and Tyler Lindsey, area developers, want to build a neighborhood shopping center with multi-family residences off South Watt Road in Farragut.
They are asking town of Farragut to revisit its Planned Commercial District zoning ordinance to include multi-family residential use in that zoning district.
Lindsey currently owns 8 acres on the west side of South Watt Road near its intersection with Kingston Pike, across from Cool Sports Home of the Icearium and behind Little Joe’s Pizza.
Lindsey and Smith said the center would include a grocery store and retail and office businesses. Smith said they are looking at a 45,000 to 50,000-square-foot shopping center with about 20,000 square feet of retail shops and restaurants. They are hoping to start the development in June 2018.
“The original concept was just to do a grocery store shopping center, but we’d like to integrate some amount of mixed-use [residential] into that plan,” Smith said, adding there would be retail shops on one level with one or two floors of residential on other levels.
“If we’re able to get this [text amendment], [the development] could change into adding a little bit of village-style, garden-style multi-family town home-type developments,” he said. “We looked at the zoning codes for how we could do mixed use at this location, given there is no mixed use in the zoning code. We thought the Planned Commer-cial District might be the best opportunity to do that.”
“I would like to hear the down side because I love this idea,” Town Alderman Louise Povlin said. “This makes me happy. You would have your shared parking. You would have built-in people who are living there, so you are not going to end up with an empty development.”
Smith and Lindsey discussed their plans during a staff-developer meeting Tuesday, Jan. 31, when they requested a text amendment so they could integrate multi-family residences into their commercial development.
Their request will be on the agenda for Farragut Municipal Planning Commission meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 16, in Town Hall boardroom, Ashley Miller, Farragut Community Development assistant director, said.
“We wanted to see the Planning Commission about this idea,” Smith said, adding they would submit a site plan as soon as they get the text amendment and zoning approved.
Along with Lindsey’s 8 acres, he and Smith have optioned for 10 1/2 extra acres for the development.
“[Lindsey has] had this property for a number of years, probably since around 2007,” Smith said. “Throughout that time that he has owned it, he has been in discussion and planned to develop it as a neighborhood shopping center.”
“This [development] would be a hybrid of traditional commercial and some residential component,” Mark Shipley, Farragut Community Development director, said. “It doesn’t really fit in with a mixed-use town center or mixed-use neighborhood. It’s kind of a mixed-use commercial.”
The Town created the Planned Commercial District when Kroger Marketplace came in, Shipley said. Currently, Kroger Marketplace is the only development in that district.
“The Planned Commercial District just gives you more flexibility on building placement, on the parking lot, the number of parking spaces,” Shipley said. “It’s more looked at as an overall plan as opposed to just, ‘ere’s a site with a big box [business] on it.’ Here’s all the requirements that would just apply to that one entity.”
“What the applicants are wanting to do is to provide for the opportunity to have residential as a component of the Planned Commercial District,” Shipley added. “From my perspective, I am very open to that. I think there may be some locations where that would be a nice fit.”
Another location, which would be a nice fit, is the Swan property located across from the former Weigel’s location and Rena-issance | farragut, Shipley said.
