New subdivision plat adjacent to Fox Den subdivision denied 7-1 by FMPC
Westerly subdivision developers will have to go back to the drawing board for their plans for a subdivision abutting Fox Den subdivision.
Farragut Municipal Planning Commission, in a 7-1 vote, denied Westerly representative Rodney Phillips’ preliminary plat for the subdivision that would place an access at Champions Point during FMPC’s meeting Thursday, Oct. 20. The lone vote in favor of the plat was from Mayor Ron Williams, who also is an FMPC Commissioner.
“I would like to see more (options),” Commissioner Ron Pinchok said.
Action on the preliminary plat already had been postponed at the August FMPC meeting, when Commissioners asked Phillips’ engineers to come up with access options other than Champions Point.
The subdivision proposes 12 residential lots on 8.74 acres and a 40,000-square-foot commercial development fronting Kingston Pike.
“The property itself is zoned both commercial and residential and fronts on Champions Point and Kingston Pike,” Community Development director Mark Shipley said.
“There was an access that would be further west that would line up with the accesses at the Little Turkey Creek Commons,” he added, noting Champions Point is an internal street in Fox Den subdivision.
Another access would come “in off the traffic signal at Old Stage Road and to have a switchback to get you back on that spur that goes through the residential property,” Shipley said. “A third option they looked at was also from the traffic signal, bringing the road straight in and then having two cul-de-sacs off that.”
He mentioned Town engineer Darryl Smith reviewed the options and agreed with the applicant to allow the proposed access onto Champions Point “based on the issues with the other access points, the fact there are 12 lots with what they are proposing, the measures they are recommending to raise the approach grade at Champions Point and the signage the traffic impact study was specifying.”
Phillips described some of the challenges of the proposed accesses from Kingston Pike: “We do really feel that (straight-line access from Kingston Pike) would result in a massive grading project, which would cause the loss of a stand of trees and potential noise.”
