Changes to Kingston Pike Village site plan include fenced dog park
Town staff and a general contractor have worked out changes to a site plan for Phase 1 of Kingston Pike Village near Watt Road.
“This is some modifications to the apartment phase of this Planned Commercial Development,” said Farragut Community Development director Mark Shipley, as staff worked with Shane Smith, a general contractor with J.A. Fielding, during the Town’s Staff/Developer meeting Tuesday, Jan. 3.
While the contractor for that development presented several changes— removing some retaining walls in the front of the development, regrading the common area, providing some assessable parking, adding a fenced dog park area and relocating the trash compactor — Mayor Ron Williams, who also is an FMPC member, pointed out “the elephant in the room is the wall.”
“We’re not real wild about walls,” he added.
‘We’re still working to put a safe façade on the (other) wall itself,” Smith said.
“That whole square, that rectangle, is wall 3,” he added, referring to a wall being removed. “It goes around back behind where the Food City would have been as well.”
While the developers had talked with Food City about locating a store in the Village, behind Little Joe’s Pizza, those plans did not come to fruition.
“So, that was the planned open space for the residents to use,” said Vice Mayor Louise Povlin, also an FMPC member who indicated the space on the map.
“It still is,” Smith said. “Instead of having a vertical wall there, we’ll want to slope it back. That wall was more inclined for the Food City parcel to give access around the back of it.”
“How is that going to maintain open space?” Povlin asked.
“This was all a sunken green space, which had a ramp that went from the sidewalk down to the sunken sidewalk,” Smith answered. “So, these are all retaining walls here that we are proposing to be removed, as well as underneath Building 5.
“The grades now will still stay along that line, but just be a slope rather than a vertical wall,” he added.
Plantings along the slope are yet to be determined, Smith said. FMPC members said they would like to see trees.
On another matter, Smith said the trash compactor was moved because the “grades had to be reconfigured to get positive drainage out of there. Plus, it was originally shown over top of some new utilities … they wanted to get (the trash compactor) out of the way.”
This meeting was held in preparation for a Farragut Municipal Planning Commission meeting scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 19.
