To replace old Belleaire Drive, FBC site plan studied by BOMA
First Baptist Concord church’s site plan to replace the old Belleaire Drive access into FBC from Kingston Pike came under review during a Town Staff/Developer meeting Tuesday morning, March 5.
“It’s got a long history to it,” Community Development director Mark Shipley said. “Basically, the old Belleaire Drive is currently a driveway access into part of First Baptist Concord property. There’s going to be part of one building that’s going to be taken out in the playground area and the old road.”
The proposed access replacing old Belleaire Drive “kind of curves from the existing driveway and goes back to the school and it comes out and lines up with Village Green’s (Russgate) access there on the north side of Kingston Pike,” Shipley said. “This access here would be over 400 feet at either access point, east or west. It does line up with Russgate.
“That’s an ideal situation,” he added. “A better access than what they have right now, which is basically a pretty short distance between the old Belleaire Road and the Belleaire that was relocated and reconstructed a few years ago.
“The new access point will have a deceleration lane … for eastbound travelers on Kingston Pike. You’ll be able to get out of the flow of traffic as you turn into the church property.
As for a timetable,“They are to have this completed by the end of the year,” Shipley said. “Their first step, with the Town, is to take this site plan through the (Farragut Municipal) Planning Commission, which they plan to do this month (Thursday, March 21). I think you all are still waiting to get (Tennessee Department of Transportation’s) approval.”
Alderman David White, who lives near the church, asked the length of the deceleration lane on the proposed access.
Ize Jeffers of MBI Co., an architectural and engineering firm, answered it would be 260 feet.
“That decel lane (to the current newer Belleaire Road) is too short,” White said.
“We’re not going to do any improvements to the new Belleaire Road,” Jeffers said. “That’s out of our scope.”
“That scope ain’t going to work, Mark,” White said. “The original plan for that thing was for (the church) to extend our decel lane, which is only 86 feet long. It should be 400 feet long, getting into the new Belleaire Drive, going east.
“We only got 86 feet and we have to dive in there, going about 30 to 40 miles per hour,” he added. “It’s going to have to be (FBC’s) scope, because in the original agreement that once that new Belleaire was open and the old one closed, the decel lane would be extended because everyone knew it was too short.”
“It doesn’t need to be 400 feet,” Shipley said.
“I’d like to know what the original agreement’s referring to,” said Mark Stooksbury, FBC director of business administration.
“I don’t know that it ever talked about that,” Shipley said.
