Outlet Drive ‘high-rise’ hotel considered
Johnson City developers to ask FMPC to rezone a 3.1-acre parcel just West of Cotton Eyed Joe
Its developers, Cox Universal group in Johnson City, will be asking for Farragut Municipal Planning Commission to recommend a rezoning of a 3.1-acre parcel west of Cotton Eyed Joe from C-2 to OD-RE/E.
“I’m excited about doing this project here in Farragut,” Philip Cox, co-chief executive officer and co-founder of Cox Universal Group, said during a Town Staff/Planner meeting Tuesday, April 30. “We’ve been looking for a site for a long time, so this site … has been sitting vacant for a long time.”
Planning Commissioner Ron Pinchok, also a Farragut Tourism/Visitor Committee member, said the Tourism committee has been “working diligently with the Town’s hotel people to bring more customers our way … so I’m glad to see you.”
“It’s a real good use for the Town,” Community Development director Mark Shipley said.
“It’s a good area for it,” Pinchok added.
Cox said the group was able to work out a sale agreement with the owner to “make something nice and new there.”
The proposed 124-room, four-story hotel would have brick on the first floor if it is built in Farragut, according to Cox.
He said they were drawn to Outlet Drive because it “scored well within the Wyndham score system and the Knoxville (area) market is growing nicely.”
“Ideally, we’d like to start construction before the end of the year, assuming we can get this rezoned,” Cox said during a separate interview. “Typically, it’s a 12-month build.”
“We’ll be delivering the first (ecoSuites) hotel in Spartanburg (South Carolina),” Ben Dutton, president of Cox Universal Group, said during the meeting.
The next FMPC meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m., Thursday, May 16, in Farragut Community Center.
The group building a hotel in Farragut is contingent upon whether it gets the rezoning to Entertainment.
“The masonry requirement, if you go four stories with 75 percent brick, it’s about a million dollars’ extra cost, plus the structure to handle all that,” Cox told staff and Planning Commission members.
Shipley said the Town requires 75 percent masonry on the façade area in the current Commercial District, but that percentage is lower in the Entertainment District.
“The thought was, when we created this district, the masonry percentage was lower because it’s really in an area surrounded by a lot of warehouses and a lot of buildings that aren’t masonry,” he said. “It didn’t seem to be as critical to have the higher masonry percentage.
“From the staff’s perspective, this is a pretty straightforward rezoning (request),” Shipley added. “I think one of the questions we would have is whether we should try to rezone property to the west or the east (of the property for which the request was made) that includes Cotton Eyed Joe and potentially the former Outlet Mall property.
“Cotton Eyed Joe should be the Entertainment Employment zone,” he added. “It really wouldn’t affect them. I mean, they would be able to do what they are doing now, but that’s something, in looking at the map in general, we would talk about with the full Planning Commission.”
“The Outlet Mall (property) is currently zoned C-2 (warehousing),” Shipley said. “That’s a district that’s no longer in existence, so we’re just trying to clean that up on the zoning map and have that property zoned a district that’s actually in our zoning ordinance right now.”
Another hotel on the horizon is the Score Hotel proposed near Topgolf. “I talked that guy (proposing this hotel), and they’re still wanting to do a hotel there,” Cox said.
“I think there’s a demand for hotels,” Shipley said.
“Yeah, there’s a demand here,” Cox agreed.
