Mixed Use Town Center Vision: plan or ordinance?
Farragut Municipal Planning Commission can be expected to recommend the Board of Mayor and Aldermen adopt the Town’s Mixed Use Town Center Vision Plan as a plan, not an ordinance.
While FMPC took no formal action at its Thursday, July 18, meeting on the agenda item, the consensus among its members was to vote recommending it as a plan only, not an ordinance, at its Thursday, Aug. 15, meeting. This came on the heels of hearing Town attorney Tom Hale advising against adopting it as an ordinance after a presentation on why he came to that conclusion.
After reviewing previous meetings, Hale said, “I think I need to give everybody some context about the way our state law is set up when it relates to planning and zoning.
He referred to a Court of Appeals decision and the judge’s opinion, which stated: “… The General Assembly has the empowered county and municipal legislative bodies to zone property.
“At the same time, it has delegated the land use planning function to local and regional planning commissions. The power to zone must be distinguished from the power to plan. Zoning and planning are complementary pursuits that largely concerned with the same subject matter. They are not, however, identical fields of municipal endeavor. Planning involves coordinating the orderly development of all interrelated aspects of a community’s physical environment, as well as all the community’s closely associated social and economic activities.
“It is a continuous process carried out indefinitely through time. Common sense and reality dictate that a general plan is not like the law … it must be subject to reasonable change from time to time as conditions in the community change. Zoning, on the other hand, involves the territorial division of land into districts according to the character of the land or buildings, their suitability for particular uses and the uniformity of these uses. …”
“Not adopting (the Vision) by ordinance does not make it non-existent,” the attorney said. “It just operates as a general plan without having it being adopted as an ordinance.”
While the Board can adopt the Vision as a plan or an ordinance, Hale said, “I personally prefer not have it adopted as an ordinance. I prefer to have the plan as a plan … it’s a guideline.
“This is a great document,” he added. However, he pointed out it is 97 pages.
Rather than being an amendment to the Town plan adopted in 2012, Hale said, “It is a document that has been created to build consensus as to the recommendations for what the plan ought to be as it’s set out in this document.”
The Town attorney added he doesn’t think anyone has considered how the two documents could be married together.
“I think that’s what has to happen before you can amend your existing (2012) plan,” Hale added. “We don’t want to make this (Vision) so detailed that it becomes kind of like a zoning ordinance.”
Vice Chairman Ed St. Clair pointed out one of the pages of the Vision regarding Concord Road properties while an item on the July 18 agenda has a change to the zoning for some Concord Road propert,y “which is clearly not in sync with what is (in the Vision),” he said. “I can’t see adopting something here I know I’m going to vote to change in a few minutes.
“We’re kind of chasing our tails,” St. Clair added.
“It still, in my opinion, has to go back to have some work done and take out the stuff that doesn’t need to be in there,” Hale said.
Vice Mayor Louise Povlin, also an FMPC member, agreed, “This is going to be a work in progress anyway. We’re not done with this.”
“There’s no rush” to make a decision, said Mayor Ron Williams, also an FMPC member.
After hearing FMPC’s reaction to Hale’s advice, a few residents who signed up to speak had backed out, but Michael Wilson spoke on another issue with the Vision.
He questioned the inclusion of vertical mixed use in the Commercial zoning areas.
“The Vision Plan Steering Committee included language that allows for up to three stories of vertical mixed-use in the Commercial areas found on pages 59, 63 and 69,” Wilson said. “This applies to the future commercial developments found on the Ford property and along Concord Road in the Biddle Farms development.
“One would assume that this would apply to any redevelopments of existing commercial properties, such as the West End and Village Green shopping centers,” he added. “That’s a lot of acreage to consider, probably upward of 90.
“I question why the Vision plan would include vertical mixed-use in these areas. Roughly four years ago, the Town decided that vertical mixed use was not viable due to the need for a parking structure or large parking areas. In addition, the Town has promised there would be no more apartments. (This) opens up multiple areas of the Town Center to potential apartments.”
Otherwise, Wilson said he supported the Vision.
