Farragut FYI

In last few years East Tennessee has experienced a mass influx of new residents and sometimes it feels like they all moved to the Farragut area. With growth comes increased traffic. Our transportation network is part of a much larger network of roads. Our traffic issues are not of own our making.  Increased traffic on the interstate has made our community a more attractive area for cut-through traffic.   The Town of Farragut was founded to protect and preserve its residential character. We shouldn't be so willing to surrender that just so folks from outside our town and the interstate can use our community as a cut through.  The infrastructure improvements we invest in to accommodate growth have long-term consequences for the Town of Farragut and need to be considered strategically.  Often, the first inclination is to widen roads and intersections. Widening roads adds more capacity and therefore allows for an increased volume of traffic, and sometimes is necessa...

  Future Land Use Map Amendments to the Concord and Choto Areas  Advance Knox is an initiative through which Knox County has worked to replace the failed 2003 Knox County General Plan and develop a Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to update Knox County's development related ordinances and regulations.  I was engaged with the Advance Knox initiative from the beginning.   I showed up when asked.   I attended all the open houses and workshops, I provided input on surveys, and I attended or watched all the Growth Policy Plan Coordinating Committee meetings.    When the first draft of the Comprehensive Land Use and Transportation Plan was released, I studied it.   Interestingly, Knox County's proposed plan has land use concepts that are similar to the Town of Farragut's Comprehensive Land Use Plan including  a future land use map and land use designations.  Having served on the Farragut's municipal planning commission for the last 10 years...

Future Land Use Map - 2023 Note: This article was originally posted in February 2022. It has been updated to reflect recent activity. The Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) was adopted in 2012 to update the previous land use plan.  The planning commission relies on this plan when making land use decisions.  The future land use map which was originally adopted by the FMPC in 2012 is below. In 2017, at my request, a steering committee was established to review the plan.  Several key corridors on the land use map (updated version is at the top of the post)  were chosen for review and a process was established to gather public input for map updates.    A few key amendments have  lowered the density and/or land use intensity on the map. Reduced the medium density designation from 6-12 units/acre to 6-8 units/acre which instantaneously eliminated higher density use in areas designated medium density  Established a high density designation. Since noth...

Ivey Farms is a partially completed master planned neighborhood with one main entrance. Knox County Schools considered the remaining open space in Ivey Farms neighborhood as a possible location for a new high student capacity school. A school built in the existing open space in Ivey Farms would be accessed through Ivey Farms Road, an internal neighborhood street which was not constructed to support a high student capacity school. Construction of a separate access road to the school that would be separate from Ivey Farms Road, if possible at all, would be destructive to the Ivey Farms neighborhood, not to mention extremely costly. A question to ponder: Is there anyone in this community who would want to share the access in and out of their own neighborhood with a high student capacity school? Ivey Farms neighborhood is NOT an appropriate location to construct a high student capacity school.

Sinkholes are as natural to our landscape as our ridges, our valleys and streams. Given that East Tennessee has karst geology, it should surprise no one that there is a possible sinkhole located on the land the Town is considering purchasing. Sinkholes are the most common karst land feature and are prevalent across East Tennessee.   Many subdivisions in the Town have sinkholes.  Bridgemore has 11 sinkholes. Bridgemore has some of the most expensive homes in Farragut.  The Cottages at Pryce Farm has a 2.4 acre sinkhole. There's a few sinkholes in Meadows on McFee and the Grove at Boyd Station, as well.  The presence of one sinkhole on a 70 acre property does not devalue the property nor does it make the property undevelopable.  Our sinkhole ordinance protects sinkholes and our Open Space Residential Overlay zoning districts specifically allow for flexibility to accommodate sinkholes without materially impacting the ability to construct a low density resident...

The Open Space Residential Overlay and the Open Space Mixed Residential Overlay zoning districts allow for a maximum density of 2.178 units/acre. The continued misinterpretation and misrepresentation of these zoning districts is unfortunate and unnecessary. Any confusion could easily be cleared up by reaching out to the subject matter expert, Mark Shipley, the Town's Community Development Director, who is tasked with implementing and enforcing the Town's policies, regulations and ordinances including the zoning ordinances. The Open Space Residential Overlay (OSR) zoning district was adopted by Ordinance 03-18 on November 13, 2003. The Open Space Mixed Residential Overlay (OSMR) zoning district was adopted by Ordinance 06-05 on March 23, 2006. Both OSR and OSMR can only be applied over the base zone Rural Residential (R-1) which effectively limits any development rezoned R1/OSR or R1/OSMR to a maximum of 2.178 units/acre. In the ordinances it states that t he number of dwell...

It is undeniable that since its incorporation over 43 years ago the Town of Farragut has thrived. The Town has done an excellent job of balancing investments in our road infrastructure and our parks and sidewalk/greenway system and these investments have been made throughout Farragut. The Town of Farragut was founded in 1980 because the residents in this area thought they could do a better job of planning, zoning and developing than Knox County or the City of Knoxville.  Farragut’s founding members understood that this area would someday build out and they didn’t like how Knox County was handling the development in this area. Once established, the first Board of Mayor and Aldermen got down to the work of assessing the road conditions and our transportation network and funding improvement, as well as setting aside funds to begin acquiring land for parks.   By the late 1980s, they expanded their vision for Farragut to have connected pedestrian facilities.