Monthly Archives: September 2022

Important: Northshore Corridor Neighbors –

/ /

Important
Northshore Corridor Neighbors –
If you are concerned, as many across the County are about zoning/balance in Knox County development, here is some guidance from the leaders of the Knox Community Planning Alliance on what you can do:
Dear Neighbors, Neighborhood leaders,
Your participation is urgently needed in the Advance Knox planning effort. Next week is “Choices Week” in which people will be asked to rank what type of future development scenario they want to see in Knox County.
There are a number of ways you can make your voice heard about these scenarios. You can attend one of the three in-person meetings being held next week at the locations, date and times listed below, or you can register to attend a “virtual” meeting online
In addition, you can request a meeting for your organization (or neighborhood) for the month of October, and the Advance Knox team will attend and present the information to your group. To help spread the word and get participation, KCPA urges you to request a meeting in October for your neighborhood, HOA, or other organization.
Click here and scroll to the bottom on of the page to request a presentation for your group by Advance Knox team members.
Groups whose interests lie in profiting from real estate development are making significant efforts to turn out large numbers of participants, and it is very important that neighborhood groups also turn out their members to ensure that all perspectives are included.
There will be three scenarios presented at the “Choices Week” meeting and you will be asked to rank them. The public input from Round 1 placed significant emphasis on preserving open spaces and rural areas, ensuring that infrastructure is adequate before developments are approved (roads, schools, utilities, police and fire, parks and recreation facilities), protecting hillsides and ridge tops, and preserving that sense of place that makes Knox County a great place to live. It is important to emphasize that these qualities need to be central to any of the “Choices Week” scenarios, and that a balance between development and quality of life is important.
Please share this information widely and encourage your family, friends and neighbors to participate! Knoxville-Knox County Planning has a number of social media posts on Facebook that you can share, including meeting invites for the below sessions.
Choices Week Meetings
October 2, 2022 – 2:00 pm – New Hopewell Elementary School, 757 Kimberlin Heights Rd, Knoxville, TN 37920
A short introductory presentation will be given at 2:10 and again at 3:10. Three different scenarios will also be presented that show strategies for guiding the county’s future growth. These scenarios are based on data the project team has been analyzing, as well as input gathered earlier this spring.
October 3, 2022 – 5:30 pm – Gresham Middle School, 500 Gresham Rd, Knoxville, TN 37918
A short introductory presentation will be given at 5:40 and again at 6:40. Three different scenarios will also be presented that show strategies for guiding the county’s future growth. These scenarios are based on data the project team has been analyzing, as well as input gathered earlier this spring.
October 4, 2022 – 5:30 pm – Cedar Bluff Middle School, 707 N Cedar Bluff Rd, Knoxville, TN 37923
A short introductory presentation will be given at 5:40 and again at 6:40. Three different scenarios will also be presented that show strategies for guiding the county’s future growth. These scenarios are based on data the project team has been analyzing, as well as input gathered earlier this spring.
October 5, 2022 – 12:00 noon – Zoom Virtual Event
A short introductory presentation will be given and three different scenarios will be shared to show strategies for guiding the county’s future growth. These scenarios are based on data the project team has been analyzing, as well as input gathered earlier this spring.
Registration is required.
All reactions:

3

Advance Knox is advancing – with you or by going around you!

/ /

Advance Knox is advancing – with you or by going around you!
The dual foghorns of Knox County’s development industry, the propagandists, oh sorry, we meant PR writers, of the Chamber of Commerce and The Board of Realtors are honking away loudly lately. Why? Looks like they want to be able to say they have your approval of the outcome of Advance Knox.
Advance Knox? AK is allegedly, the visioning process that will codify what we Knox Countians want for our community in the coming decade. In the view of some close observers it is the County Mayor and development cabal’s million dollar planned end-run around Knox County’s zoning regulations, and they will prevail – unless citizens step in.
Here’s your choice. Be there (in person or online) and speak up or let the Mayor and team say what you want. Public sessions around the county begin next week. They are:
Sunday, Oct.2 at New Hopewell Elementary School, 2-4 p.m.; Monday, Oct. 3 at Gresham Middle School, 5:30-7:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Oct. 4 at Cedar Bluff Middle School, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
A virtual session will be held at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 5.
The Advance Knox process was forced on the County when it’s leaders systematically neglected and ignored the prior plan – The Knox County Growth Plan, until finally, community groups raised it from the dead and said hey, wait a minute. What about this master zoning plan? Didn’t we citizens clearly say, codified, in writing, with state approval that we wanted planned, controlled growth, not rampant profiteering and runaway bulldozers paving over of the entire County? Then there was a scrimmage.
The Mayor’s team lost that round and were left having to fight out every rezoning, parcel by parcel with public input before the Planning and County Commissions – the way the law intended. They don’t like that. Their top industry spokesperson, developer Scott Davis, complains again and again that it raises development costs and slows things down (translation: doing things properly cuts into profits).
If you can’t win playing by the rules, change the rules? The Mayor and team continually push to advance their plan by working to change how things work, jiggering the meaning of the law, the structure and composition of boards and staffs, who controls what. But we’ll get to that later.
You may recall that the Mayor’s previous major assault on zoning/The Growth Plan unexpectedly went down in flames when the Town of Farragut declined to sign on to the Mayor’s plan to chuck it. Now the Mayor and team intend to see that you and your neighbors sign off on their vision, or they can say you did, and that’s what matters. The State demands a publicly approved process. So either we show up and speak out loudly or give the insiders what they want.
How does the Mayor plan to get what he wants from you? By laying out for you in dreamy, aspirational detail how denser development and the paving of green spaces will improve your quality of life – and getting you to unwittingly sign off on his vision.
This is being orchestrated via a million dollar consultancy contract. The earlier Advance Knox public input sessions were embarrassingly poorly attended and they certainly did not give the Mayor the mandate he seeks to claim. The recent PR onslaught is designed to correct that – by driving people to the public sessions – but, judging from their PR placements, only the right people – realtors, developers and their kith and kin along with young professionals who presumably want to see a more urban, dense, entertainment and nightlife oriented Knox County.
The insider-preferred vision touts more Northshore Town Center type development (never mind the sordid multiple failures along the way that left a stalled, blighted parcel for years as multiple developers failed to fulfill the vision presented and stranded the early purchasers in homes they struggled to re-sell). In the Chamber’s PR piece, community groups that question carte blanche development, those who have organized to preserve existing zoning (their property rights?), are criticized as only focusing on preserving farmland and green space. Those of us on the front row of many of those zoning disputes beg to differ! Overwhelmingly, the greatest concern has been for transparent advance planning and fair cost sharing of the impact of development on roads, sidewalks, schools, utilities and fire and police.
You can attend the Advance Knox actual meetings or weigh in online at https://advanceknox.org/schedule.