Knox County is reconvening the Growth Plan Committee, which will consider an update to the growth plan. The meeting will be at 5:00PM on Tuesday, Oct 24th in the Main Assembly Room. The official page for the meeting and materials is https://advanceknox.org/gpp. A proposed amendment will be introduced, there will be a public forum, and they will schedule a follow-up meeting.
The updated Growth Plan is the first step of codifying the results of the Advance Knox Initiative, which will update our General Plan and later update our zoning ordinances and development standards. These all have significant future impact for how our county and communities will look, and develop – where and what types of housing will be built, where new and updated commercial and office and industrial will be, and where we will make efforts to preserve farmland, open space, and forests.
Neighborhoods and Community Call to Action:
- Read the materials (summary below).
- Ask questions. The county’s project team may be reached at contact@advanceknox.org. If you’d like to ask the Knox County Planning Alliance volunteers questions, we can be reached at contact@kcpa.us
- Attend the meeting on Oct 24th at 5PM
- Sign up to speak during the Public Forum session of the Oct 24th meeting by calling 865-215-2005
Summary of Update
The update consists of:
- A new Growth Plan Map – currently only this PDF is available. Hopefully a higher resolution map, and a comparison to the existing map, will be available soon.
- An update to the text of the Growth Plan policy – text of the amendment, a redline of the old and new version with an Appendix D to describe the Growth Plan Land Allocation,
Major highlights are:
- The updated map expands the Planned Growth Area by 17.58 square miles.
- 10.6 square miles (approx 6,770 acres) are along Washington Pike in the Ritta and Maloneyville areas and then north into the Gibbs community. This represents 60% of the increased Planned Growth Area.
- 4.62 square miles (2,957 acres) in Hardin Valley, which is 26% of the increased Planned Growth Area
- Smaller areas (less than one square mile) of expanded Planned Growth area in Karns, Chapman Highway, and Strawberry Plans south of I-40
- The text amendments update the Rural Area and Planned Growth Area policies:
- In the Rural Area, the allowed Placetype designations (today we know that as sector plans) are updated to three new Placetypes – Rural Living, Rural Conservation, and Rural Crossroads. The only information about those 3 placetypes is in this summary page.
- Residential density in the Rural Area is limited to a maximum of 2 du/ac average, which is down from the 3 du/ac average allowed today. This is designed to encourage conservation of rural and open space land.
- In the Planned Growth area, any Placetype will be allowed – which could be suburban residential, traditional neighborhood, corridor or town center mixed-use, business park, etc. There will not be any residential density restrictions at the Growth Plan level, but we may see policies in the General Plan or zoning ordinance.