by Zachary Harmuth
Thursday night, the first of two meetings held by developer H.G. Hill garnered input from the community to help it decide what to do with its large swath of property in the middle of Brentwood.
H.G. Hill, over the past year, came to acquire the Murray Ohio plot at 219 Franklin Road and the Tennessee Baptist Convention plot on the corner of Maryland Way and Franklin Road.
There has been a lot of noise in the community out of fear for a certain kind of development going up there.
This is the same place where the community defeated the proposed Streets of Brentwood Project last year that would have created a zone C-4 Town Center area, with shopping, high-density housing, big-box stores and created a general high-traffic area. H.G. Hill, amidst the public outcry, withdrew its proposal.
So, given the responsiveness in the past of H.G. Hill to the people of Brentwood, one can be sure that CEO Jimmy Granberry was not just paying lip service Thursday night when he said, last night, that there are no plans set in stone, to the large group gathered at the Tennessee Baptist Convention center.
“We are here tonight to hear the will of the people,” he said. “Streets of Brentwood is a past memory, and when we develop we want to do what is right for that community.”
He made it clear that his company by no means plans to pursue rezoning to C-4, but would like to if possible get out of the C-1 office park zoning. Most likely, the plan that will go forward will involve some retail and some office, but not big-box stores. That falls under C-2 zoning.
It is no mistake that H.G. Hill’s ideas for the site, the purview of C-2, coincided with what a majority of citizens at the meeting preferred, when asked for a show of hands.
It should be noted that this was an unofficial and voluntary meeting called by H.G. Hill- the city of Brentwood was not involved. The Brentwood Planning Commission meets and will most likely hear the H.G. Hill plan Monday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
H.G. Hill is hosting another public meeting on April 10, at 6:30 p.m. also at the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
A big concern, aside from the actual development of the site, was the traffic it would create. Anyone driving on Franklin Rd or Maryland Way at rush hour knows the pain and importance of traffic. Granberry responded that while offices increase traffic, he believes that retail alleviates it somewhat. Traffic, however, is more or less a part of life given Brentwood’s roads. So many people leave or enter it at rush hours that there is very little to be done about it, one way or another.
