By Zachary Harmuth
Planning the New Plan
Brentwood planning officials- and those private firms charged with executing their plans- held on Thursday night the second of two public-forum-type meetings this week to gather community input for the upcoming update to the city’s development plan.
Brentwood 2020, the eponymous comprehensive plan released (rather ambitiously) in 1999, outlined an itinerary for development and growth that (hopefully) balanced the community’s views with its anticipated changing needs through the next two decades.
That sentence might seem easier to wrap around your head than vice versa, so in a nutshell:
Brentwood was expected to grow and develop (obviously) in the 20-years from 2000-2020. Brentwood 2020 was designed to manage that growth and development, with an eye for respecting and responding to what the folks who live there want. It was built based on surveys, and updated in 2006 based again on community surveys, and will be once more updated next year- based on surveys.
The meetings this week polled the community members in attendance, and planners will use the feedback to help construct upcoming surveys which will in part shape the 2014 update.
Both meetings showed several strong (and unchanging) views in the community, echoing the results of the previous surveys:
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By a large majority the people of Brentwood generally care most about maintaining high quality schools; continuing low-density development (one dwelling per acre); and keeping traffic manageable.
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A majority of the respondents on Thursday agreed, to some degree, with developing the Town Center, and the 17-acre property at Franklin Road and Maryland Way, as long as no high-density housing gets built.
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A sizable minority, 44 percent, thought the Town Center should not be developed further (much of this group lives nearby the Town Center).
Different People, Same Community
Brentwood’s population took off in the first ten years of the 2020 Plan, increasing by 35 percent from 2000 to 2010.
This influx, however, barely budged the concerns of the community, according to the 2006 surveys and these two meetings.
For a community to grow so much so fast without changing its vision shows that people moving there and already living there value Brentwood for the same reasons.
The newer population largely fits into the demographic that already dominated the area: suburban families of middle-class income or higher, and suburban.
This kind of growth limits residential development to single-family units on large pieces of land and keeps property values high, while ensuring well-funded public schools with good student-teacher ratios and congesting traffic at about the same rate new roads relieve it.
In large part, this is just how the city planned it: because of how the land that has been developed is zoned, it restricts growth to this type. The city decided it wanted to develop in a way that created more of the same.
For people living there, Brentwood rocks, simply put, because of how it has grown. And, if you live there or moved there or want to move there, how you want it to keep growing.
Not Enough of a Good Thing
Too much of a good thing is now leading to not enough of a good thing.
By 2030, officials predict, the Brentwood population of 40,000 today will reach 60,000. Without rezoning to allow higher-density, officials figure, no more than 7,000 new houses will fit in the city.
In the next couple decades, Brentwood will be grown in fully and more or less finally, rezoning or not.
As that point approaches, a pickle awaits.
Getting Your Hand Stuck in the Pickle Jar
Another community claims a stake, with slightly different concerns: the business community. Namely, developers. What people want and what is best, economically, for Brentwood the city as a whole may not always match.
Obviously, the quibble is not that big. Brentwood is not against development; just against development that might lower property values or create undue traffic. And development is good for Brentwood- more tax revenue, more jobs, etc.
But as space runs out, for developers and businesses in Brentwood, the return on investments will not shrink so much as run out.
To maximize the space left, getting some of the remaining real estate rezoned to allow higher-density will help out developers maximize their revenue as they run out of places to build in Brentwood.
Developers and real-estate owners, however, can often make more money over time by building higher-density residences. More homes, more people, more revenue.
But these types of residences obviously put more people in smaller space- which means less dollar-per-student at schools, more traffic, more crime (statistically), and also lower the value of adjoining property.
So developers will lobby for the updated plan to include, or at least not totally rule out, rezoning.
But the response from folks has been unmistakably clear. Whether spoken passively, in responding to surveys and most recently Thursday’s meeting, or aggressively, like last winter when residents successfully fought off a proposal to rezone a large tract where Franklin Road and Maryland Way intersect.
A developer’s plan would have seen condos go up alongside retail stores and restaurants in the Streets project.
A group called Preserve Brentwood-TN, in mobilizing the community, eventually persuaded enough city leaders of the contradiction between supporting the project and being a city leader past next election.
The developer’s proposal never even came up for a vote.
Now, that same developer, HG Hill, most likely will end up building something on its large and potentially-lucrative plot.
But, make no mistake, developers and city planners will ignore the community’s concerns about growth at their peril. But at the same time, to prevent the local economy from turning stagnant as residential growth peters out, the city needs the business community to remain invested. City officials, for the good of the long, long term, need businesses to have as much stake as people to live, and grow, in Brentwood.
The government, after all, serves the community- whoever they are.
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