by Zachary Harmuth
A development plan on Old Hillsboro Road will put 20 houses on 34 acres, and it is dividing a community over how it sees its future.
Originally Bob Parks Reality owned the plot, which like the surrounding land is zoned “Rural Preservation-1,” which allows for subdivisions of no less than 1-acre lots served by septic tanks. The zoning designation is used for land like the Old Hillsboro plot, which is surrounded by historic sites, in order to preserve their historic character.
Bob Parks’ plan was approved more than a year ago by the Williamson County Planning Commission, until Grove Park Construction, run by Brandon Jenkins, bought the plot in order to develop it.
Controversy sprung up around the development, with local landowners and residents claiming that the proposed subdivision will not be in the spirit or character of Rural Preservation. Last Wednesday, a group of concerned area residents protested at the site of the proposed development.
The lot sits on Old Hillsboro Road across from the terminus of Old Natchez Trace. The problem some in the community have with the proposed Hillsboro Cove subdivision, is that the adjacent land is zoned slightly differently.
“The majority of land in our area is zoned Rural-5, which means that each house must be built on at least 5 acres of land,” Laura Turner, a resident involved in protesting the development, said.
One side of the road, the Hillsboro Cove side- has one acre minimums, while the other side has 5 acre minimums. However, due to voluntary down-zoning by many residents in the area, much of the land on the Hillsboro Cove side is now zoned Rural-5 too.
“The Jenkins subdivision is totally out of line with the development that has gone up here in the past,” Turner said. “We have never had a problem with developers in the past. They have always worked with respect to the historic nature of the land.”
According to homeowner Jim Leonard ” There currently isn’t a single home on less than two acres on Old Hillsboro Road today. The majority of homes on Old Hillsboro Road reside on five acres or more.”
Jenkins, however, sees things differently.
“As of June, construction will begin, and we have all the approval we need,” he said.“Nor should the development be stopped.”
Jenkins said that residents should be supportive, and that he is doing everything he can to take the historic integrity of the surrounding area into account.
“I felt like people out there should be for it not against it,” Jenkins said. “ All we are doing is helping their cause out there by building beautiful new homes, with an average square footage of 4,000-6,500 square feet. All of the lots are more than an acre in size.”
“I am doing what I can to be respectful of historic area. I changed the plan and took the lots off Old Hillsboro Road, so that now they will face inside the neighborhood. So I am not going to have any lots now facing Old Hillsboro Road, I did not have to make the changes, but did it to help community.”
One of Turner’s concerns is that part of the plot sat on a floodplain. In a 2010 Army Corps of Engineers study, six of the sites fall within the floodplain. She said that, even if the community could not change the county’s mind on the plan, she hoped at least Jenkins would not develop any of the lots on the floodplain that she said some of the lot sits on. At the very least, Turner hopes that the county will not approve development on those lots until a FEMA floodplain map comes out in June.
Jenkins, in turn, said that none of the houses will be built on a flood plain, according to floodplain studies approved and passed by the County Planning Commission.
“It was a big deal to the planning commission that none of the houses be built on not just the 100 year flood plain but the 500 year flood plain,” he said.
The bigger matter in all of this is the preservation of an area with a huge historic value, said Turner.
“There are 13 historic sites in this area, not to mention prehistoric sites that were just found,” she said.
“The biggest positive to come out of all of this is that the community came together to have a voice,” she said. “We may not be able to stop this development, but in the future we plan to have a bigger voice in how our part of the county is developed.”
She said that in protest many neighbors of hers have voluntarily received permission to down-zone their property from the Rural-Preservation-1 to Rural Preservation-5, so that in the future, denser developments such as Hillsboro Cove will not have the zoning to be built.
Jenkins, however, sees the future differently. He has already sold 17 of the 20 houses he plans to build there.
“On the protests, all it is doing is making farmers call me to buy their land,” he said. “We are not doing anything wrong, it is an approved site, and all the protests are doing is giving me more press and making people contact me to sell their farm.”
The vote will take place Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. at the County Complex on West Main St. in Franklin.
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