The votes are in, and the 700-acre Eagle’s Rest Farm owned by Gary and Portia Baker will officially become a part of Thompson’s Station, moving the proposed Two Farms development closer to fruition.
The referendum held on Thursday, in which the Bakers were the only two qualified voters, passed 2-0. Not exactly for show but a matter of legal formalities, the matter was decided weeks ago when the Bakers decided to vote early.
As the only part of the 2,000-acre annexation made effective last year by Thompson’s Station that lay outside the Urban Growth Boundary set by the town and the county, it needed to be approved by a vote of the affected property owners.
Back in July, when the county contested the annexation, Gary Baker said the land was going to be sold to somebody, and that he supported the annexation and contested the delay. He said Beacon Land Development, which will almost certainly now buy the land, was the best option, compared to alternatives of tract home builders and mass-produced neighborhoods.
Among other reasons, he said Two Farms would not happen without the annexation because of the complications of building across two government jurisdictions.
Beacon has plans to turn the 2,000 acres into Two Farms, a $150 million development that will include about 800 homes, a health center and an 18-hole golf course possibly designed by Tiger Woods.
For the developer, whose plan hung in the balance, the process is back to step one.
“They will have to go through the planning process from the beginning,” Joe Cosentini, city administrator for Thompson’s Station, said.
Beacon had been working with the town to have the land zoned as a mixed-use transect community, and any agreement on a project will include certain infrastructure improvements on the property, such as schools and a fire station and road work, contingent upon the approval of a concept plan.
The process was halted over the summer when the county contested the legality of the annexation of the Baker property. The fear was, according to several county commissioners, that the annexation set a dangerous precedent for land-grabbing by the municipalities outside of the carefully worked-out UGBs.
After consulting with state law on annexation, the county was advised by its legal counsel, Beurger and Mosely, that if the referendum passed it had no legal authority to stop the annexation.
The entire process has come full circle, as the situation with Two Farms, Thompson’s Station and the 2,000 acres now annexed is legally and procedurally where it was a year ago when the annexation first passed the Thompson’s Station Board of Mayor and Alderman.
The zoning change to transect community, will have to go through public hearings and a vote of the Board of Mayor and Alderman. Then Beacon will have to have its concept plan approved.
But the developer is excited to simply get to work.
“Certainly that slowed everything down from our standpoint, and there are still a few hurdles to go through which we hope will be successful, but we are hopeful that by the end of May we will be through that part of the process and start getting down to the real, hard work of submitting plans to the city to approve and really get started on construction from a development standpoint,” Mike Abbott, principal developer of Beacon, said.
“We are excited we have gotten through this first phase, but also very respectful of the process.”
Over the course of the last year, there has been some protest among the citizens of Thompson’s Station against the Two Farms project.
Abbott wanted to speak directly to those in his parting words.
“We are very respectful and careful in following the planning ordinances set by Thompson’s Station, and I tell everybody that it is something that has been written by the city and citizens and voted on, it is not something the developer came in and did,” he said.
“The open space requirements, the planning requirements, are from a developer standpoint tough to follow, but worth it in the end because you get a project like ours will be that goes with the area, that is a benefit to the area. It is not just stacking one rooftop after the other but there is a thought and character that has to go into it so that at the end of the day you end up with a place the has great meaning to it.”
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