Cookeville has selected an engineering firm and a consultant for the city’s project to create more parking, green space, and retail space on the old Wilson property. .
Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton said the city met with four different firms and ultimately selected Assa Engineering and Tinkert MA to assist with the project. Wheaton said what the city liked the firm because of its similar vision of what the city wants to do with the property.
“They just had renderings, multiple renderings that showed us different versions of what could be done,” Wheaton said. “It included traffic flow. It included Broad (Street), Cedar (Avenue), Depot (Street), all that area, malfunction junction, as we know, and again at the end of the day, they just really impressed us.”
Wheaton said traffic flow was one aspect of the project the city had not thought about before the presentation. Wheaton said the city now wants to address traffic flow in the downtown area as part of this project.
“That really encouraged us to go ahead and try to put that idea into the plan as well,” Wheaton said. “It’s gonna be a big project, let’s do as much as we can to really improve that area, and so with having that discussion, we have kind of expanded on, ‘Hey, there are some other great things we can do with this property and incorporate some improvements that need to happen on the West Side.”
Wheaton said the city wants to hit the ground running with this project. Wheaton said the city is set to have the first meeting with the engineering firm and consultant this week.
“We want to go ahead and meet and get a contract signed, and let’s start getting some hard designs down,” Wheaton said. “Let’s really start nailing down what we want for this project. Let’s go ahead and get a timeline. When can we get parking, you know, officially done? Obviously, we got it open to the public now. Could be some improvements on the actual parking space and surface there.”
Wheaton said the project is at the top of the priority list. However, Wheaton said there are several other projects the city is racing to finish before winter approaches.
