The Cookeville Planning Commission began the process of updating its comprehensive plan Monday.
Cookeville Community Development Director Jon Ward said the plan has not been updated since 2010. Ward said with recent growth, it was time for the commission to consider its development goals and objectives. Ward said a big item the commission will have to consider is the stance on using commercial space.
“Do we want to remove residential development from our commercial districts?” Ward said. “That is, that came out of our survey. That’s something that we have been questioned on, and we’ve even internally had discussions. Like, are we losing a lot of our commercial opportunity here for residential development?”
Commission Member Ali Bagci said he would not necessarily want to prevent residential development in all commercial districts, but did support substituting some of the commercial districts for mixed-use zones. Bagci said mixed-use zones are the only way Cookeville could be sustainable as a city.
“You’ve got to have revenue generating something in there,” Bagci said.”I mean, the reality is, you’ve got to generate revenue so you can set taxes, because property taxes are not going to generate the income that sales tax will.”
Ward said the commission also needs to address true mixed-use standards.
“We don’t have true mixed-use standards,” Ward said. “That just needs to be a goal and objective in our plan, like hey, this is something we want to do, this is one of our goals for the city.”
Ward said the city’s Community Development Department believes single-family residential lot sizes should be adjusted. A proposed minimum lot size would be 20,000 square feet if you do not have sewer, 10,000 square feet if you do.
Commission Member Jim Cobb said if the commission and the city goes by the requirement, then it needs to be stated.
“Sure, we may be practicing that, but it needs to be written instead of just understood,” Cobb said.
Ward said he thinks it is still important for the city to support all types of housing. Ward said the commission will have to work out issues that come particularly with high-density areas.
“Some of the things that have been detrimental to there are on-street parking and things like that,” Ward said. “But all those requirements will drive housing costs, which you know, it will cost more, which is kind of defeating the purpose of what our intent is with that kind of thing. That’s just something to think about.”
Other topics that were suggested for the commission to consider were business parking requirements, stricter standards for street signage, accessory dwelling units and irrigation requirements.
Ward said it would likely take several work sessions to fully update the plan. The commission will continue the discussion at the next work session. Ward said once the comprehensive plan is ready, a public hearing would then follow.
“We should have time at this work session to really dig in on some of this stuff so we can get something out,” Ward said. “And when we start offering public hearings, you know, you need to have something for people to shoot at. And we can do that, but I want you guys to do that with me.”
In other business, the commission spent time creating rough drafts to update the commission’s mission statement and vision statement.
