Parking is the top priority of residents, local groups, and downtown businesses who provided feedback on the proposed Depot Street Project.
Cookeville City Council met with ASA Engineering Officials Monday to review public feedback. Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton said participation was excellent in last week’s meeting period. The city received over 400 responses from the online questionnaire with parking mentioned often.
“One that we have stated from the beginning is our first priority,” Wheaton said. “The original concept that we had includes up to 150 new parking spots, and that is one of the first phases that we want to focus on, is getting parking for that area because it is obviously already utilized for parking in that area.”
Wheaton said green spaces and pedestrian-friendly spaces were the public’s other top priorities. Wheaton said after the meeting she feels like the project is heading in the right direction.
“What the public wants and what we want really are becoming a cohesive project,” Wheaton said. “And I think we are gonna get to see a lot of the things that we want to see come to fruition.”
Wheaton said it was encouraging to meet with downtown business owners about the project as they expressed similar opinions about the project. Wheaton said the next step in the project is putting together a final master plan.
“We are gonna finalize the master plan,” Wheaton said. “I think really get the concept to a place that we can go ahead and start putting out bids for construction, because obviously this is not going to be just a one little step here, it’s going to take a lot of working parts and departments to work together.”
Wheaton said the city expects to reveal the final master plan sometime in November. Wheaton said the city is still on an aggressive timeline to get the project started.
