Meeting with Dave Hill, South Waterfront Director, City of Knoxville
September 3, 2008

Present: Katie Hannah, Rachel Craig, Jessica Rodocker, Greg Congleton, Jim Hagerman (last half of meeting), Dave Hill, City Council member Joe Hultquist

Dave reported that the City of Knoxville (COK) has been paying Dave Gamble, an architect who was a consultant for the south waterfront form-based code, to work with Camden's architect for the Tank Farm project.

John Gumpert of Camden and his partners met with Dave last week and presented a draft plan. Dave passed it around for us to look at it. Features included:

• 5 or 6 four-story apartment buildings
• Apartment entrances face the courtyards rather than the interior of the buildings
• Apartments along the street have their entrances on the street
• A parking garage behind the buildings provides parking

The development is for approximately 252 units.

Camden still wants to build some neighborhood commercial between the river walk and Island Home Avenue. Dave said that he is looking to Hargreaves to develop a plan for the riverwalk, the commercial space, and the street improvements (which would include moving IHA about 20 feet to the south).

There was some discussion about the intended target market. Our neighborhood is concerned that the target market may be student apartments. The floor plans (equal sized bedrooms each with a bathroom) and the apparent lack of elevators were pointed out as two reasons for thinking this might be the case. It was agreed that Joe Hultquist would ask about this.

Dave said that even if the development met the new code, the COK would look at how the development's type and quality fit into the overall long-term plan for the area. The COK can choose not to provide the infrastructure improvements that the developer wants if the quality is not there. Dave said that this was not a high priority project for the City, meaning that it was not on the list of development projects they had expected to see in the first five years.

If the COK chooses not to provide such improvements and the development goes on anyway, the COK may be able to make the developer provide some street improvements himself because the street sections have been codified. The COK could also require traffic studies, whose outcome might be that the developer would have to provide road improvements to handle the traffic. How this would be approached is not yet clear.

Any changes to IHA would also involve redesign of the intersection at the pillars. We emphasized that IHP would want to be involved in that redesign.

We shared with Dave John Gumpert's promise to us at the recent meeting we had with him to have Stroud Watson review the final design. Dave said he had mentioned that to John and had not received a favorable reaction.

We asked Dave about John's timeline (since John had told us he wants to break ground by the first of the year). Dave indicated that he thought John does want to move pretty quickly, but that it takes awhile to get a development agreement between the City and the developer in place. This would also be contingent on getting the design for the river side from Hargreaves.

Dave will ask David Gamble to draft an alternative site plan just to show what possibilities there are for the site given John's needs (# of units, etc.). David Gamble was very helpful in doing the same thing for the Conley/Mike Stephens development.

We discussed how important it was to get the first riverfront projects right, because that would set a precedent both for how the COK will approach these developments and for developer expectations.

Dave also mentioned that Kent Copeland, who owns land on both side of Hillwood east of the JWP, is looking to rezone that land for development of 80 condos plus some apartments. That land is not covered by the form-based code, although it could possibly be added. Dave had urged Copeland to contact the neighborhoods (IHP, South Haven, Old Sevier) to talk with us about this before he moves too far ahead. Dave suggested that he do this through Joe. We asked Joe to be proactive about contacting Copeland.

One potential upside of this potential project is that it would most likely accelerate the reconfiguration of Hillwood.