With the final draft of the area’s comprehensive growth plan finally complete, residents may soon see some of the changes designed to balance incoming growth with road infrastructure and other needed services take shape. But those aren’t the only benefits they might see, says Pam Glaser, principal planner for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency.
If the draft finds favor in the eyes of planning officials and its suggestions are implemented as listed, the resulting landscape could also make public transportation feasible in the White Oak Mountain Area, which consists of Apison, Collegedale, East Brainerd, Ooltewah and Summit.
The prospect comes as a byproduct of the plan’s theme of cultivating activity centers.
Some of the areas highlighted in the plan are Old Apison, which planners say could be developed into a rural village center similar to Leiper’s Fork, Tenn.; the intersection of East Brainerd and Ooltewah-Ringgold roads, which could be developed into a walkable neighborhood center reminiscent of the mixed-use Berry Farms community in Franklin, Tenn.; and Cambridge Square, which is already being developed as a town center.
These concentrated centers would help maintain the area’s rural character by attracting commercial developers to one specific place, keeping commercial growth from spreading outward to areas that don’t have the infrastructure for it, Glaser said.