Chattanooga's top planner said Monday that officials are readying to kick off "probably the largest planning process we've ever undertaken at one time" as the city grapples with growth.
Dan Reuter, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency's executive director, said the initiatives will include traffic studies.
"It's going to involve pretty major traffic studies and other things that will happen," he told the city-county Planning Commission at a meeting.
Reuter made the remarks as about a dozen Mountain Creek Road area residents turned out before the planning panel to give feedback on a recent land use plan related to that part of the city where developers have been busy building new housing and planning more.
Bob Geier, who lives in that area, said at the meeting that the land use plan needs more work.
"We were promised a thorough traffic study at a future date," he said.
Geier said the land use study as written can be construed "to be a rationalization to do nothing."
He said a traffic study would be "a sound technical basis for prioritization of actions to resolve our traffic issue."
Geier also cited the density of apartments in the Mountain Creek Road area, which he said make up 62% of housing there.
"The corridor is disproportionally stocked with apartments," he said.
The land use study released in February cautioned that building new apartment complexes may not best serve the Mountain Creek Road area.
Jim Faulkner, who also lives in the area, said at the meeting that there's support for more park space, including where The Quarry golf course had operated. He said state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Chattanooga, is trying to secure some state funding to that end.
Brooke Bradley-King, another area resident, told the planning panel that traffic "seems to be a problem all to itself."
She noted "how difficult it is to walk on Mountain Creek Road, getting kids to schools, backing cars out of driveways."
Bradley-King said the neighborhood supports the land use plan.
Reuter said the agency is to incorporate the Mountain Creek Road study into a larger area plan.
"We're kicking off the planning process in the next month or so," he said. "It's good we've done this study."
He said the Mountain Creek area will benefit from the larger planning process.
Ethan Collier, is chairwoman of the Planning Commission, said at the meeting the panel wasn't intending on taking action on the Mountain Creek Road report.
He told residents to make sure they stay engaged with the larger area plan that will include all the work up to the present.
In January, Reuter said at a meeting with Collegedale area residents that outside consultants were to be brought on to help his team update the area plans for different parts of Hamilton County. Such plans serve as a guide for growth for different communities in the city and county.
Reuter said then that some of the area plans for the city are 15 to 20 years old.
"We shouldn't wait that long," he said.
Reuter said the agency also will work on a comprehensive plan for the unincorporated parts of the county.
"There are areas of Hamilton County that have never had any thoughtful planning on growth," he said.
Also, the planning agency intends to examine zoning codes and regulations, Reuter said. In addition, the group will review infrastructure needs such as roads and sewers, he said.
"There's a need to modernize our planning," Reuter said.
In a recent Chattanooga Times Free Press survey, more than one-third of Hamilton County voters thought the Chattanooga area was growing too fast.
Among 311 voters sampled at the polls during the Nov. 8 election, nearly 52% said the city and county are growing at the right pace, and nearly 36% of respondents said local growth was too fast. Fewer than 7% of those sampled said they thought Hamilton County was growing too slow.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.