Almost exactly one year ago, Williamson County planning staff held the first public meeting to kick off work on the Arrington Special Area Plan. On Monday, Feb. 3, citizens gathered to review the final draft of the plan they spent months ideating and refining before it is presented for an adoption vote by the county’s Planning Commission.
“As everyone in this room knows, there’s a lot of development pressure in Williamson County and the region,” said Mike Matteson, community development director for the county. “What we like to do is get in front of that and work with the community to design a plan so that when or if future development does occur, it is consistent with what the community envisioned.”
Matteson and his staff have spent the last year holding public meetings to understand citizens’ vision for the future of their community and then translating those ideas and desires into a guiding document.
“Participation has been terrific from the community,” Matteson said. “You’ll see how the community’s input, from the very first public meeting to the last public meeting we had, is demonstrated throughout the plan and that’s what resulted in the document itself.”
While Monday was the final public meeting to discuss the Special Area Plan, the process will continue into the summer and fall as the plan becomes adopted and implemented. Matteson said the next steps will be an informal endorsement from the County Commission in March followed by a Planning Commission vote to adopt the plan as policy on March 13.
If both actions pass, staff will continue to work with citizens to create zoning standards that will help enforce the plan’s vision in cases of future development.
“While the plan itself doesn’t have teeth, it’s not zoning, it sets the stage for some implementation tools like zoning,” Matteson explained. “Once this plan is adopted and becomes policy we’ll start working again with you all and the advisory committee to come up with a set of zoning standards just for this area that will only apply to Arrington Village. That way if development does come, we’ve got some standards to ensure that what gets built corresponds with what the community wanted to see.”
Dozens of citizens present on Monday were encouraged to ask questions and make final suggestions for changes to the drafted plan. Some citizens raised concerns over sewer capacity, asking how development would occur if there were no sewer capacity.
Matteson said the sewer facility in neighboring Triune as currently planned will not be able to serve Arrington and that developers wanting to grow the village would likely have to bring in sewer themselves.
“The plan does suggest that it would be appropriate to have small retail and restaurant shops, but it probably would be dependent on there being some sort of sewer solution which there currently is not,” Matteson said.
Another resident, Laurel Prothro, said she has concerns about the overall scope of the plan — namely that it does not include the area housing Arrington Vineyards and Delvin Farms, some of the area’s most successful agricultural hubs. She thinks the plan shortsightedly ignores the importance of these legacy farms.
“The vision and goals of the entire project and scope from even before the meetings completely falls short of recognizing a 200-year agriculture history and legacy that is still very much alive in Arrington,” Prothro told the Herald.
Find the full Arrington Special Area Plan draft and documents from the past year of public meetings at https://www.williamsoncounty-tn.gov/2101/Arrington-Special-Area-Plan. The County Commission will vote to endorse the plan at their March 10 meeting with the Planning Commission scheduled to vote on adoption of the plan on March 13.