A preliminary design for the Wilson Property includes moving Broad Street south of the Depot, building a park around the trains and lining a new Broad Street with new retail and restaurants.
Cookeville City Council called it a starting point as they approved an engineering consulting contract for the property Thursday night.
Traffic would leave the Crawdaddy’s intersection and enter a roundabout. The current Broad Street would be converted into a one-way street that could be closed on weekends to traffic. A new Broad Street would reconnect with the current street around Oak. City Manager James Mills said the entire downtown would benefit from additional parking.
“We want a significant portion of this to be public parking,” Mills said. “And I think we are all pretty much in agreement that that would be at the southern end of this property. Now, there may be some changes in that, but just to get, this got us excited, so we are getting it out to you guys so you will get excited with us because this is a major change for our downtown area.”
Mills said the city wants to complete a final master plan by next February. Mills said the city will soon begin public input gatherings to see how a portion of the property should be developed.
“We’ve envisioned and had discussions about this being a mixed-use commercial retail area, but that’s to be determined,” Mills said. “We want to gather input, and like I said, there will be a minimum of six public meetings that will involve specific stakeholders. One being the merchants and the property owners in the downtown. We also have the historic interest involved in that, TTU (Tennessee Tech University) will be involved in that, just the public at large will be involved in that to get your input on how this portion of the property is developed.”
The contract is with ASA Engineering and Tinkert MA for an estimated $430,000.
Mills said the city could also sell a portion of the project to a private developer, or the city could form some kind of public/private partnership.
“If we got a proposal for someone that’s gonna bring in a huge amount of revenue for us or be a major attraction to the downtown, or promote other businesses, there’s several different things like that,” Mills said. “Most of them will be economic that would sway us to, ‘Hey, let’s go do this as a private development.’”
The plan includes a new hotel and conference center on the west end of a property. An event stage, dog park, ferris wheel or merry go round also envisioned. All are just ideas at this point.
Council Member Eric Walker said the council is not dragging its feet on the project and encourages the public to stay in touch and continue to provide feedback.
In other business, an ordinance to amend the city code regarding credit or debit card payments was approved on second and final reading.
An ordinance to amend the zoning code to remove drive-thru restaurants as a permitted use within the Neighborhood Commercial district was approved on second and final reading.
An ordinance to rezone property located at 1630 Blackwell Road from Light Manufacturing to Commercial-Industrial Mixed Use was approved on second and final reading.
An ordinance to rezone property located at 2034 West Broad Street from Commercial-Industrial Mixed Use to Local Commercial on second and final reading was postponed for 120 days. Community Development Director Jon Ward said the petitioner requested that it be postponed.
An ordinance to authorize a public street access point on Tennessee Avenue for properties located north of the Nashville Eastern Railroad and authorizing a public access point for Event Center Drive for the Putnam County Fairgrounds and the Putnam County Bus and Maintenance Garage was approved on second and final reading.
The council awarded an estimated $70,000 bid for 20,000 feet of 350 triplex wire for the Energy Department.