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Next Stop: Thompson's Station!
[Wikipedia: A charrette (pronounced [shuh-ret]) . . . is an intense period of design or planning activity.]
Placemakers, professionals in architecture, storytelling, city planning, and economic development led by Susan Henderson, helped show the ways in which the Town could be developed in a sustainable way based on citizen input. The week long process was chronicled online with daily posts about the progress with comments from citizens. After the week was finished, Susan and her team collected all the data and began working on the new Land Development Ordinance.
Placemakers developed a hybrid form(or character)-based and traditional based zoning solution to address our issues and goals. This style of zoning will allow for the preservation of rural land while allowing dense mixed use development in order to create a sustainable tax base. Preservation of rural land and small town culture arose as the overarching desire for citizens that attended the charrette, meshing well with the administration's desire for a "green oasis" in middle Tennessee's increasingly urban environment.
If you want to know how it all began, be sure to check out Thompson's Stations original RFQ (Request for Qualifications) and the Placemakers response.
- Next Stop | Process Introduction
- Next Stop | Kick Off
- Next Stop | Day One: Setting the Stage
- Next Stop | Day Two: Clarifying Issues
- Next Stop | Day Three: Testing Ideas
- Next Stop | Day Four: Closing Presentation
- Thompson's Station lays out plans for the future - The Advertiser
- Thompson's Station experiments with planned growth - The Tennessean
- State and National Recognition for Land Development Ordinance - Spring Hill Home Page
Transect Zones
LDO Recognized with Awards
In 2016, the Town of Thompson's Station won two awards for the new Land Development Ordinance that was enacted the previous year.
Alderman Brandon Bell said that he represented the Town of Thompson’s Station . . . at the Tennessee Municipal League’s annual conference in Gatlinburg, where the town received the Small Town Progress Award for the work done on the new Land Development Ordinance.
“My understanding is that’s a state award,” said Mayor Corey Napier. “It represents the collaborative and consensus-building process we went through last year to look at our Land Development Ordinance and the intended code that went with it.”
The Town also received a national award, the Driehaus Award, national recognition from the Form-Based Codes Institute located in Detroit. “What they were patting us on the back for is we’re looking out 20, 30, 40 years down the road and saying, ‘We know growth is going to happen here, and this is how we are going to address it,'” Napier said. “What this was acknowledging was that we are still considered a somewhat rural, agrarian area, but we know that’s changing with 840 and with the popularity of Williamson County and Middle Tennessee.”
Find out more about the Awards on the Land Development Ordinance Webpage.
Next Stop - Thompson's Station Submission
Below is a slideshow of the Town's submission for the Driehaus Award which explains the project, workshop results, and previous framework with illustrative plans. (Next Stop Submission - PDF)