| Group looks to invest in
Lenoir City Jeremy Nash News-Herald.net Lenoir City Regional Planning Commission last week approved the site plan for about 27 acres that will begin off McGhee Boulevard, wrap around the school and line Simpson Road. A site plan shows the apartments are called Highlands of Lenoir.
Realtor Julia Hurley, with Julia
Hurley Group of Keller Williams
Real Estate, said the property
owned by Lenoir City Company of
Virginia will transfer ownership
to Chattanooga-based East
Tennessee Investors Group LLC on
Nov. 18. Hurley could not give
the price.
“We’re going to have to do it in
two phases because it’s a lot of
work,” Hurley said. “... We’ve
got a lot of easements and a lot
of clearing to do, so two
phases. (We) should start
breaking ground next late
spring, I would say May-June.
We’re going to let it sit for
the winter and then we’re going
to break ground, so it’ll be a
while. It’s going to be
completely fenced in, a
round-a-bout for the entrance, a
gated community. It’s going to
be great.”
Map Engineers owner Michael
Price said he believed the
project may actually take a
little longer to begin, starting
sometime in July or August.
Price is also a member of East
Tennessee Investors Group.
“We’ve got issues such as making
certain that we’ve done our
complete due diligence as far as
all the market study and type of
product that we’re looking at,
getting all of our rents
established, getting the
determination that this is the
correct ... mix in terms of the
number of one-, two-,
three-bedroom units that we want
to do,” Price said. “Then
getting the architect selected,
getting the financing in place.
So there’s a lot of steps to
that take place between where we
are today and breaking ground.”
Phase one will include 260-300
units, Price said. Hopes are to
be complete by November 2018 and
have residents moving in at that
time or sooner. Phase two should
follow about 12-18 months after,
he said.
“It’s really going to depend on
how easy it is to get the
construction done on all the
prep, all the prep work and site
moving and all that,” Hurley
said.
Price said the market will
ultimately determine when phase
two begins.
“We see a class A type-apartment
development coming into the
area,” Price said. “We see
something that we think there’s
sort of an un-met demand in the
area and we think that we can
meet that with our type of
product that we’re proposing.”
Officials at first tried
rezoning the property from R-2
to R-3 in order to meet the
initial 550 units planned, but
the planning commission denied
the request in October. Although
the project was approved last
week, Commissioner Eddie Simpson
said he still has some concerns
with the amount of traffic that
will follow putting that many
apartments in the area, which
may take a toll on the roads.
“Since it was zoned appropriate
then we had no choice but to
approve them,” Simpson said.
“What we may have to do at some
point is try to redesign some of
that road up through there and
try to see what we can do to
accommodate a little bit more
traffic, and my thoughts are too
that we may even need to go to
Rock Springs Road to try to make
some improvements there to allow
some of that traffic to disperse
down in that direction at full
development. ... Upgrade the
roads around it to try to adapt
to some of the additional
traffic that might be on McGhee
Boulevard, especially there at
the intersection of Weigel’s.”
Despite that concern, Simpson
said he believes the apartment
complex will be good for Lenoir
City.
Officials say amenities will
include a clubhouse, swimming
pool and a car wash. A buffer
zone will be placed around the
property.
“It’s the type of things that
one would want to have as far as
being able to leave their
apartment and come down and
enjoy the pool area but also be
connected to the entire world
basically if that’s what they
want to do,” Price said. |
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11/16/16