West Plant, greenways progressing in Alcoa | News
The detention pond at the former ALCOA Inc. West Plant is complete, as the redevelopment continues.
The Alcoa Board of Commissioners got a bird’s-eye view Monday of the new detention pond, which is located in the curve where Hall Road meets Alcoa Highway, thanks to a stationary webcam the city has trained on the construction site.
Five photos taken over the course of one day — Wednesday, Aug. 16 — show how the detention pond area evolved as it was prepped for seeding, explained Andrew Sonner, assistant director/chief engineer for Alcoa’s Public Works and Engineering Department.
The rectangular portion shown at the bottom of the photos is the “fore bay,” he told commissioners, which is where sediment settles before clean water continues over the berms and “meanders” toward the point of exit, where it will join Culton Creek.
Commissioners learned at a briefing in July that an underground spring on the property could feed a water feature on the West Plant site, and Mayor Don Mull wondered Monday how large that lake could be.
“Probably 3 or 4 acres surface area,” Sonner said, though he was hesitant to guess how much water a West Plant lake could hold without revisiting the drainage calculations.
Sonner added Monday that the mass grading of the site is “90-plus percent done,” with two Blount Excavating crews working on laying sanitary sewer now and another crew lined up to lay water lines.
“The sewer has to go in first, and it’s taking a little longer because the lower half of the site is solid rock, and they had to blast,” Sonner said. “But now they have two crews going and are making up time.”
Meanwhile, APAC-Atlantic continues addressing the shoulders of the new Tesla Boulevard as well as the on- and off-ramps to a new Hunt Road interchange that is the first phase of the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s Alcoa Parkway project.
The bid date for that has been moved to June 2018, City Manager Mark Johnson said Monday.
Commissioners continue to be most interested, however, in how West Plant is going to develop.
Johnson could not elaborate Monday on who is looking at the property, which is owned by Airport Center Development Partners, a collaboration between brownfield developer RESIGHT and the city. However, he noted a master plan is underway and the first residential properties already have been sold: seven lots on Mill Street, five on Lodge and five on Maury.
The ones on Lodge and Maury, platted in March 1944 as part of the West Springbrook Subdivision but never developed, will be used for single-family residential homes built to look like existing houses in the neighborhood.
Mill Street, however, is up in the air, although those lots were bought by the same developer: Springbrook Properties LLC.
“Mill Street is going to be residential,” Johnson said. “It could be townhouses, but (the developer) is also interested in detached housing.”
Meanwhile, the city is looking at buying from ACDP 1.3 acres of vacant property that faces Faraday Street so that Alcoa can keep it as green space and a buffer to Alcoa Middle School.
“Age-wise, you think we’ll see everything develop?” asked Commissioner Vaughn Belcher jokingly, lumping the mayor, Vice Mayor Clint Abbott and Commissioner Ken White in with himself.
“I think you’ll see a lot,” Johnson replied.
Also on Monday, Sonner updated commissioners on several ongoing Greenway projects, including Pistol Creek Phase IV, which would connect Alcoa’s primary Greenway trail near Meadowood Apartments on North Wright Road with the existing Greenway at Clayton headquarters in Alcoa.
“We are in the middle of right of way (aquisition), and I have spoken to all but one property owner so far,” Sonner said.
“We staked out the center line of the trail and met to show them so they can see where it is.”
The centerline is “a little off from what we wanted,” Sonner added, so the city is working on the design to shift it a little — “10 feet here, 5 feet there.”
“I’m trying to get it closer to the creek,” he said, noting that property owners want to relinquish as little of their property as possible. “Instead of 50 feet from the creek, maybe 20 or 30, if we can make it work.”
So far only one of the affected property owners has had concerns, which Sonner alleviated with assurances that the city could put in a woven-wire fence and a gate she could lock to keep Greenway users off her private property.
Commissioners commended Sonner’s work with affected property owners, saying it is a hard job.
“We try to treat them the way we would want to be treated,” Sonner said.
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